Feel the Fusion!

I have bought the "Trio of Doom" album. It is legendarily awful (although the bloke at blogcritics seems to like it, I tend to take the fact that the trio immediately broke up amid atrocious recriminations and the tracks haven't been released for 27 years as probably informative). It was only 8 quid though and I am a big John McLaughlin fan. JMcL's liner notes are really quite hilarious in the extent to which he comments on what lovely people his bandmates were and how the "Havana Jams" US State Department cultural exchange project was a thoroughly worthwhile diplomatic initiative, while clearly unable to bring himself to write a word about the actual music. Even the jazz hack's jazz hack, Bill Milkowski, who can always be relied on for 500 words of nostalgic hagiography of the "importance" of any jazz recording, no matter how terrible, is slightly qualified in his enthusiasm. I'll listen to it his evening and tell you how I got on.

While rooting around for links, I found this bit by Pat Metheny on the subject of Kenny G. I won't tell you whether he's for or against.

Update: it is ... pretty bad. There is a genuinely excellent Tony Williams drum solo to begin the record, but this can't justify a whole album on its own. The live tracks are as appalling as they are renowned to be; Pastorius really does play in a different key to the rest of the band, and there's not much in the way of mixing that can be done to compensate for this. JMcL's guitar playing is fantastic throughout though, at times sounding weirdly reminiscent of 90s indie also-rans The House Of Love. On the whole I'm glad I bought it.