Joe Zawinul & Weather Update (DVD-Video)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: B-     Extras: C-     Concert: B-

 

 

Joe Zawinul has been a serious Jazz musician in the commercial and critical eye since the early 1960s, but his membership in Weather Report in the 1970s gave him music immortality.  A fusion band, the newer Weather Update began in 1985 when Zawinul left the classic group to be able to better express his own musical ideas.  That is good, because Joe Zawinul & Weather Update is a good DVD that shows the more abstract, avant-garde, electronic direction he wanted to go into.

 

Weather Report is often criticized (unfairly to a good extent) of being safe Jazz, even on the borderline of being elevator music!  You cannot say the same of Weather Update, with some new and different being tried in every song.  The tracks here are:

 

1)     The Harvest

2)     Dr. Honoris Causa

3)     Update

4)     Consequently

5)     Face The Fire

6)     This Is This

7)     Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz

 

This runs under an hour and could have gone on longer.  Taped on July 7, 1991, the this likely sounded even more cutting edge before electronic music and its assimilation in Pop and Hip Hop to be kicked in, though the use of the voice synthesizer (Melodeon) for Zawinul to sing through makes one feel like Peter Frampton will show up and try to sell the DVD-Audio and Super Audio CD of Frampton Comes Alive.  Outside of that, very entertaining for as long as it lasts.

 

The 1.33 X 1 full frame image looks good for its age off of a clean analog professional NTSC source.  The sound has been remixed for Dolby Digital 5.1 and sounds so good not having DTS is a shame, which is why the 16Bit/48khz PCM 2.0 Stereo is a nice option.  Extras include the credits and text bios on the band.  Not enough, but the performance is unique and worth your time.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo