Original Release: Columbia 83670
Release Date: 1979
Time: 71:34

Josef Zawinul:	Prophet-5, Keyboards, ARP Quadra bass, Korg Vocoder
Wayne Shorter:	Soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone
Jaco Pastorius:	Bass, drums on "8:30" and "Brown Street"
Peter Erskine:	Drums and percussion
Erich Zawinul:	Percussion ("Brown Street" only)
West Los Angeles Christian Academy Children's Choir:	Vocals ("The Orphan" only)

	1978 UK tour program cover, courtesy Andy Forward. Click the image to view the entire program.

With Peter Erskine brought into the fold at the end of Mr. Gone, Weather Report entered its most stable period in terms of personnel, with Erskine and Jaco remaining until the end of 1981. In concert the band was a jaggernaut, ripping through the Weather Report repertoire with stunning chops and power. Indeed, many fans remember the Erskine-Pastorius edition of Weather Report as their favorite, a feeling shared by Joe Zawinul. "8:30 was one of my favorite records that we ever made! I love this record!" Zawinul exclaimed in the 1994 8:30 CD reissue liner notes. "I think at that point we had reached the height..that 'live' tour...every night was an event." He went on to add, "For four people to play 'live' like that...I don't think there is too much around today to compare to that." [ET94]

In addition to introducing Erskine as a full-fledged member of the band, 8:30 captured Weather Report pared down to a quartet--a configuration dating back to the pre-Mr. Gone days when Zawinul fired percussionist Manolo Badrena and Alex Acuña manned the drum chair sans percussionist. Asked why the band no longer needed a percussionist, Zawinul said, "It's making everyone play that much better, and the harmonics can be heard much better. The congas can interfere with the contra alto range of the bass and can devastate part of the piano, too. If the drummer and percussionist are not perfectly synchronized, the music can become chaotic." [DB78b] "They never mattered all that much anyway," he later said. "There was always a certain quality missing when we used them. Now we focus much more on melody and harmony. We all play percussion ourselves. It's much better that way. The sound isn't as crowded as it used to be." [LAT78]

"We have four percussionists," Shorter explained. "Each of us will play percussion at some point in the evening, and sometimes I play tenor like percussion. See, we can change hats." [RS282]

In November of that year Down Beat's Larry Birnbaum asked Jaco and Zawinul how it felt to work as a quartet:

Pastorius: Fantastic.

Zawinul: It's a little more focused. It helps the bass player.

Pastorius: There's a certain timbre in some of the percussion instruments that takes away a lot of the midrange, midrange and below. Joe and I might be playing and we can take more space and not have to force our way through. [DB79b]

	Columbia Records Press Photo for 8:30

Following the release of Mr. Gone, the band embarked on a tour that took them to Europe, Japan, and South America, before culminating in a sweep of the U.S. in late 1978. It was from this tour the that live material for 8:30 was recorded. In fact, most of it comes from the November 24, 1978 concert at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California. According to Zawinul, "We recorded four concerts and the very first concert where the guy who recorded it didn't have a clue was the best. Ninety per cent of the music on the 8:30 album was from the very first concert in Long Beach which was magic." [IM81] Peter Erskine remembers, "The live recording engineer actually wanted to save tape and record over the Long Beach performance because he felt it wasn't so good and the band would play better. Of course, everyone in the band thought that was a bad idea!" [PE]

Dennis Hunt, in his Los Angeles Times article promoting the Long Beach concert, made the mistake of suggesting that Weather Report was a fusion band. "It's all crap. Fusion is all crap," retorted Zawinul. "I hate it. There is no fusion. What's fusion? Can you tell me what it is? I think most fusion music stinks and to be put in the fusion category is an insult. It's the writers who are putting us in this category because it's easy and there's no other place to put us. In Europe they have the right idea. They say Weather Report is the leader in a field of one. There's nobody like us. We don't play rock 'n' roll or jazz-rock or whatever that crap is. We play our own original music and that's that." [LAT78] Glad we got that straightened out!

