Weather Report - Live in Berlin 1975 / CD & DVD(all region)

CD + DVD

The year before this previously unreleased audio/video recording was made, Weather Report had got funkier with the album Mysterious Traveller, and this show catches them just as their popularity was about to rocket. There are a few instances of the showy electronics-noodling from Zawinul and absent-minded gap-filling from Shorter's sax that was to blunt Weather Report's jazz edge as its rock-audience grew. But as the show warms up, the players find that balance of spacious tone-poetry, incisive improv and infectious hook-playing that was the essence of their best performances.

The opening Freezing Fire is a sprint for splashy synth effects and frenzied percussion, but Zawinul's Scarlet Woman is the epitome of subtle story-development, coloured by the composer's panpipe sounds and embraced by Alphonso Johnson's rich electric bass, and Mysterious Traveller a vehicle for some gutsy Shorter tenor sax. The 20-minute closing medley of an impassioned Badia and a jubilant Boogie Woogie Waltz, prefaced by a flowing acoustic piano passage eventually joined by smoky tenor sax, shows exactly how inspirationally Weather Report blurred genre differences, and improv/written differences, too.

John Fordham - https://www.theguardian.com/music/2011/mar/24/weather-report-live-berlin-1975