Procession 00:18
Fast City 10:50
The Peasant 20:12
D-Flat Waltz 30:31
Blue Sound - Note 3 46:07
Molasses Run 59:12
Plaza Real 1:05:22
Percussion Solo 1:13:18
Two Lines 1:16:43
8.30 1:33:25
Black Market 1:35:08
Elegant People 1:36:23
Badia 1:36:54
A Remark You Made 1:38:43
Birdland 1:42:09
Delicate Fantasy 1:46:30
Where The Moon Goes 1:57:41
Weather Report
Universal Amphitheatre, Universal City, CA
April 15, 1983
Josef Zawinul Keyboards
Wayne Shorter Saxophones
Victor Bailey Bass Guitar
Omar Hakim Drums
Jose Rossy Percussion, Concertina
Original comments: "This concert has another story of its own, and is another reason I waited so long
to create this Weather Report memorial concert series. Like the Starlight Bowl
concert, this is another of my favorites. But the recording has problems, and the
problems take a lot of time and effort to fix. So instead of working on this a
long time ago, I waited all of these years to gain the motivation to work on it.
This show is a solid A-rated show, and the recording quality is for the most part
A-rated as well. The new band has been together for a year by now, and they perform
like a well oiled machine. Like the Starlight Bowl show, there are moments of pure
magic on this recording. One such moment is during the encore, during an improvised
piece I called "Delicate Fantasy." Synthesizer technology was just starting to get
real interesting. For the very first times, synthesizers were able to perfectly mimic
an actual instrument. But this wasn't the magical moment. But during an interplay
between Wayne and Joe, Zawinul dials up a perfect Tympani on his synthesizer. But
as Joe moves up the scale on his synthesized Tympani, the instrument (and it's
waveform) morphs into a perfect French Horn. That was a pure magical moment back
in 1983.
Another moment came during the second encore of "Where the Moon Goes." We've all
heard jazz players do a form of call and response. But in this case, the challenger
was Joe Zawinul, and the response came from Omar Hakim on Drums. Yes, it's a
synthesizer vs. drums on call and response. That was another truly magical moment.
But alas, the recording has problems. The first minute of the recording doesn't
sound so good. You will hear that. The beginning of the concert the levels were
sporadic (at best) and there was lots of microphone muffling. To fix this, I was
lucky enough to have a second source recording the same concert. The quality isn't
the best, and you can hear this during the first minute of the concert. There are
also times during the concert where there is apparent oversaturation of the tape
recording. This isn't on the master tape. The master tape levels are sufficiently
low that this oversaturation should not have occurred during recording. But I
noticed this at least three places on the recording, and all three places original
levels were not set incorrectly. I can only conclude this oversaturation sound came
from the house PA system, possibly caused by overdriving the preamps of the mixing
console.
The original recording also suffered two very bad tape turns. In both cases, the
song had ended while the tape was turning. That's very hard to fix. Using the
second source recording, you would think it was possible to get complete versions
of each song. Nope, he turn the tapes during the same songs as I did. To fix
one of them, I had to take what I had, and use the very end that was captured on
the alternate recording to create a false ending. That means about 16-bars of
music are missing. The second tape turn was much more fortunate. My recording
captured longer before the tape turn than the alternate second source. I was
able to splice the two back together to fix the song. The sonic quality of the
second source is noticeably poor. But I did the best I could to make the
equalization sound the same. Finally, one of the microphone cords was cutting
in and out during the encore. There was just enough sonic material to perfectly
fix this in almost every case; but it was very time consuming. In the three or
so cases that were too excessive to fix, I had to revert to mono; but usually only
a second or so at a time.
But even with all of these warts, the show is one of my favorites. It's an
A-quality show with an A-quality recording. It's a must have for any Weather Report collection."
Thanks to Robert Collins & ledwhofloyd.
Footage & Production by bigfootpegrande.
