Pat Metheny Group - American Garage (1979)

R.I.P. Lyle Mays, 27 Nov 1953 - 10 Feb 2020

Lyle Mays, best known for his long association with Pat Metheny, has died at the age of 66 from causes related to a recurring illness.  To commemorate Lyle's great contributions to jazz from the 70s right up to the 21st century, here's a blast of classic PMG.  Plus more below from previous posts.

American Garage was the second Pat Metheny Group album, and all of its five tracks (in an economic 35 minutes) were co-writes by Pat and Lyle.  The album saw Mays' adoption of the Oberheim synth, and it both builds on the jazz-rock fusion of the PMG debut and also strips it back a bit to a rootsier, rockier sound (hence the 'Garage' concept).  From this distance,  it's just a great little record stuffed with melody, great playing, and a snapshot of the young group just before they became a huge, Latin-influenced group in the 80s and beyond.  Thanks for all the great music, Lyle.

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Previously posted at SGTG featuring Lyle:
Watercolors
Shadows & Light
As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Offramp
First Circle
The Way Up

Pat Metheny Group - Offramp (1982)

The album that took the Pat Metheny Group to stardom was a new-sound album in more than one way.  Nana Vasconcelos, introduced on As Falls Wichita (see links below), returned to fill out the percussion sound with its Brazilian influence that would become more central to the PMG sound in the coming years.  Longtime bassist Steve Rodby also made his debut here, as did Pat's guitar synth.

That legendary Roland GR-300 sound makes its first appearance right from the start, in the brief opening track Baracole, over a nice thumping pulse from Vasconcelos.  Then it's straight into one of the most gorgeous mellow classics of this era, Are You Going With Me.  First led by Lyle Mays on a synth-harmonica sound, then by Pat on guitar synth, it's one of his sunny-day trips across the Midwest for the ages.  The Brazilian influence becomes even more explicit on Au Lait that closes out the album's first half, adding Vasconcelos' voice to the mix as Pat returns to clean guitar.

Side Two introduces more PMG classics to what is perhaps their quintessential album.  The upbeat Latin rhythm of Eighteen drives one of the most simply joyful pieces of music they ever recorded, and for maximum contrast the knottiest free jazz of the album comes next in the title track, devised as a tribute to Ornette Coleman.  Another tribute follows, this time a sweetly melodic one for James Taylor, before the album closes with the calm melancholy of The Bat Pt. II.  An utterly essential jazz fusion masterpiece from start to finish.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
First Circle
The Way Up
Pat Metheny at SGTG:
Watercolors
New Chautauqua 
As Falls Wichita (with Lyle Mays)
Song X (with Ornette Coleman)
and featuring Pat:
Dreams So Real
Shadows And Light
The Sound Of Summer Running

Pat Metheny - Watercolors (1977)

In early 1977, the 22-year-old Pat Metheny had a lot riding on his forthcoming second album: he'd produced a stunning trio debut with Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses, making him the rising star to watch on Europe's premier jazz label.  The follow-up would expand his sonic palette by adding keyboards, courtesy of a musician of similar age who he'd met a couple of years back, and would spent the following decades coming back to as part of the evolving Pat Metheny Group.  That group's initial drummer, Danny Gottlieb, came into the picture here too.  With Metheny still lacking his own bassist, one of ECM's established ones sat in, bringing his unique sound: the great Eberhard Weber.

If, as some regard it, Watercolors was the first PMG album in all but name, it was a low-key start.  I've always felt it works just fine in Pat's name only, sitting better with his more intimate solo records like New Chautauqua (check some of the gorgeous 12 & 15-string sounds here) than the more immediate smash hit of the PMG debut.  The music here is mostly quiet and impressionistic, suiting its becalmed, watery art and track titles.  The more upbeat material however does ensure variety in the programme, and Lakes and River Quay in particular do arguably point the way forward to the early PMG sound.  Either way, just another stunningly beautiful early Pat Metheny record among several.

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Pat Metheny & Lyle Mays - As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls (1981)

Recorded in between the second and third Pat Metheny Group albums, this collaboration of the PMG creative hub was highly significant to the larger group's direction.  For the first time here, Metheny and Mays worked with Brazilian percussionist/vocalist Naná Vasconcelos, and Metheny's innate sense of wide open space in his music would expand further into full-on panoramic vistas.

