Forecast: Tomorrow

Disc 1
1	In a Silent Way 4:18
2	Super Nova 4:51
3	Experience in E Excerpt 5:44
4	Milky Way 2:32
5	Tears 3:24
6	Eurydice Full Version 10:46
7	Orange Lady 8:42
8	Unknown Soldier 7:59
9	Directions previously unreleased / Take 1 5:31
10	Surucucu 8:19
11	Second Sunday in August 4:12
12	125th Street Congress 12:14
Disc 2
1	Nubian Sundance Live / previously unreleased 13:07
2	Blackthorn Rose 5:00
3	Badia 5:22
4	Cannon Ball 4:38
5	Black Market 6:33
6	Three Clowns 3:24
7	Havona 6:02
8	Birdland 5:58
9	Palladium 4:48
10	The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat 5:03
11	The Orphan 3:17
12	Sightseeing 5:35
Disc 3
1	Dream Clock 6:29
2	Three Views of a Secret 5:54
3	Port of Entry Live 5:08
4	Dara Factor Two 4:27
5	Procession 8:42
6	Plaza Real 5:31
7	The Well 3:58
8	D-Flat Waltz 11:12
9	Domino Theory 6:10
10	Predator 5:20
11	Face on the Barroom Floor 3:59
12	Indiscretions 4:08
13	125th Street Congress DJ Logic Remix 5:03
Disc 4
1	Black Market DVD
2	Scarlet Woman DVD
3	Young and Fine DVD
4	The Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat DVD
5	A Remark You Made DVD
6	River People DVD
7	Thanks for the Memories DVD
8	Delores/Portrait of Tracy/Third Stone from the Sun DVD
9	Mr. Gone DVD
10	In a Silent Way DVD
11	Waterfall DVD
12	Teen Town DVD
13	I Got It Bad and That Ain't Good/The Midnight Sun Will Never Set ...
14	Birdland DVD
15	Introductions DVD
16	Fred & Jack DVD
17	Elegant People DVD
18	Badia DVD

Barnes & Noble

Culled by producer Bob Belden, the 37 tracks on this beautifully programmed three-CD box set provide an informed chronological overview of Weather Report’s output from its cusp-of-the-‘70s prehistory through its final salvo in 1986, showing that even two decades later after co-founders Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter went their separate ways, the group remains, as Belden puts it in his excellent booklet introduction, “a travel agent for the imaginative mind.” As opposed to the 2002 issue Live and Unreleased, which featured two CDs of never-released live performances that offered a new angle on what Weather Report was about, the only pieces on Forecast: Tomorrow with which devotees will be unfamiliar are a 13-minute version of Shorter’s “Nubian Sundance,” taken off a Chicago mix board in 1974 and propelled by ebullient, relentless funk grooves from bassist Alphonso Johnson; a heated reprise of Zawinul’s “Directions,” which debuted in spacier form on the Miles Davis Ur-fusion date, Bitches Brew; and an unedited version of Shorter’s “Eurydice,” from Weather Report’s eponymous first album. But both the album’s title and its final track -- a DJ Logic remix of “125th Street Congress,” on which, Zawinul claims, the root beat structure of hip-hop first appeared -- symbolize the forward-looking nature of this collection. Members of the two generations that have come of age since the group disbanded will find the one-world, genre-blending aesthetic conveyed in the compositions of Zawinul and Shorter and the pan-diasporic grooves articulated by their iconically brilliant rhythm sections -- the bassists are Miroslav Vitous, Johnson, Jaco Pastorius and Victor Bailey, and the trap drummers include Alphone Mouzon, Eric Gravatt, Ndugu Chancler, Chester Thompson, Alex Acuna, Peter Erskine, and Omar Hakim -- to be directly in line with the sound of much 21st-century jazz. This should not be surprising, because so much of today’s music descends lineally from language that Weather Report developed. A host of under-45 musicians from around the globe take Shorter’s harmonic poetry and long-form strategies (“Tears,” “Blackthorn Rose,” “Three Clowns,” “Palladium,” “Port of Entry,” “Plaza Real,” “Predator,” “Face on the Barroom Floor”) and Zawinul’s electronic, evocatively voiced narratives (“Orange Lady,” “Unknown Soldier,” “Badia,” “Cannon Ball,” “Black Market,” “Pursuit of the Woman with the Feathered Hat,” “Dream Clock,” “Procession,” “Indiscretions”) as points of departure for their own inventions. Not to mention such hits -- and hits they were -- as Zawinul’s “Birdland” and Pastorius’ “Three Views of a Secret” and “Havona.” The significant value-added for those familiar with this oeuvre is a DVD of a two-hour 1978 concert in Germany that features the Zawinul-Shorter-Pastorius-Erskine iteration at a creative peak. Hal Miller’s blow-by-blow notes, if slightly hyperbolic, include interviews with all the main surviving protagonists and evoke the impact of this jazz supergroup on the ‘70s-‘80s zeitgeist. Ted Panken

