CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
Fusion music—jazzz, as one tipsheet has taken to spelling it—combines the worst of both styles. From rock, we get sound-effect solos and neat-to-cute commercial structures; from jazz, instrumental technique so obsessive that trick meters are expected to do the work of a good beat and content is excluded altogether.
CHRISTGAU CONSUMER GUIDE
by
Robert Christgau
Fusion music—jazzz, as one tipsheet has taken to spelling it—combines the worst of both styles. From rock, we get sound-effect solos and neat-to-cute commercial structures; from jazz, instrumental technique so obsessive that trick meters are expected to do the work of a good beat and content is excluded altogether. The 70’s recordings of two of the three exceptions—John McLaughlin’s the other, unless you count Jimi Hendrix, which maybe you should—are dealt with below.
This project frightened me at first—I find jazzbased music difficult, and most of these albums have been sitting on my shelves, tasted but undigested since their release. But the meandering mistakes I expected to find in Davis were obliterated by his insight-into rock rhythms and texture and his high-content improvisations. Weather Report, on the other hand, was a disappointment—music that always sounded “interesting” in the background wilted .under scrutiny, so that in the end I skipped two LPs in frustration and disdain. Davis’s 70’s music has a reputation for saminess, but despite their surface variety, Zawinul, Shorter & company’s attenuated spirit proves far more enervating.