Nowhere is this better expressed than in Wichita's 20-minute title track.  Evolving from ambient sound into a gently throbbing pulse, the track's beautiful opening phrase only lasts a minute before setting off into dark wilderness.  Over the extended, filmic landscape, Vasconcelos' voice & percussion and Mays' synth explorations traverse the frontiers of ambient jazz in a journey that remains one of the crown jewels in the ECM catalogue.

At the outset of the album's second half, Metheny and Mays remain in the rural outdoors for the joyful Ozark, before taking the tempo and mood down a notch for a sombre tribute to Bill Evans' passing (which occurred during recording).  Next up is It's For You, another outing for Mays' synths and Vasconcelos, as Metheny creates shimmering rainclouds of acoustic guitar before taking a solo at the halfway point.  The sweetly atmospheric Estupenda Graça closes the album.

A quick word about the album cover, said to be both a reference to the track It's For You and to Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman; it might come in for some stick from many fans, but I kind of like it.  And it does provide a link to another of my favourite record labels, Erased Tapes: two years after the recording sessions for Wichita, the cover photographer Klaus Frahm would become father to a son named Nils.

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Joni Mitchell - Shadows And Light (1980)

Metheny. Mays. Pastorius. Brecker.  Must be ECM Friday?  Not this time: it's a spotlight for, IMHO, the greatest live album ever made.  And it was released on Asylum in September 1980, a year after its recording at the Santa Barbara Bowl, where it was also filmed for a concert movie, hence the opening credits-style 'Introduction' left intact here.

At the end of the 70s, Joni Mitchell was wrapping up what has become my absolute favourite phase of her peerless career, spanning two magnificent albums, one admirably questionable double, and a lovely collaboration with a jazz legend nearing the end of his life.  All are represented here with some of their best tracks, given fresh propulsive energy by the crack team mentioned above: Hejira's great young bassist is particularly on fire throughout, to the point where I sometimes put this album on purely to listen to Jaco.  Pat Metheny's rising star confidence is a joy to listen to as well, even cheekily quoting his own 'Phase Dance' when Joni sings "...songs from the hit parade" in the first song.  Mays, Brecker and Don Alias round out an amazing band for this dream setlist, breezed through by a singer-songwriter who had utterly transcended that genre.  If you only have one Joni Mitchell album representing her 'jazz era', make it this one.

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Pat Metheny Group - The Way Up (2005)

For their final (barring any future reunions) outing together, the PMG core of Metheny, Mays & Rodby, unchanged since the early 80s, plus more recent members Cuong Vu (trumpet/voice) and Antonio Sanchez (drums), produced a masterpiece of a sendoff.

It was the start of 2005; many of us who'd been tirelessly defending Metheny/PMG against the "jazz muzak" putdowns had been getting slightly worried that Speaking Of Now had just been giving those naysayers more fuel.  Then along comes a new album - a single, 68-minute piece of music composed around recurring themes but still leaving plenty of improvisational space, that stretched Pat & Lyle's writing skills and celebrated all that had made them great.  It remains my post-ECM favourite by both bandleader and group.

Conceived by Metheny and Mays as a "protest song" against the dumbing-down of modern music (© every generation since music began), The Way Up was always intended to be a big statement, and a long one, but that doesn't make it inaccessible.  One helpful concession was to divide the hour-plus work on CD into three sections, preceded by a five minute 'Opening', which does make the whole thing more manageable to digest (and to write about!).

It's also just so damn enjoyable: to hear Pat run the whole gamut of acoustic, electric and guitar synth; to hear the main themes introduced then seamlessly reconfigured much later on, like the Reichian pulse in the Opening coming back in Parts 2 & 3; to hear all the buildups in tempo and intensity suddenly stop in their tracks, only to immediately start building up the next stage of the journey.  The Way Up always feels like a lengthy train ride to me, no doubt helped by Metheny's career-long evocation of Midwestern open space; if you ever feel less than enamoured with the scenery for a bit (I'm not crazy about Grégoire Maret's guest harmonica solo, for instance) there'll be something else, both new and familiar, along shortly.  And as a complete journey, I seriously can't rate The Way Up highly enough.  Essential early 21st century jazz at its finest.

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