Mahavishnu Orchestra C/D/S/D

I like the last track on inner worlds a lot

Cobham is insane. I read a story once that when Cobham was a kid, he and his friends would have competitions to see who could keep a quarter pressed against the wall the longest with a roll.

Agree that he holds that group together, but Narada Michael Walden was a solid replacement. So crazy that he became this slick hitmaker. I saw Aretha Franklin this summer, and Walden was playing drums with her, and I kept thinking, huh, the same dude who did "Freeway of Love" and Whitney's "How Will I Know" was in Mahavishnu Orchestra. Anyway, he was a joy to watch, having so much fun. Here's a bit of him backing her at the show I saw:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzPHaRowxu0

So cool to find this, this is a set I saw McLaughlin do in Spain in 1993, with Dennis Chambers and Joey DeFrancesco!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po_toT6n9aE

Who was in his band when you saw him?

4th dimension: ranjit barot, gary husband, etienne mbappé

mbappé was so sick. not only was he an insane bass player but he wore god damned gloves

JUst checking out Where fortune Smiles which is McLaughlin either just before he started mahavishnu or a little after. Alongside John Surman, Dave Holland, Karl Berger nad Stu martin.
JUst seen that Esoteric reissued it recently. Sounds interesting so far.

This is p much the sickest thing ever imo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=10a45mgMGcY

What can you say? Wow! I wish more 1970's drummers kept their solos that short n sweet. And of course his technique is absolutely phenomenal. Nice clip.

"Sunflower" by Milt Jackson, w/Ron Carter, Herbie Hancock, Freddie Hubbard, Jay Berliner and Billy Cobham: a fantastic record.

He's pretty good in the core unit band on the CTI Allstars first live lp. Tracks like Red Clay on that are really great.

Agree that he holds that group together, but Narada Michael Walden was a solid replacement. So crazy that he became this slick hitmaker. I saw Aretha Franklin this summer, and Walden was playing drums with her, and I kept thinking, huh, the same dude who did "Freeway of Love" and Whitney's "How Will I Know" was in Mahavishnu Orchestra.

"Agree that he holds that group together, but Narada Michael Walden was a solid replacement. So crazy that he became this slick hitmaker."

i'm still a little flabbergasted whenever i realize that michael tilson thomas was the guy who did the orchestral stuff on "apocalypse" (and it wasn't very good...)

Didn't expect to get into Between Nothingness & Eternity at all but I enjoyed more of it than I thought I would. Cant be bothered with getting into the rest of it right now, so I'm shelving it for now. Didn't think this was so highly thought of.

I thought one of the riffs sounded a hell of a lot like Deep Purple's "Smoke On The Water" but I guess people who know better would have made a deal of that if it really did have much resemblance.

I liked Apocalypse. Not the whole way through but the highlights are great. Last track has a kind of "You And I" feeling and the soloing at the big climax is fantastic.

But "Smile Of The Beyond" is just gorgeous. Check out this live version with a far more energetic middle portion and added drum solo with good drumming faces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IjM-UQ0zVUU

That was worth waking up to.

dude can shred

hats for sporting the spiritual SG double neck look

That right there is a spiritual custom Ibanez.

aah, I see!

Visions of the Emerald Beyond is really nice

Narada Michael Walden has had a pretty interesting career starting with Mahavishnu with Aretha (Who's Zoomin Who) and Whitney Houston and many others. From the Ashram to Malibu I would suppose.

his drumming on a few songs on Fripp's "Exposure" is ferocious. NYC and Breathless are the two best songs on the album

You follow Billy Cobham, you better be able to deliver it. Those guys are/were so good, they are like superheroes.

Birds of Fire- I think it's their best, Jan Hammer expands with Moog (okay, maybe a tad cheesy, but I love it anyway)...Generally better music, IMO.

Need to poll Birds against all the other titular objects Of Fire at some point (Chariots of Fire, Wheels of Fire etc) to determine which one is the most awesome.

It could be called 'POLL of Fire'

Rhapsody of Fire
In the Line of Fire

Yeah, there's lots. I just worry that some ppl will miss the point and vote for the music they prefer.

Was McLaughlin the first real shredder?

He was probably the most technically accomplished and polished player in rock up to that time.

GW In your opinion, who was the first shredder?

