My appreciation of the esteemed critic Barry McRae (Jazz Journal, 17 May 2019) has certainly produced some interesting correspondence.
I observed in my piece that Barry’s book The Jazz Handbook certainly...
Opening with a drum solo, this vintage fusion set reminds us of an era when drum gymnastics were a mandatory part of the fusion repertoire. Later, Cobham returns to centre stage for a three and a half minute solo titled - soundly enough - Drum-Solo.
Cobham's turn-of-the-decade fusion was typified by the kind at sparsely scored bluesy, modal funk which has long since been overtaken by harmonically more adventurous stuff. The title track, with its simple, mostly pentatonic theme and violin/guitar unisons harks back even further, to the kind of thing Cobham encountered in the Mahavishnu Orchestra almost a decade earlier. Another period indicator is bassist Tim Lander's reggae groove All Hallows Eve, conceived at time when white reggae bands like The Police and Madness were becoming widely influential.
Contemporary fusion fanciers will note the presence of guitarist Mike Stern, who was concurrently a member of Miles Davis first comeback band, or at least about to join it. Here we hear a number of guitar solos which show all the familiar...
