Search - John McLaughlin, Jaco Pastorius, Tony Williams :: Trio of Doom : Live

There is some seriously intense music here. For starters, Williams' drum solo that opens the album is to die for. There is no excess, no showing off - only an intense orgy of rhythm. When McLaughlin and Pastorius join him, the crowd must have gone crazy because he shifts nonstop into the guitarist's composition "Dark Prince." While his solo is overdriven, distorted, and rangy, full of angles and twists and turns, Jaco's playing on the head, and in taking the tune out, is solid. The entire band is engaged with focused attention, ascending scalar and harmonic peaks together for its six and a half minutes. It is followed by a beautiful ballad by Pastorius called "Continuum," which appeared on his self-titled solo debut for Columbia. It's a gorgeous and deeply melodic ballad, and the bassist's playing is intensely soulful and lyrical. McLaughlin's chord shadings and voicings are not only supportive, they bring weight and depth, as does the beautiful hi-hat work of Williams. (Speaking of which, on "Dark Prince" and elsewhere, it's obvious that Williams is the true inventor of the blastbeat, not some generic heavy metal drummer. To hear his incessant bass drum and chronic cymbal-and-snare workouts is inspiring.) "Are You the One, Are You the One?," written by McLaughlin, closes the live set, and it's a funky, kinetic, and knotty jam with Williams playing breaks as well as pummeling the toms to get the funk up out of the thing. Pastorius' groove is incessant, even when he is matching the guitarist note for contrapuntal note. Fans of the fusion era, and those interested in any of these personas, will be much edified by what is found here. If only there were more of it.