Before you extend your trust to me as a con­sumer advo­cate, let me offer a per­sonal anec­dote. Back in the early days of Mosaic Records (and if you want to mea­sure my Early-Adopter sta­tus, my first Mosaic box was the Tina Brooks LP set), the cat­a­logue used to have blurbs from cus­tomers, and the most mem­o­rable one was one where some­one wrote some­thing to the effect of “last night my friends saw me fill­ing out the order form and said ‘it’s nice to have money to blow on records,’ I said, ‘first of all, I don’t have it, and sec­ond of all, I’m not blow­ing it.’” So, now you know where I stand. Caveat lector.

Reg­u­lar read­ers also know that when I see a box of CDs, I tend to say “Yes” first and then check to see what it is later. That caused my excite­ment this morn­ing when I look at the email from CD Uni­verse announc­ing upcom­ing titles:! Woody Shaw! Ornette!! Weather Report!

What’s going on is that Sony is print­ing some more money, i.e. gath­er­ing up some more of their impor­tant back cat­a­logue and putting out a few small to medium sized col­lec­tions. Any­one who has an account at or has browsed their odd on-line store, Pop Mar­ket, wil have seen some of these before — they were first offered there, at large pre-order dis­counts and later at greater, but still rea­son­able, prices. Now they are being released through major out­lets like CD Uni­verse, Ama­zon and Import CDs.

I am but a gnat to the mighty cor­po­rate moun­tain of Sony, mean­ing cer­tainly no pro­mos and not even press releases, so this post is very much that of a slaver­ing con­sumer and fan des­per­ately try­ing to jus­tify spend­ing money I do not have (and what bet­ter time to men­tion that the fundrais­ing push for this site, pathetic as it has been, is still going on, and per­haps you’d like to make a one-time dona­tion or become a vol­un­tary sub­scriber via the but­ton on the left and toss me a metaphor­i­cal nar­co­tiz­ing pel­let). Maybe this is you, too?

The Ornette Cole­man release col­lects two LPs of his cham­ber and orches­tral music, The Music of Ornette Cole­man and Skies of Amer­ica, in one pack­age (best price by about $10 is the pre-order from Import CDs, but their ship­ping can be slow). Skies is essen­tially a con­certo he plays with the Lon­don Sym­phony Orches­tra, the rest of the music is a set of pieces for string quar­tet and wood­wind quin­tet. The for­mer piece is fairly well-know, was dif­fi­cult for jazz and clas­si­cal peo­ple at the time to under­stand and is great, and the lat­ter pieces are also fine, skill­fully and care­fully writ­ten, sound­ing noth­ing at all like Colemna’s own play­ing and are very much in the con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal idiom. This is essen­tial music not just for fans of Ornette but for any­one who cares about mod­ern, cre­ative music.

The 1970s were an impor­tant and highly cre­ative decade for jazz, and Woody Shaw was one of the lead­ing play­ers of the ear (before a truly sense­less pre­ma­ture death). His com­bi­na­tion of Hard Bop style and har­monic com­plex­ity built off the ideas of Eric Dol­phy is still con­tem­po­rary — it’s hard to believe these record­ings are two gen­er­a­tions old — and Woody Shaw: The Com­plete Colum­bia Albums, a six CD col­lec­tion is the heart of his work, avail­able for under $40 at least until the June 12 release date (best price again at Import CDs). This fills in a gap in my own col­lec­tion, and is rec­om­mended for all jazz fans.

Not all fans also dig the F-word, which is Fusion. I don’t dig all of it, but as with any­thing else, it can be done well or badly, and The Mahav­ishnu Orches­tra and Weather Report did it very, very well. I have been torn on the Mahav­ishnu box, as I already own the first two CDs and it doesn’t include Apoc­a­lypse, but here it is, and here is a very cheap set of all the major record­ings, sans book­let and even liner notes. Weather Report is, at least for me, an easy call. They were one of the great­est and most impor­tant groups across all styles of pop­u­lar music from the early-70s to the mid 80s. Their influ­ence on musi­cians and audi­ences was per­va­sive, their legacy was enor­mous, and the music, once they found what it is they truly did best, was imag­i­na­tive, sur­pris­ing and always cook­ing. It’s demand­edr a com­pre­hen­sive box set treat­ment, and cur­rently it’s com­ing in a rather odd way, with most of their record­ings parsed to two dif­fer­ent boxes, one already out that cov­ers 1976–1982, the Jaco Pas­to­rius years, and another cov­er­ing their ear­lier years of 1971–1975 (the band put out four fur­ther record­ings, Pro­ces­sion, Domino The­ory, Sportin’ Life and This is This, per­haps not essen­tial for any­one but fans though full of good music, the first two with some of the strongest tracks they ever pro­duced, the final disc with an invig­o­rat­ing appear­ance by Car­los Santana).

Both of these boxes are impor­tant. The band with Jaco was incred­i­ble and the set has the land­mark record­ings Black Mar­ket and Heavy Weather. The rest of that era has long been under­rated: even the cold and odd Mr. Gone has great mate­r­ial in “Young and FIne” and “River Peo­ple,” the mostly live 8:30 is great, Night Pas­sage is excel­lent and the epony­mous 1982 disc (their sec­ond titled “Weather Report”) is one of the high points of their discog­ra­phy. The ear­lier record­ings are incon­sis­tent, but the jour­ney the box defines is fas­ci­nat­ing and excit­ing. Weather Report was the debut disc, a col­lec­tion of self-conscious impro­vi­sa­tions and com­po­si­tions that don’t quite suc­ceed and have a dated style. The first half of their sec­ond record, I Sing the Body Elec­tric, is more focussed but also more pre­ten­tious. The “B” side of that release, though, had a fero­cious live set recorded in Tokyo, and that double-CD com­plete con­cert, pre­vi­ously only avail­able as an import, is in the box: it’s a rarely equalled, aston­ish­ing bal­ance between funky and free. From that con­cert, at least as far as we can hear, the band found it’s foot­ing, it’s aes­thetic, it’s pur­pose. After that they released three great albums: Mys­te­ri­ous Trav­eller, Tale Spin­nin’ and the utterly fan­tas­tic Sweet­nighter.

Per­haps you are like me, and have pretty much all of this already, includ­ing the Tokyo con­cert. Still, there is the emas­ter­ing, which I do antic­i­pate will improve on the pre­vi­ous lack­adaisi­cal CD trans­fers, and there are bonus tracks men­tioned (I have no insight into what and how they are), book­lets and, of course, the joy of being able to hold mas­sive amounts of musi­cal infor­ma­tion in a sweet lit­tle box, hot in your sweaty hands. I know I shouldn’t, but … I think I can at least talk myself down from the Mahav­ishnu set.

Weather Report, The Colum­bia Albums 1971–1975 will be released at the end of July, cur­rent best price is at Pop Mar­ket. The 1976–1982 box is cheap­est at Import CDs, although Ama­zon Prime mem­bers will get their’s a lot faster for about 10% more cost. Your choice.