Wayne Shorter: A Collection

Though I remember next to nothing about the music — I've got a feeling the band was mostly electric, but that's all I can say — I remember being impressed by the first Wayne Shorter gig I went to. That would have been late 1986 or early '87, at the Nelson Mandela Building in what was then Sheffield City Polytechnic.

It looks as though some of what I heard that night could have been based on the tracks on this collection, though. There are no sleeve notes, but a little research shows that six of the tracks are from 1985's Atlantis and one is from 1986's Phantom Navigator. I'm less enamoured of this music, but then the mid eighties were a dark age for production values in many genres, and it seems jazz didn't escape.

The three other tracks are from 1974, and they sound better. They're all from the Native Dancer album, which was Shorter's last solo album until Atlantis — the intervening years being taken up with his work in Weather Report and the V.S.O.P. quintet.

The last two paragraphs are what I've learnt in the last half an hour — I certainly knew none of that when I bought the CD, which, quite evidently, is a very partial selection from Shorter's 50-year career. Its £0.99 price tag was the main thing that caught my attention.

I saw Shorter again early in 2004, at St Luke's. Once again, I've forgotten the music, but I remember being put off by its angularity and apparent complexity. There was a support band playing an homage to his work in the sixties, and I enjoyed that more.

Wikipedia entry for this album