Thanks to the success of Heavy Weather--and Mr. Gone, which reached No. 52 on the Billboard charts--the concerts were marked by higher production values than before, with a smoke machine and fancy lighting backdrop. "That was the beginning of our most successful period, as far as mass appeal," Zawinul recalled. "The success of Heavy Weather opened up things we hadn't been able to afford, like the lasers and full production we took on the 8:30 tour." [KB84]

But the music remained paramount according to Zawinul. "We had finally reached a level of performing that surpassed most bands I've ever heard," he recalled. "Over the years we had always had great bands, but sometimes on stage we had a tendency to play a little bit too long. There was a period in jazz where everybody played real long; I think it was almost an illness. There was a lot of swimming going on. We tried to reduce the swimming somewhat and get more to the point. What we ripped off on the 8:30 album as a quartet, I think, was incredible! It was all live and there was very little overdubbing. The only overdubbing was done just to clean certain things out, like a hiss, a buzz, or something like that." He went on to say that "the 8:30 tour was actually the best tour Weather Report has ever done." [KB84]

Weather Report performing in Germany, September 29, 1978. Photos courtesy Rockpalast Archiv. Used by permission.

1. BLACK MARKET (ZAWINUL)

The live concert was preceded by the playing of Maurice Ravel's "Bolero"--once dubbed "the world's longest musical crescendo"--broadcast over the house P.A. system. At its climax, the lights dimmed, and the auditorium was filled with what sounded like howling monkeys, as can be heard on 8:30 just before the start of "Black Market." According to Alan Howarth, Zawinul's keyboard tech from 1977 to 1980, the sounds came from "a monkey cage that Jaco recorded in Australia, a whole baboon community dialog thing." [IASW, p. 237]

Peter Erskine recalls that "'Black Market' on 8:30 is not edited to the best of my knowledge. The take is identical to the one on Havana Jam, because the version we played in Havana sounded pretty crappy. Since the band was in the middle of mixing 8:30 at the time, the decision was made to just send CBS the version which was already mixed from the Long Beach concert. Completely identical, despite some reviewers' contrasting analyses of the two performances." [PE]

2. SCARLET WOMAN (ALPHONSO JOHNSON/SHORTER/ZAWINUL)

This track is omitted from the U.S. release of the CD in order to fit the material onto a single CD. The Japanese double CD release includes all of the tracks from the original double LP.

3. TEEN TOWN (PASTORIUS)

Another live version of "Teen Town" can be heard on the compilation album Havana Jam 2. (Or is it the same version as this one? I don't have Havana Jam 2.)

4. A REMARK YOU MADE (ZAWINUL)

5. SLANG (PASTORIUS)

Stuart Nicholson in his book Jazz-Rock: A History wrote that "Slang" "demonstrated Jimi Hendrix's influence by segueing Charlie Parker's 'Donna Lee,' John Coltrane's 'Giant Steps,' and Hendrix's 'Third Stone from the Sun.'" [JR, pp. 178-179] Bill Milkowski, in his Pastorius biography, describes a typical Jaco solo showcase like this:

During Joni [Mitchell's] road show, Jaco was featured in a solo bass spot every night. Using the repeat function of an MXR Digital Delay, he would lay down an ostinato, loop it, and then play solo lines on top of the repeating riff. As he played, he would--of course--slide around the stage on the baby powder sprinkled beneath his feet, and he would often get the crowd to clap along with the beat while he danced and strutted his James Brown moves. As the solo gathered speed, Jaco would turn up the built-in fuzz tone of his Acoustic 360 amplifier full blast and launch into an explosion of feedback, quoting from Jimi Hendrix's "Third Stone from the Sun" and "The Star-Spangled Banner" along the way. He would then climax his showcase by laying his bass down on the stage (pickups still howling), climbing on top of his amp, and jumping onto his instrument. Sometimes he would mockingly whip the bass into submission with his guitar strap, like some sort of comical Marquis de Sade. [JACO, p. 92]

Though Milkowski's book says the looped, repeating phrase was made with an MXR Digital Delay, Jaco himself said in 1984 that he used "an old makeshift fuzztone" effects pedal. "There's no brand name on it at all. You can hear a good example of it in action on the title cut from the Word of Mouth album, my last studio album. It's got a built-in delay that I can put on infinite repeat whenever I want to lay down some kind of track to play on top of in concert." [GP84a] (See the notes below about the track "8:30" for Jaco's comments on his use of the MXR unit.)

