2003 was a big year for very large, very fast, and very,
very cool things.
The United States Air Force tested the biggest conventional air-to-surface bomb ever early in the year. It was called MOAB and was short for Massive Ordinance Air Blast (and often referred to as the Mother Of All Bombs). Weighing in at about 21,000 pounds, it carried over 18,000 pounds of explosive. To help come to grips with that sort of achievement, the previous recordholder (the “Daisy Cutter”) weighed a total of 15,000 pounds and carried about 12,000 pounds of explosive. There’s more explosive in the new bomb than there was
bomb in the old bomb.
In short, it was pretty
fucking badas
s. Badas
sin the kind of way Godzilla, very tall men in exceedingly tall hats, and ultra huge ballistic missiles are badas
s.
Later that year, Porsche finally rolls the incredibly elegant and powerful Carrera GT out of concept car limbo and straight into production. For the paltry sum of $440,000, this deus ex vehiculum, with a top speed of 213 mph and a 0-60 time of 3.5 seconds (about as fast as my interest for pretentious indie music), caused just as much shock and awe as the MOAB. Like the Americans, the Germans certainly had their obligatory huge damned thing for the year
In other words: Pretty
fucking sweet.
Finally, just before the year of great big years was almost over, something truly magnificent came out. Weighing in at 3 pounds and costing about 200 pounds (har har currency wordplay punnery), the
Montreux Concerts box set was clearly the English response to the developments of their German and American counterparts.
Nearly twenty-five years of John McLaughlin’s incredibly varied and diverse performances at the Montreux Jazz Festival are to be found spread across the
seventeen discs and seventy tracks of this enormous box set. There are almost fifteen hours of music in total, with the average track time ending up being an astonishing 12:37 long.
Up until now, proportions this fantastically huge were usually reserved for Greco-Roman mythology or nuclear powered American aircraft carriers.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the box set before diving into the good stuff:
Discs 1 & 2 – Mahavishnu Orchestra (July 1974)
Discs 3, 4, & 5 – Shakti (July 1976 & 1977)
Disc 6 – John McLaughlin & The One Truth Band (July 1978)
Disc 7 – John McLaughlin & Chick Corea (July 1981)
Disc 8 & 9 – Mahavishnu Orchestra (July 1984)
Disc 10 & 11 – John McLaughlin & Paco De Lucia (July 1987)
Disc 12, 13, & 14 – John McLaughlin & The Free Spirits (July 1993 & 1995)
Disc 15 – John McLaughlin & The Heart Of Things (July 1988)
Disc 16 – John McLaughlin & Remember Shakti (July 1999)
Disc 17 – John McLaughlin/Carlos Santana & John McLaughlin/Paco De Lucia (July 1993 & 1996)
ANYWAY
Amazingly enough, even though one would think McLaughlin’s utterly massive and prolific musical career would have been fully covered on these 17 discs, there are still a couple of things missing. The first and (most fiery) incarnation of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which truly made him (in)famous around the world as a virtuoso world fusionist, is nowhere to be found and neither is immensely popular and Grammy-winning Guitar Trio with Al Di Meola.
However, I’m just nitpicking quite unfairly, because the performances of the other incarnations of the Mahavishnu Orchestra plus the groovy and outrageous One Truth Band & the shockingly dark and serious Heart Of Things more than make up for the absence of the first Mahavishnu Orchestra. In addition, I much rather prefer the guitar duo performances of just Paco and John provided because Al Di Meola, in those days, was more of a scale run speed demon novelty than an actually soloist. This is more than well demonstrated on the Grammy winning Friday Night In San Francisco. Of course, twenty years is a long time and Al Di certainly more than shows the incredible amount of maturity and musicality he had gained on the incredibly beautiful (and very simply titled) Guitar Trio album, which was released just a little bit before the close of the 20th century.
Stand out performances or groups? A question probably easier to answer would be one inquiring about the lack of such qualities…And the answer to that is, well, there aren’t any. Despite a couple rough patches, which is quite understandable considering the decision by John and co. to do absolutely no editing or cleaning up of the recordings before releasing them in the box set, each disc is an incredible (and incredibly diverse) faceted glimpse into nearly all that John and his fellow virtuoso bandmates have accomplished in the last twenty five years.
However, if I had absolutely had to pick, the Shakti and One Truth Band performances are just ludicrously good. It is no coincidence, however, that I picked the two groups that featured the Indian classical violin prodigy, L.N. Shankar. The interplay that Shankar and John shared in Shakti’s studio albums was simply paltry compared to the seemingly telepathic spontaneity they masterfully manipulated in the live performances of Shakti. It is no wonder that over two and a half hours of music (the most for any one group in the box set) is spread out on three disks. Nata (clocking in at almost forty minutes long!) and the two different performances of India (lasting twenty two and twenty four minutes each) are completely jaw dropping.
And if you can get past the corny chanting and spoken word parts about world peace and universal love, you will uncover an absolute demon of a jazz/rock/Indian classical fusion super group in the One Truth Band. They mix together the harmonic and rhythmic monstrosity of the original Mahavishnu Orchestra with the epic interplay of Shakti and dish out even more recklessness than either group. John McLaughlin described the often inaccessible and overtly technical music of the Mahavishnu Orchestra as being very “strong” compared to much of his other efforts. To follow that analogy, the One Truth Band is like twelve Saturn V rockets launching simultaneously.
Off your dining table.
At breakfast time.
Recommended more highly than mandatory immunity vaccination for children born in Third World countries.
A note for audiophiles: Since no editing was done to these live recordings, the sound quality (especially of the oldest performances) will not do your $12 billion soundsystem (powered purely by the blood of virgins named Albert) justice. Just keep that in mind when your finely tuned and highly refined ears hear something amiss, don’t send the triple Kevlar reinforced gold plated magnesium latticed superduper nuclear powered speaker wire back to Area 51 (or Guantánamo Bay) for replacement or something equally as pointlessly geeky.
A note for normal, non-apeshit-crazy people: Even though no editing was done to these live recordings, any (unperceivable) loss in sound quality will be absolutely inconsequential since most of the quality loss can only be perceived by very small hamsters or very nerdy audiophiles
And one last final note: Disc 17 has such a spectacularly thrilling performance by Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin that Microsoft Word keeps crashing because I keep using too many damned superlati-
