2. Weather ReportSweetnighter
I would put these first two choices together as more of an electric kind of groove version of jazz. I have a lot of early memories of that record. Before I understood that music had different tribes, and that you had to listen to punk or whatever. While everyone else was listening to Buzzcocks, I was listening to Sweetnighter by Weather Report. So I was a bit out of step there. I remember a mate of mine was in a punk band and I would go along to rehearsals. But I had this secret life with this album. I like the way it is jazz and funk but it has a Viennese thing going on, strange Austrian folk melodies going over the top of these American funk grooves. I didn’t think in those terms, but lately, as I got into the world a bit more, I realised it is a weird mixture of old archaic folk and electric funk.
Miroslav Vitous is on both those first two albums. This is pre-Jaco [Pastorius], and I sort of prefer it. I really like his strange bass playing. That weird mixture of Eastern Europe and New York. I saw Weather Report live quite a few times in the north of England. I saw them play with Jaco as well, I remember him leaping over his amps with a gymnastic flourish.
