***Weather Report Corner***

[Hot Ptah]

I am not sure what to think about this thread. However, I think that we have all read a highly sanitized version of reality in the big jazz magazines over the years, in which every jazz musician is a happy, wonderful person who was influenced by the same giants of the past and who loves their audience, their record company, their gigs, and everyone in the whole wide world. Everything is sunny and happy.

There is no group of people in any walk of life who are really like that. The sanitized presentation of reality is not unique to jazz. The film "Bull Durham" illustrated how a young baseball player was explicitly taught to mouth happy inane statements instead of being candid, which was humorous because we have all heard national sports figures talk the same way many times.

I have often read about business people in my community who are being profiled in the local newspaper. I know that they are not very nice or ethical people, and the entire business community thinks of them very poorly. Yet in the newspaper article, you would think they were Mother Teresa from the glowing remarks made by other business people in the community. Everyone presents a happy talk version of reality in print.

So when you read some truly candid remarks about any public figure, it often seems remarkable.

[jazzbo]

I personally have no reason to doubt what youmustbe says and from what I've read between the lines I would believe it to be true.

As you say, we get sanitized stories. I know (even just shallowly) a few people "of note" or "of import" and I know them to be crusty and/or many things that aren't "clean and safe."

I don't mind keeping it real.

Edited May 8, 2009 by jazzbo

[JSngry]

Hey, Joe was crazy. Ok. "crazy", if you prefer. His music was beautiful crazy. That doesn't mean that every other part of him was the same.

Not having known the man myself, all I can really evaluate is the music. As for the rest of it, I'll believe nothing that I don't have very good reason to believe.

And the same goes for what I will or will not disbelieve.

[rockefeller center]

Ah, that's why Z did the Mauthausen recording:

Nah, sorry youmustbe, I don't believe Hitler was his man.

[bertrand]

To believe an accusation like that, I would need a lot more than one source. This same source has proven to be sprouting BS in the past.

Bertrand.

[marcello]

During my recent move, I've unearthed a whole lot of buried items, including a tape of a NPR show featuring Weather Report music along with interviews of Joe and Wayne. I'll give it a listen and report any interesting tidbits.

[king ubu]

Ah, that's why Z did the Mauthausen recording:

Nah, sorry youmustbe, I don't believe Hitler was his man.

Yeah, I'm really having a hard time imagining that... Zawinul wasn't just present in the glossy US jazz press (which certainly is "sanitized", no doubt about that), but also in the daily papers, and if you read interviews with him or articles about him, that's just not a thing that would ever come up... of course you can now say that he himself hid it, but then we're off into paranoia and conspiracy...

[oneofanotherkind]

I haven't listened to Joe's Mathausen , but I've read about it. I believe that the initial ( and only ) live performance in 1998 was presented at the camp itself, with Joe the only live musician ( it being a multimedia thing with much spoken word ).

It forcibly ( and painfully ) strains the limits of my imagination that Joe could sit for hours inside the very grounds where 120,000 horribly lost their lives , personally recreating the insane depravity that went on 50-60 years before in an intense multimedia barrage , while at the same time privately sympathizing with Hitler and the Nazis and believing that what happenned there was somehow justified.

I believe that even an openly Nazi musician ( if there is such a thing these days ) would experience severe psychological troubles attempting to create, stage, and deliver such an event.

Edited May 9, 2009 by oneofanotherkind

[oneofanotherkind]

Excerpt from this 1998 interview with Zawinul :

"When I found out about the Holocaust, I was like unconscious for about a year. The media had been contolled by the Nazis and nobody came back from the camps to talk about them. How could my people do this? I learned that there were beasts everywhere. How could those monsters come from the same place as Beethoven? I had all the weight of my past on my shoulders like a camel."

[JSngry]

Flirting with danger here & take this at 100% literal face value, but... if Zawinul from time to time expressed a "dislike" of "Jews", that does not necessarily equate to being a Hitler sympathizer or a neo-Nazi. It's one thing to individually harbor cultural/generational prejudices, quite another to embrace a systematic/systemic organized acting out of those prejudices.

