Musical and geographical offerings from GeoBlogs: a 365 blog project for 2026.
Earth Run was an album released in 1986 by Lee Ritenour.
He used an early guitar synthesiser called a SynthAxe.
On the track Sanctuary you can hear this guitar being used. It has an interesting tone, which was then developed further by Pat Metheny and others.
Recorded in 1981 for the album 'As falls Wichita, so falls Wichita Falls' by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays.
Bill Evans died on September 15th the previous year...
Rick Beato has broken down the song here.
I lived in Hull for just under a year between September 1986 and May 1987 while I was training to be a teacher.
This was a time when one of the bands most associated with the city was active: The Housemartins. They morphed into 'The Beautiful South'. Some of the band members lived round the corner from where I lived.
I don't remember going to many gigs while at the university to be honest.
One was at the Hull Truck Theatre Company's venue. It was an evening of New Age music put on by Coda Records. John Themis played a great track from his album 'Atmospheric Conditions'.
There was also a band called Frugivores who played the same night.
I've seen Pat play live in various different circumstances:
- with the Pat Metheny Group - including the late Lyle Mays and Steve Rodby, along with varying combinations of musicians
- as a Trio, with various musicians, including Antonio Sanchez
- Solo (including a superb concert at the Barbican
- with the Orchestrion: an automated
On Sunday, I headed down to the Barbican to see the latest tour with Side Eye 3+
Set List1976 saw the arrival of another few classic albums. Blondie was in the charts a lot at the time - I was in Secondary school by now... and a half century has passed since...
Genesis released 'A Trick of the Tail', another album since Peter Gabriel's departure.
Perhaps the best album released this year is now a classic, but I didn't encounter it for another 20 years at least....
2026 is the 50th anniversary of its release.
Bright Size Life is the name of the album: a trio recording, and the debut for Pat Metheny - at the age of just 21.
The album features Pat Metheny of course, plus Jaco Pastorius on bass and Bob Moses on drums. It was released by ECM Records. Details are here.
Here's the title track:
Pat Metheny has released an unexpected digital only single today... I'm seeing him in a few months' time on his latest Side Eye tour, having seen the previous two of these.
I had to think about this one for a while.
What song genuinely cheers me up when I hear it?
I always enjoy hearing this performance from Pat Metheny, Lyle Mays, Steve Rodby and Nana Vasconcelos.
It's called 'Ozark'.
Here's a studio version. "Ozark" is from "As Falls Wichita, so Falls Wichita Falls", a collaborative album by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays, released in 1981.
It captures the band that toured with Joni Mitchell in 1979.
Eberhard Weber is a German bassist. He has sadly retired from playing following a heart attack which happened in April 2007.
He played with a great many of my favourite musicians.
The first time I saw him I was completely blown away by his style and sound. This was a concert with the Jan Garbarek Group performing 'Molde Canticle' from 'I took up the Runes' at the Cambridge Corn Exchange.
More on that to come in a few days' time...
Portrait by Gert Chesi - Shared under CC license
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberhard_Weber#/media/File:Eberhard_Weber_-_Portrait_by_Gert_Chesi.jpg
I then saw him around a half dozen other times with the Jan Garbarek Group, including a concert at the St. Andrews Hall in Norwich, where I had front row seats.
One night in Norwich I also went to see him play a solo concert at the Norwich Arts Centre. He said quite a bit between the music that he played expressing thanks and surprise that people would come out to watch him "playing with himself".
This was a reference to the echo and delay unit that he used to layer up sounds and create some wonderful effects and tunes.
He started out working with other musicians, and recorded several solo albums too.
He also played with the Colours Quartet and recorded several albums, which had Lyle Mays as one of the players too.
Here's an early performance.
A tribute concert was held in Stuttgart in 2015.
It was released as an ECM album called 'Hommage a Eberhard Weber' - I have a copy of that album.
Musicians playing were: Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Scott Colley, Danny Gottlieb, SWR Big Band, Helge Sunde.
Weber's latest albums, Résumé (2012) and Encore (2015) comprise solos from his performances worldwide with The Jan Garbarek Group, overdubbed with keyboards/treatments by Weber, saxophone by Garbarek, and flügelhorn by Ack Van Rooyen.This included a long piece which was written by Pat Metheny.
This was recorded with musicians in front of a screen which showed some of his solo work.
One of the final pieces of music that the late Lyle Mays (who will be remembered in due course in a post on the blog) recorded is called 'Eberhard' and is a tribute to him.
Seek out some of his work with Jan Garbarek.
Finally, it's also worth saying that he also worked with Kate Bush.
A REDDIT post tells the story by sharing images of books.
He talks about the experience in an interview:
She called me once when I was in Hamburg. I couldn’t even believe it was her. The hotel had a message from Kate Bush and I called her back. She told me she loved ECM music in general and my music in particular. She wanted me to participate in one of her albums. She sent me a tape of the two tracks she wanted me to play on and asked me to think about countermelodies. So I did that and flew to London where she lived. I thought it would be like the jazz people I work with and that within two hours, the first tune is done and within another hour, the second tune is done.
...so falls Wichita Falls...
A beautiful album, released in 1981.
One that featured quite a lot of improvised music.
I like the simplicity of this video - the view from a train travelling through a wintry Kansas landscape.
The first of a series of posts featuring some record labels which champion music from global artists.
The record label which I perhaps have more of than any other in my collection is ECM.
ECM was founded by Manfred Eicher.
The covers of ECM music are always works of art.
This Substack article showcases some.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Bowie: a musical icon for many. I remember listening to his music from the late 1970s onwards. My wife saw him play live, but I never managed it.
He is often described as a musical 'chameleon', adopting a number of personas in his music, and also having a successful acting career. Three classic albums are referred to as the Berlin trilogy.
In 2022, the film 'Moonage Daydream' was released: a montage of footage. This is well worth catching and captures the experience of seeing him play live for his fans.
David Bowie's archive is now on display at the V&A Storehouse in East London.
This contains a range of objects (about 90 000) and there is more information on Bowie's career and the creation of some of his most famous songs. I have plans to see it later this year and will be blogging about the visit here of course.
Social media is full of people sharing their favourite David Bowie tracks today.
Here's a track which is not necessarily my favourite, but whose name is perhaps apposite.
It's from the soundtrack to a film called 'The Falcon and the Snowman', which starred Sean Penn. Penn is getting a lot of nominations for acting in the Paul Thomas Anderson film 'One Battle After Another', More about that over on my dedicated film blog.
For the album, Bowie was asked to contribute by the composers Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays. They will be mentioned on the blog a lot. He worked out the vocals after watching an early cut of the film.
The story of the track is here. It was recorded in late 1984. Released in early 1985 it made it into the UK charts.
It is called 'This is not America'.
