Search - Pat Metheny :: Road to You

Five Stars does not do this art justice.

Lee Fredrickson | Hansville, WA | 05/20/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"
From where Metheny and his group members,

(of a common soul, I'd almost swear,

playing different tools from the same heart

with different fingers) take me and took

European audiences on this album,

I would have titled it "Levitation."



Music, well composed and performed, built

and played with care, love, creativity

and talent, takes me places that approach

ecstatic.



With this work on the audiograph I am

transported places VERY few other musicians

have ever taken me close to, in any genre.



I can only compare it to feeling lifted up

and floating, being held aloft--levitated--

by Pat's group, working together so tightly

while flowing, like liquid, over and through

the songs' melodies, arrangements, rhythms.



Listening, right now, to this CD's version of

the Metheny-Mays standard "First Circle."

Am in the clouds! Think it's just my opinion?

Listen to the crowd! Damn!

Those big, blocky Mays chords.



Buy the album. Put it in a car's player.

Turn it up!!! You will thank me.

You will thank those 6 guys.

You won't want to get where you're going.



Lee"

EUROPIAN VACATION

Crabby Apple Mick Lee | INDIANAPOLIS, IN USA | 11/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Some years ago, I was working at my job in surgery when a friendly female nurse asked what that great jazz I was listening to. I told her it was Pat Metheny. She asked was there more like that. I replied--not thinking as I was busy--"Yeah, I think you would like about anything he does. Just give it a try." What I didn't remember was Pat had just put out the SONGS X album with Ornette Coleman and (wouldn't you know it) that was the album she bought. The two days later she threw the tape in my face and yelled "you can just have this c**p!". She never spoke to me again. It kinda upset me because she was every bit of alright.



Since that time, one has to pick Metheny's albums carefully. There seems to be drive, which one guesses is an occupational hazard among popular jazz musicians, to prove to your contemporaries that you indeed are "artistic" and a deadly serious creative type. After all, no one wants to be regarded as another Kenny G. What comes out is this earnest, edgy stuff appreciated by aficionados of "deep jazz"--otherwise known as "pure music". Whatever the effect these immersions have on peer respectability, they sell very few records. They also have the lethal effect of persuading the general public that jazz is not for them.



Fortunately, THE ROAD TO YOU has none of impulses to bow to the jazz elite. This is an excellent record full of the most loved pieces in the Metheny catalogue. The live performances and the mixing are about all you could ask for given the recording art of the time. THE ROAD TO YOU is also absent any traces of one of Metheny's favorite guitar-synth sounds I lovingly call "the raging elephant". There have been several great Metheny albums since this recording and he continues to draw an ever larger fan base. But you could do much worse than starting here. It any so bad for us long time fans either.



Other superb Metheny albums to explore:



As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls

Letter from Home

Offramp

First Circle

80/81

Travels

Speaking of Now

The Way Up

"

AweSome!

Muhammad S. Rahim | NJ USA | 08/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I agree with David........ BUY IT FOR THIRD-WIND. I've heard a couple of versions of that track but the one on this CD is AWESOME!



I've been listening to Pat for about 20 years now.....I'm 40 so thats half of my life....... I've seen him in several concerts and also had the pleasure of meeting him in NY at J&R Music World where I got his Autograph! I wish that I weren't nervous because I would have hugged him..... I did shake his though.



He's the only musician the I can say I LOVE. His music reaches my soul like no other.....period."