SATRIANI That’s a good one. When you say “shredder,” I would say it’s probably a guy who’s not a great writer but yet can play really well. So that first wave of rock guitarists—people like Hendrix and Page and Beck and Clapton—they weren’t shredders. The fusion guys—Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth—were doing their own trip; they were fusion guys. So you can put them in another bag. I see shred as a metal thing—someone who listens to Di Meola, who loves the freak-out of Hendrix and the I’ll-do-whatever-I-want nature of Page, and who innocently brought it into a new era. I’m hard pressed to name that person who just played something so simple but really overdid it. [pauses] It might be Alvin Lee from Ten Years After.

( https://www.guitarworld.com/features/joe-satriani-shred-ache )

That super trill that McLaughlin plays going into some of those speedy runs sends signals up my spine. It's got an effect like sometimes when they play a filtertwist on a really distorted TB-303 in acid music.

What's an example you have in mind?

Oh the big one that has always raised neck hairs was that first run after the riff on "Meeting of the Spirits". His picking is just so super speedy and clean. It's like Dick Dale on steroids. There are plenty of that double picking on the live record, especially on "Dreams". JM does some crazy picking matching the high speed tabla runs on acoustic with Shakti.

As my garage band mind understands, some of this is McLaughlin doing his take on 'sheets of sound' by Coltrane using altered pentatonics. The one I came across was using the minor pentatonic raising the 5th up to the 6th

Ah yeah, those are magnificent.

Sounds like that’s a mode of mixolydian pentatonic, If you start from the 4th. Like the unison lines on Eternity’s Breath.

Did McLaughlin invent shredding?

The one I came across was using the minor pentatonic raising the 5th up to the 6th

I'm trying to parse this: so a minor pentatonic would be A - C - D - E - G, raising the 5th would make the E an F, so you'd just be using a different pentatonic scale (F - G - A - C - D, but favouring the A as a tonic)?

I think it was proven on another thread that Alvin Lee invented shredding, but McLaughlin sure did it faster and more accurately.

I always get Alvin Lee, Albert Lee, Albert King, and Albert Collins confused.

Of course. Surely that has come up before on some other threads

I saw one of them on The Everly Brothers tribute this weekend. Can’t be 100% sure, think it was Albert.

Albert Lee, that is.

Dick Dale invented shredding.

GW In your opinion, who was the first shredder?

SATRIANI That’s a good one. When you say “shredder,” I would say it’s probably a guy who’s not a great writer but yet can play really well. So that first wave of rock guitarists—people like Hendrix and Page and Beck and Clapton—they weren’t shredders. The fusion guys—Al Di Meola and John McLaughlin and Allan Holdsworth—were doing their own trip; they were fusion guys. So you can put them in another bag. I see shred as a metal thing—someone who listens to Di Meola, who loves the freak-out of Hendrix and the I’ll-do-whatever-I-want nature of Page, and who innocently brought it into a new era. I’m hard pressed to name that person who just played something so simple but really overdid it. [ pauses ] It might be Alvin Lee from Ten Years After.

GW I was just about to name him!

SATRIANI Yeah. And it’s totally innocent, that moment from Woodstock that everybody refers to [Ten Years After’s performance of “I’m Going Home”], because Alvin Lee is a great blues guitar player. But as a shred moment…it could be that. He might have invented the genre right there.

https://www.guitarworld.com/features/joe-satriani-shred-ache

Iirc, Satriani was a lot more positive/defensive of shred in 93 and defined it more as someone who plays what they believe in regardless of the trends or the industry (?)

someone who plays what they believe in regardless of the trends or the industry

Shredding as masturbation — you're doing it for your own pleasure, and if you care at all what other people think, you're taking the wrong approach. Of course, this also means you shouldn't do it in front of other people without asking first.

Feel Like You've Been Here Before? It Might Be Déjà Vu - Penn Medicine

The shredding at the end of "Hymn To Him" is just incredible. There has never been a film epic enough to justify using that music for the ending.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FV4eOohUsAA0wbo?format=jpg&name=900x900

Whoever paid the $3.75 admission sure got their money's worth

Finally cleaned a bunch of McLaughlin records I had laying around - previously only knew the first two Mahavishnu Orchestra records - and Extrapolation and especially My Goal's Beyond are really great records. Maybe I'm soft but his shredding sounds better to me done acoustically in a more trad setting. There is a short riff on Peace Two that sounds like the underlying ascending/descending riff in Heart of the Sunrise.