John Mclaughlin

Though this fitfully inspired yet always intelligently musical record is an electric album, McLaughlin is more often heard on acousticintet, along with bass and drums, contained two keyboard players, Francois Couturier and the noted classical pianist Katia Labeque (who was McLaughlin's companion). Labeque, seated at a Synclavier and a grand piano, has acres of technique and almost no feeling for jazz, though she is adept at providing moody backdrops, and her rapid-fire synth runs and Jarrett-like etudes on the Steinway aren't too far away stylistically from McLaughlin's helter-skelter flurries. In a continued homage to McLaughlin's once and future employer Miles Davis, "Blues for L.W." brazenly quotes "Blues for Pablo," and sometimes the music texturally resembles the heavily synthesized things that Miles would soon be putting out.

At this point, it is easy to see that the John McLaughlin story has become a peripatetic journey of electric-acoustic switchbacks, with the formation of the One Truth Band that plays on this LP being just another short chapter in the saga. And this time, McLaughlin is thoroughly in charge: there is little of the competitive dueling or tightly drilled, high-volume unison lines of the past; it's the guitarist and his sidemen, although sometimes keyboardist Stu Goldberg steps out with some wicked chops. McLaughlin returns Miles Davis' favor of naming a piece on Bitches Brew after him by turning the tables, and indeed, "Miles Davis" often has the loose, jamming feeling (and a quote of "It's About That Time") of the maestro's own jazz-rock sessions.

Essential: a masterpiece of fusion music.
Believe me, I am not joking when I saw awesome, because it really is. Think about one suberp guitarist , who again show us what he can do with that strings and that fingers, and a superb violin, a superb tabla, so after all it could be a super band no?

In the early '70s John McLaughlin was one-third of the supergroup Lifetime with drummer Tony Williams and organist Larry Young. This particular CD from 1994 matches him with drummer Elvin Jones and organist Joey DeFrancesco, but the music has little in common with Lifetime. Instead many of the tunes can be considered to be tributes to John Coltrane; Jones's participation certainly reinforces that connection. McLaughlin, back on electric guitar after several years sticking almost exclusively to acoustic, is in top form on such numbers as "Take the Coltrane," "My Favorite Things," "Crescent," and "Afro Blue." The improvising is advanced and colorful with DeFrancesco keeping the proceedings swinging, and even if the results are not quite classic, the collaboration is somewhat unique.

Essential: a masterpiece of fusion music
The day I heard these three musicians, I was literally "combed back." Well, is that this concert became part of the essential in guitar history (long before fashion "unplugged").