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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pw: sgtg

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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pw: sgtg

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 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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Pat Metheny Group - First Circle (1984)

Pat, Lyle & co certainly got what turned out to be their ECM farewell off to a memorable start, parodying an off-key high school marching band, which must have had hundreds of record store owners saying 'oh, you want to hear the new PMG?  You might want to skip track one... yep, definitely skip past it'.  From then on in, though, drummer Paul Wertico leads into the album proper with the sunny, upbeat Yolanda You Learn, and all was well.

The PMG sound for years to come was crystalised on this LP, although the seeds of it had been sown over the previous few years.  Yolanda goes on to feature a fine wordless vocal performance by Pedro Aznar, looking forward to the Still Life (Talking) era, before Pat whips out the guitar synth - tastefully, of course.  First Circle (the album) still retains a bit of an avant-garde edge, but for the most part the lush, South American-influenced rhythms and melodies were all in place to full out the sound beautifully.  A stunning high point for Pat to end his ECM tenure on and look to his future, that still makes for fresh, life-affirming summer listening today.

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