Unofficial recording collector Andy Forward notes that this is an edited performance, as Jaco's solos during this period typically ranged from nine to twelve minutes.

6. IN A SILENT WAY (ZAWINUL)

"In A Silent Way" was one of several pieces Zawinul wrote during a return trip to Austria in the winter of 1967. "I wrote 'In A Silent Way' in Vienna, in a hotel room overlooking the park," Zawnul explained in 1978. "My kids were off with my parents, and my wife was asleep. The snow was falling down, and I looked out the window to the park, and took out the paper and wrote the whole thing in a few minutes." [DB78b]

Of course Miles Davis used it as the title track for his seminal 1969 album, In A Silent Way. Zawinul recalled to Paul Tingen, "I met Miles for the first time in 1959, when I was playing with Dinah Washington. We became good friends, and during the late 1960s I didn't live far away, and we often spent two, three hours fooling with music. I wrote so many tunes, and he liked my music a lot at that time and he used some of it. I'd played him 'In A Silent Way,' and he told me he wanted it on his record. Actually, Nat Adderley gave the title when we played it at a soundcheck in the band I had with Cannonball Adderley. Nat said, 'Oh, man, that's so beautiful, it sounds like 'in a silent way.'' There was some conflict going on, because Cannonball wanted to record the tune, but I said, No, I gave my word to Miles that he could use it. One morning Miles called me and asked me to come to the studio, and a few minutes later he called me back and said, 'Bring some music, and bring that nice tune.'" [Mojo01]

Miles altered and shortened Zawinul's composition, using only the last part. "I don't know what [Zawinul] was looking for when he wrote that tune," Miles once said, "but it wasn't going to be on my record." [MB, p. 61] A short time later Zawinul recorded the entire song as he originally conceived it for his Zawinul album. The liner notes of that album say that "In A Silent Way" was inspired by Zawinul's boyhood experiences in the Austrian countryside. Down Beat writer Ray Townley asked Zawinul how he conceived the tune, its textures and rhythms. "This I don't know," replied Zawinul. "I just took a pencil and a piece of paper and wrote it, within a minute and a half. There was no stopping. The concept was clear from the very beginning. And there was never any change, except for the last eight bars. Miles stayed on the tonic, while I on my recording changed the bass notes." [DB75a]

On this version Zawinul relied on the Sequential Circuits Prophet-5 for his string sounds, telling Keyboard magazine's Greg Armbruster, "I have a fantastic string sound on the Prophet-5, unequaled by any other synthesizer." Even better than the E-mu Emulator (a new instrument introduced in the early 1980s that played digital recordings of actual instruments), asked Armbruster? "Yes, and I'll tell you why," Zawinul replied. "On the Emulator I can get a solo string sound that's real good. You can record a solo sound that's going to be as total as anything you ever want to have. But the moment I play a chord and there are four or five voices moving, it loses it, and I don't know why. You don't program the Emulator; you feed it the sound [from a floppy disk] and there it is, exactly what you put in there. With the Prophet-5 I can program the sound while playing chords, and then I can tweak it--that's what I like about the Prophets." [KB84]

"In A Silent Way" has been recorded numerous times, including a version by Carlos Santana on his album, Dance of the Rainbow Serpent (which also includes "This is This" from Weather Report's final album). The Davis version is featured prominently in the 2000 theatrical film, Finding Forrester, along with another Zawinul composition recorded by Davis, "Recollections."

7. BIRDLAND (ZAWINUL)

Asked about the difference in style between this version of "Birdland" and the one on Heavy Weather, Peter Erskine says, "As I remember it, when I first joined the band I played it like Alex [Acuña] did on Heavy Weather (his drumming on the entire album is AMAZINGLY GREAT), and I think that any tapes of the band from that first tour of Japan in 1978 reflect that. But at some point Joe said that he didn't like 'that Bossa Nova beat' and could I play something else? Again, as I recall, I came up with the shuffle idea, though I wasn't convinced that it was such a great idea, and we experimented with how much and where to put the shuffle, etc. So, I'm happy and comfortable to take the credit or the blame for the beat, but as in most things Weather Report, there was a lot of group energy/synergy and input re: most everything the band did." [PE]