Which is not to in any way "excuse" or otherwise justify those prejudices. I'm just saying, as somebody who grew up surrounded by prejudice, that not all "prejudiced" people gravitate towrds extremist positions. Some of them will actually backtrack big time when the opportunity to align themselves with such movements arise.

I'm left wondering what was actually heard here - an actual embrace of Hitler/Nazi-ism or some individually prejudiced statements that were "assumed" by the hearer to embrace something that was not actually being embraced.

[bertrand]

Thank you, gentlemen, for rescuing this thread from the crapper.

[jazzbo]

I believed that "Hitler was his man" was a dramatic overexagerration, all I'll say is I can believe the anti-semitism charge may be true, I'm not dismissing it outright out of some sort of vision of what my jazz heroes should be like. (I've also observed as Jim has that not all prejudice leads to extremist stances).

I know from experience that heroes are far less idealized than we think or a PR department might wish us to think.

That's all. Even the sanitized version of Zawinul I've seen showed fierce egotism. I think youmustbe may possibly have told us the truth in important ways.

One can say: so what. I've learned to do that with heroes.

Edited May 11, 2009 by jazzbo

[Claude]

I highly recommend this new DVD featuring a german TV studio performance from 1971 (a 48 minute set without an audience)

Weather Report - Live In Germany 1971

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003GE69QG/

Here's a review: http://sidsmith.blogspot.com/2010/05/weather-report-live-in-germany-1971.html

I might add that the quality of the picture (color, 4:3) and the sound (mono) on this legit region-free DVD (not recorded from TV like many other jazz DVDs sold in Europe) is very good.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Claude

[bertrand]

I'm so glad they issued this!

Can I get it in the States or do I have to go the import route?

Bertrand.

[Quincy]

I'm so glad they issued this!

Can I get it in the States or do I have to go the import route?

Import CDs has it listed as Live In Hamburg w/ a release date of July 27. Price before shipping is $11.27. Link here.

Kind of interesting that it's the same cover design except for Hamburg in place of Germany. This is the only site I've checked (thus far) regarding US sellers, so you might want to poke around elsewhere, or just order from the link that Claude provided.

[Matthew]

This question has bothered me for years.

Ask Ed Freeman.

http://www.edfreeman.com/ef8.html

I just did.

Talk about good karma! Mr. Freeman was at his computer and answered back, like, immediately:

Hi Jim - thanks for the email and the kind words. The Weather Report cover was made by laying two pieces of polarized plastic on top of each other at 90 degree angles to each other and stuffing various kinds of clear plastic in between them - mostly Saran Wrap and the cellophane from cigarette packs. In effect it's a plastic sandwich. Produces really interesting results when you hold it up to a light source and view it as a slide. Try it yourself - easy, instant art!

Ed

So there you have it - it's a SAMMICH!

I was reading this thread while listening to Weather Report just now, and I kept looking at the cover, wondering: "What the **** is this?" Then, KISMIT! I come across the answer. Life is easy sometimes....

Edited August 14, 2012 by Matthew

[Valeria Victrix]

I highly recommend this new DVD featuring a german TV studio performance from 1971 (a 48 minute set without an audience)

Weather Report - Live In Germany 1971

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B003GE69QG/

Here's a review: http://sidsmith.blogspot.com/2010/05/weather-report-live-in-germany-1971.html

I might add that the quality of the picture (color, 4:3) and the sound (mono) on this legit region-free DVD (not recorded from TV like many other jazz DVDs sold in Europe) is very good.

There's a couple of great gigs to be found from that period. To think of all the incredible stuff lying in various Radio and Television Archives around Europe. I know of some great Keith Jarrett European Quartet stuff for example.

Getting back to WR though - at this period they were really cooking - more free form and inventive than in their later incarnations (although they were incredible live too, as they really stretched out. For my money Live and Unreleased contains some absolutely brilliant stuff) There's some tantalising glimpses of new material - such as SunFish.

[mikeweil]

At the last rehearsal of our band (where we attempted Zawinul's tune "A remark you made") our sax player said he had heard stories about Shorter and Zawinul insisting they play on different days when booked into the same festival, like they wanted to avoid meeting under all circumstances. Any confirmation - and any other non-musical reason why they decided to split?