All Music Guide

In an era when box sets are so plentiful and are basically de rigueur for any major, and some not so major labels, it's virtually a wonder that a Weather Report box set didn't appear until the 21st century. Things take as long as they must, evidently, and Legacy has done an outstanding job with this set. Consisting of three CDs and a DVD of a phenomenal live concert from 1978 (with Jaco Pastorius and Peter Erskine on the Heavy Weather tour), this document considers every aspect of the band's career carefully and thoughtfully. It actually commences on disc one with some of Wayne Shorter's and Joe Zawinul's pre-Weather Report ensembles, beginning with their joint membership in Miles Davis' band during the Bitches Brew era with "In a Silent Way." Zawinul composed it; he and Shorter both played on it. This short version of the tune was recorded by Davis, but according to Hal Miller's fantastic liner notes (there should be a Grammy nomination for these), Zawinul never gave Miles the intro for the tune, just the one chord vamp -- his own version is very different. Also here is Shorter's "Super Nova," from his Blue Note record of the same name, along with an excerpt of Zawinul's "Experience in E" with the Cannonball Adderley band (from Adderley's Domination). The reason? Both men showed concepts and tropes that became part of the Weather Report's method of working.

The actual Weather Report tunes begin with "Milky Way," from their debut album, and continue with six more from that album, including the full version of "Eurydice." Weather Report was a free and progressive band which took its composer's frameworks and built floating, drifting, melding, sparkings of ideas into them; members at this point also included bassist Miroslav Vitous, percussionist Airto Moreira, and drummer Alphonse Mouzon. The band's sound got bigger and stranger on the classic I Sing the Body Electric disc from 1971. Moreira was in transition and Eric Gravatt entered the drum chair as Dom Um Romão became the band's percussionist. There is one of two unreleased cuts from these years: a different version of Zawinul's "Directions" with spark aplenty. The real emergence of a new Weather Report sound began in 1973 with the underrated and classic Sweetnighter. While only "125th Street Congress" is included to round out the first disc, it is a mighty one, clocking in at over 12 minutes and showcasing for the first time the kind of deep funky groove the band was capable of; the song included not only Vitous, but also electric bassist Andrew White, who played English horn on "Unknown Soldier" on their previous album. This is the point where the bass-heavy groove began to dominate the band's sound, and rhythmic groove became the centerpiece not only for improvisation, but composition as well.

Disc two kicks off with an unreleased live version of "Nubian Sundance" from 1974, with electric bassist (Vitous had left by this point in time for a solo career) Alphonso Johnson who'd also played on Tale Spinnin'. Pastorius made his first appearance with the band on "Black Market" and thereafter Weather Report became a different unit. The music became more progressive, funky, and complex, where the groove was decorated with all kinds of syncopated keyboard and saxophone charts, and Pastorius became the centerpiece of the band's sound, and its third composer. (His loss is clearly felt on Procession and Domino Theory, with Victor Bailey replacing him.) This sound becomes paradoxically more and more idiosyncratic and complicated. All the predictable selections are here, from "Birdland," "Three Views of a Secret," "Palladium," "Pursuit of the Woman in the Feathered Red Hat," "Dream Clock," and "Dara Factor Two" from the subsequent studio albums, by which time the trio of Zawinul, Pastorius and Shorter was aided and abetted alternately by drummers Peter Erskine and Omar Hakim, and percussionists Bobby Thomas, Jr., Mino Cinelu and Jose Rossy, among others, and there are some live cuts from the 8:30 album, including the stunning "The Orphan," where Shorter and Zawinul played with the West Los Angeles Christian Academy Children's Choir. There is also a DJ Logic remix of "125th Street Congress," perhaps to illustrate how the band's sound has remained current after all this time. The DVD from the Heavy Weather tour with Pastorius and Erskine is simply outstanding, Whether watched or listened to it is a document that fans and collectors live for -- there have been some dodgy boots of the music out there, but nothing matches this sound quality. All assembled, this is a fitting box set that represents a seminal part of jazz and pop/rock history. The only gripes are that some more of the unedited material from Live in Tokyo (the stuff that didn't make it to the flip of I Sing the Body Electric) isn't here since the album was never issued in the United States, and there isn't more unreleased material. But in sum, this is perhaps really a teaser to induce listeners to dig into the band's catalog. It serves not only as a fitting introduction to Weather Report, but also as a definitive will and testament to a band that was both a critical and popular success for over a decade. Thom Jurek