Black Market
WEATHER REPORT
Columbia
Two decades on, Weather Report has proven itself to be far and away the most durable band from the '70s fusion scene. I find Return to Forever and Mahavishnu stuff all but unlistenable, while I still crank up Zawinul and Shorter and the guys with regularity. Black Market came just before the band's big commercial breakout, Heavy Weather, which yielded the rare jazz hit "Birdland." Every track on Market — ballads, jazz-rock tunes, funk throwdowns, proto-world-music workouts, et al — simply kills, but it's the title track, with its multilayered unwinding melody, that nudges out the rest.
This article appears in Mar 8-14, 2006.
