Weather File

The press information that Prog received simply states: "The exact details around the gig seem to be lost in the mist of time, though it was at some point in the 80s!" Weather Report only payed four London dates in the 80s - at Hammersmith Odeon on November 14, 1980, when Jaco Pastorius was still in the band, two more Hammersmith Odeon shows in June 1983 and one final time at the Dominion in 1984. The Live In London CD features a line-up of Joe Zawinul (keyboards), Wayne Shorter (sax), Omar Hakim (drums), Victor Bailey (bass) and Jose Rossy (percussion) places this between 1982 and 1984, so that narrows things down to the final three shows. The set comes from a radio broadcast, and looking at the band's setlists over at the time, it seems that the Dominion show is the most likely.

This double-CD has 24 different groups of fusion musicians (including some from Europe) paying tribute to Weather Report. Despite the personnel and often the instrumentation changing from track to track, there is a unity to the project and many of the bands sound quite a bit like Weather Report, either purposely as part of the tribute or naturally. The programming is somewhat random and the bands bring back the sound, grooves, and spirits of Weather Report rather than necessarily always sticking to their compositions. All in all, this is a heartfelt and very well-played tribute that can also serve as an introduction to a cross-section of some of today's top fusion musicians, many of whom are not household names yet.

Weather Report is generally regarded as the greatest jazz fusion band of all time, with the biggest jazz hit ("Birdland") from the best jazz fusion album (1977's Heavy Weather). But the group's studio mastery sometimes overshadows the fact that it was also a live juggernaut - so don't overlook the outstanding live and studio album from 1979, 8:30. This was a rare quartet version of Weather Report, with co-leaders in keyboardist Joe Zawinul and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. The bassist was the inimitable Jaco Pastorius, the drummer a young Peter Erskine. Pastorius is otherworldly on early gems like "Black Market," the breakneck "Teen Town," and his solo showcase, "Slang" (in which he quotes Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun")…