Weather Report - Live in Offenbach - September 28, 1978

Weather Report
Live in Offenbach, Germany
Sept. 28, 1978

Artists:
- Joe Zawinul (keyboards)
- Wanye Shorter (tenor and soprano saxophone)
- Jaco Pastorius (electric bass)
- Peter Erkskine (drums)

Tracklist:

01. Black Market
02. Scarlet Woman
03. Young and Fine
04. The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat
05. A Remark You Made
06. River People
07. Thanks for the Memories
08. Dolores / Portrait of Tracy / Third Stone from the Sun
09. Mr. Gone
10. In a Silent Way
11. Waterfall
12. Teen Town
13. I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good / The Midnight Sun Will Never Set On You
14. Birdland
15. Introductions
16. Fred & Jack
17. Elegant People
18. Badia

Previously unreleased recordings from pioneering fusion band Weather Report playing live in the 1970s are streaming from the late Joe Zawinul's estate in the group's 40th anniversary year. This spring's 1975 Live in Berlin set caught the band beginning to sense its power over a rock audience. Live in Offenbach, from September 1978, features the band that included bass-guitar star Jaco Pastorius. It also included Peter Erskine, a shrewd drummer who helped reintroduce a cooler jazz feel after the critical hammering that had greeted the overcooked, studio-made Mr Gone earlier that year. Stripped down to a quartet, the band sound engaged (particularly the sometimes enigmatic saxist Wayne Shorter), and after the standard early workouts on their hits, they get surprisingly loose and open. Shorter exhibits Sonny Rollins's muscular solo-sax whimsicality on the standard Thanks for the Memory, and Zawinul's wealth of acoustic-piano improv ideas burst out of I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good, while Birdland has a bright, rough-and-ready energy. Pastorius's driving basslines thunder through the music, even if his solo spots tend to emit more heat than light. It's a vivid show from a WR period sometimes considered short of inspiration.