In his 1984 Keyboard magazine interview, Zawinul acknowledged that "Birdland" was perhaps the toughest Weather Report tune to play live (and one can marvel at the dexterity required to play it live as heard on 8:30). "For a long time 'Birdland' was a hard one. It's always been interesting, because it's one of the hardest tunes I've ever had to play, as far as hand independence is concerned. When we did it in the studio, I overdubbed all the parts, even the solo, but then I realized what I had done. You don't want a record that can beat your performance, or not be able to play the tune on the stage, so I had to really practice 'Birdland' to get everything to sound like the record, and it wasn't easy. I have to switch octaves in unison, operate the foot pedals for the Oberheim, play the entire accompaniment with the left hand while the right hand plays a different rhythm. I have to play all the counter-melodies in the solo, and for a while that was a hell of a challenge for me." [KB84]

8. THANKS FOR THE MEMORIES (L. ROBIN/R. RAINGER)

9. BADIA/BOOGIE WOOGIE WALTZ MEDLEY (ZAWINUL)

10. 8:30 (ZAWINUL)

"8:30" was the first recording on which Zawinul used a vocoder. Asked about it in 1984, he said, "I've done a lot of things with [the vocoder] over the years. The whole melody on '8:30' was a vocoder melody. And, for instance, on 'Procession' the didgeridoo-type sound is all done with the vocoder, as well as the 'chipmunk' voices on 'Two Lines.'" The vocoder he used was the newly introduced Korg VC-10, a standalone device that included a small keyboard, a simple synthesizer, and a goose-neck microphone attachment. The idea was to impart the timbral character and articulation of speech onto a synthesized sound generated by the VC-10 itself or from an external sound source. (According to Zawinul keyboard technician Jim Swanson, Zawinul generally used the synthesizer in the VC-10 as opposed to an external synthesizer.) If you used a bass sound as the audio source, for instance, then the vocoder made the bass "talk." The VC-10 was part of Zawinul's live set-up at least through 1984, when he actually had two VC-10s, one of which was modified by Swanson by detaching its keyboard so that it could be placed on top of one of Zawinul's keyboard stacks. He eventually replaced the VC-10s with a Korg DVP-1 voice processor, which was introduced to the market in 1986 and was still a part of Zawinul's set-up as of 1997. [Mus97]

About the making of "8:30," Erskine told Glasser, "At one point, Jaco sat down at my drums and started playing--which was a little threatening to me at the time--and started playing something, and Joe joined in, and that became the tune '8:30,' the opener on the studio side. And I ran and got the engineer and told him to come back and record it properly." [IASW, p. 214]

Regarding the short wave radio segment preceding the tune, Erskine said "They came up with that because they said, 'We need something to get into the tune,' so Jaco found somebody that had a short wave set-up and he recorded it on a cassette. And he brought it in, and we listened to about 45 minutes of him turning the knob, some accordion, the BBC voice and then, bam!, they cut into the cassette version. Then... you hear the whole thing come into this full-blown thing in stereo. By that time they'd finally got the two-inch multitrack going, because I'd gone and got the engineer. So it was the same take, just different machines. As with a lot of Weather Report edits, it would be masked because we'd overdub a cymbal crash right at the edit point." [IASW, p. 214]

11. BROWN STREET (ZAWINUL/SHORTER)

"'Brown Street' was recorded right here at home," Zawinul recalled in 1984. "Jaco was supposed to come to the rehearsal, but he had been arrested. So Peter Erskine, Wayne, my son Erich, and I just started playing and it was 'Brown Street.' It was originally recorded on a cassette, but we put it on the record and the naturalness always remained." [KB84]

Erskine told Glasser, "We came up with 'Brown Street' at Joe's house, which we just had on cassette. So we took the cassette track, put it on two tracks of a multitrack and Wayne relearned a lot of what he'd played and overdubbed to get a better sound." [IASW, p. 214]

