Your favourite band might not suck as much as some people think.

July 18, 2012 4:23 AM

For me Miles Davis Bitch's Brew is the epitome of good driving fusion /jazz / rock. Help me push the envelope. I remember some Wayne Shorter, Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, Weather Report, John McLaughlin. I need more of this good music in my life.
posted by adamvasco to religion & philosophy (21 answers total)

Well, the Wayne Shorter you are thinking of is his work with Weather Report; his albums from the 60's are modal jazz (they are wonderful).

If you are interested in contemporary artists who are still flying the flag of 70's era fusion, I recommend browsing the website of AbstractLogix, where you will find audio samples of the CDs that they distribute. I 'll recommend the work of Swedish bassist and composer Jonas Hellborg, especially the records he made with Shawn Lane and Jeff Sipe.
posted by thelonius at 4:48 AM on July 18, 2012

Those three Weather Report Albums Night Passage, Mr Gone and Heavy Weather are amazing

The Solo Jaco Pastorious albums are really good. The Joni Mitchell albums with Wayne Shorter and Jaco are amazing - Hejira and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (not so much Mingus). Hissing of Summer Lawns is fantastic too.

You might like some of the Marcus Miller stuff - he played bass with Miles on a few 80's albums

Also you might like Jan Hamer too - I found Jan Hamer through the bass player Fernando Saunders who led me to the Billy Cobham album Spectrum. Fernando Saunders played with John McLaughlin as well as Lou Reed on The Blue Mask.
posted by mattoxic at 5:04 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

You might be interested in Julian Priester's Love Love.
posted by .kobayashi. at 5:25 AM on July 18, 2012

Herbie Mann
posted by Ironmouth at 5:27 AM on July 18, 2012

Gout by Art Jackson's Atrocity sounds so much like Agharta-era Miles Davis that for a while people were fooled into believing that it had been recorded in 1974.

The marketing was fake but the music was legit.
posted by Egg Shen at 5:35 AM on July 18, 2012

A great Mahavishnu Orchestra influenced band, more rock than jazz, who you might like, was the Dixie Dregs (later changed to just The Dregs, as people thought they were some kind of Molly Hatchet Southern rock group). Actually Jerry Goodman, violinist from Mahavishnu Orch, ultimately joined the current lineup of the Dregs. Actually you have heard them if you listen to NPR news, where some excerpts from songs on "What If" are used frequently as bumper music.
posted by thelonius at 5:38 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Are you in Davis' Tribute to Jack Johnson? It's right up with Bitches Brew for me.
posted by princelyfox at 5:50 AM on July 18, 2012

I think you might love an obscure French band called Priam. Their first record is my favorite, but I love this one too.
posted by jbickers at 6:13 AM on July 18, 2012

modern prog-rock, sort of jazzy

Chicago Odense Ensemble
Elephant 9
posted by pepcorn at 6:56 AM on July 18, 2012

The Brecker Brothers, Heavy Metal Be-Bop. Skip the first (studio) track and listen only to the rest of the album (the live stuff).

My two favorite Billy Cobham albums: Crosswinds and Total Eclipse

Not 100% hard-driving fusion, but check out John Abercombie's Timeless
posted by crLLC at 7:00 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

Tony Williams Lifetime: Turn It Over. Also Cooper-Moore / Digital Primitives and James Blood Ulmer.
posted by ryanshepard at 7:02 AM on July 18, 2012 [1 favorite]

This may not be helpful, but two names that occur to me are Chick Corea and Jean-Luc Ponty.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 7:32 AM on July 18, 2012

Joe Farrell's Moon Germs is a great listen. Joe Henderson's acoustic album Relaxin' at Camarillo isn't fusion (in the "classic" sense), but the personnel (incl. Chick Corea and Peter Erskine) have done a lot of pioneering work in that genre, too--check out the track Y Todavia La Quiero, which has a really nice, solid, driving groove.
posted by freeform at 7:51 AM on July 18, 2012

It's more recent than the examples you mentioned, but Bill Frisell's Unspeakable is fantastic and (IMO) has a throwback vibe that fits right in. There aren't many full tracks online, but here's 1968.
posted by usonian at 8:39 AM on July 18, 2012

Tortoise
posted by hydrophonic at 8:50 AM on July 18, 2012

Weather Report's mostly live album 8:30 is great too. (I'd recommend listening to the vinyl version if you can find one.)
posted by fuse theorem at 8:58 AM on July 18, 2012

re 8:30...There is a DVD documenting that era (1978) Weather Report in the box set they put out a few years ago; a concert in Germany. It's interesting how much fretted bass Pastorius plays on it, and how close the sound is to his iconic fretless work. The man had really, really good intonation.
posted by thelonius at 9:05 AM on July 18, 2012

The place for you to start with Jaco, I think, are the Live in New York City albums, specifically the different takes on Teen Town.
posted by troywestfield at 11:14 AM on July 18, 2012

Seconding Jean Luc Ponty.

Maybe not quite what you had in mind, but as we're talking Jaco, check out Victor Wooten
posted by BWA at 11:33 AM on July 18, 2012

Bitches Brew is astounding. One way to go from there is the Weather Report kind of way, but another is to follow Miles further into the seventies until he retired: into Pangaea and Live Evil and so on. Julian Cope's Miles Davis On the One is a wild introduction to that period. There is a lot of fantastic music to explore here.

Another way, a bit sideways, is to explore what Miles was listening to. Dig into some James Brown (especially something like Love Power Peace, which is later but incredibly funky), or Sly and the Family Stone, or Jimi Hendrix.
posted by wdenton at 4:20 PM on July 18, 2012

Need to mention Miles' In A Silent Way
posted by mattoxic at 10:55 PM on July 18, 2012