12. THE ORPHAN (ZAWINUL)

13. SIGHTSEEING (SHORTER)

Peter Erskine once recalled that this tune "was my favorite track I ever played with the band. The thing with Jaco playing the didgeridoo, the antique cymbals and cortales, and that kind of funny funk thing it goes into, we came up with that after we cut the tune. We were just fooling around, to create an interlude." [DB01]

Jaco once cited "8:30" as an example of the sound he achieved with the MXR Digital Delay, but he was most likely referring to "Sightseeing," which was combined with "8:30" in concert. The effect he describes can be heard during the bass break near the recorded version of "Sightseeing." [JS]

As Jaco described the effect, "I've got an MXR Digital Delay, which I put through one amp, leaving the other amp clean, to cause a natural sort of vibrato. I'ts almost like an organ Leslie [rotating speaker] effect or flanger. A good example of that effect is the title cut from the 8:30 album, or the tune 'Continuum' from the live Invitation album. I also used that effect a lot on the Joni Mitchell records, particularly on 'Coyote' and 'Hejira' on Hejira, or 'Goodbye Pork Pie Hat' and 'God Must be A Boogie Man' on Mingus." [GP84a]

"Weather Report live at last! Famous for its meticulously produced albums--one a year since 1971--the once and future fusion band has come out of the studio with three sides that strike the color and power of an electrical storm... As any WR fan or bootleg owner can attest, Weather Report is a good live act. In the past few years their stage show has become downright flashy, and these performances evoke vivid images... Back in the studio, the band spins out an odd assortment of new tunes... This side comes off as filler and is only mildly interesting compared to the exciting set that precedes it."

****

--Douglas Clark, Down Beat, December 1979

---

"Just another idle stop in the dismal live album terrain? Just one more watermark in the soggy Weather Report decline into the absolute mud of their history? Just something to shut up the silence? Shape up the bank balance? Yes (except that one side of this double is a studio set and is equally disappointing). Yes. Yes. Who knows, or cares? Having summed up 8:30 so succinctly, I'm at a loss to go on."

--Ian Penman, New Musical Express, September 29, 1979

---

"8:30 is a welcome change-up, with several exquisite curves, and it is also a slightly unsatisfying set from what is certainly the best band of the seventies... A couple of Weather Report's older pieces are the keys to this album's most immediate value. As mentioned, Pastorius and Erskine are a drastically different rhythm section from earlier combines, and that makes this a drastically different ensemble. Listen to 'Black Market,' which was originally recorded using Alphonso Johnson's surfacey, static bass lines for interior motion; on the live version here, Pastorius leaps all over the beat, charging this wonderful tune with the jumpy, glorious life-force of a revivalist on mescaline. Then try 'Birdland,' on which Erskine has completely rewritten the beat and, by extension, the song itself... And without a percussionist, Weather Report's sound is more open, much looser, than it's been since 1973. The best band of the seventies may well be turning into the best jazz band of the eighties and 8:30 is the first imperfect hint. Take note."

--Neil Tesser, Jazz, Winter 1979

---

"It's really a painful paradox, that this band could make a record so despicable in some ways, yet still enjoyable in others. It's despicable that they so often fall into calisthenic displays of chopsmanship, as in the live 'Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz' medley or Jaco Pastorius' 'Teen Town.' Equally awful are pointless indulgencies like 'Scarlet Woman' and Jaco's bass solo, 'Slang,' which is hardly worth the adoration it draws from the rabid hordes. Then when you think all is lost, they light into a swinging 'Birdland,' which is lovely in spite of its Mangione/Muzak overtones. Or the liquid funk of 'Black Market,' or the soothing, narcotized noodling of 'A Remark You Made.' Pleasant, if not too inspired... The studio side veers in a similarly erratic manner. '8:30' is slight, if pleasant, and 'The Orphan' is unbearably weighty... Yet, 'Brown Street' is a good demonstration of Weather Report eclecticism at its best... And then there's 'Sightseeing,' 5:34 of burning hard bop that cooks--the only Shorter composition on the lp, natch, and the only chance they take (it's to their credit that it's a big one that works well)."

--Michael Shore, Musician Player & Listener, November 1979

Grammy, Best Jazz-Rock Album of 1979

Best Jazz Group, 44th Annual Down Beat Readers Poll