Weather Report

[sunwaiter]

oh i made a mistake: my personnal highest peak of funkiness can be heard t

[sunwaiter]

at minute ten of "chameleon".

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! Once again, your last message created a strong duality in me. So much of what you said is mutual. And there are voids. When I first wrote back tonight, losing three times before losing online to a modem plug, I began by quoting one of your paragraphs and scrolling up to co-ordinate my responses with yours. I'd be happy trying to recreate myself, but I can't do that here. Before, I was under your lengthy posting of the previous page, which I recommend reading, and could copy you. Maybe posting under a previous message would pop up at the end. Maybe replying at the end of the thread would bring me good luck.
I'll jus'wing it.

La routine. or is it le routine? Cette, ou les personnes qui as un mot pour le sensationne a manger fruites alive. Another duality but left undeveloped here.

Your writing is strong and urgent. Beyond half-way through, I could almost see a man's arm held up front outside, not a fist, but flexing the fingers to see how they feel. And yet your literary reference is unknown to me. This is an example of what I meant of you creating strong dualities. What seemed the main thrust for me, over half way through, feeling the arm, began with you saying "I don't believe in samsara" and carried past to where you were wondering why you said that "blurry" good luck trying to explain yourself. But the more I saw samsara, the more I was overcome by memories of a very idyllic time of my life. Samsara...

My high school bassist friend who invited me to go see Jimi Hendrix in Toronto asked me if I'd spend a week with his family at a cottage up north. My Mom thought I should pack like a Boy Scout. I was a Cub Scout too. That meant having a new book for a rainy tent day, a paperback. I saw one that reminded me of Jimi's "Axis: Bold as Love", using The Indian Pantheon of The Gods for graphics. "I am Sam, that's short for Samanathra" was a science fiction based on The Indian Pantheon of The Gods and Samsara. At the end of one chapter, Sam and his divine friend are taking refuge at a monestary. They are being followed and know the monks will be questioned later. Sam decides to cover their tracks by holding an audience and talking. He explains about his being there, and their being there, and his not being there, and his being there not being their being there, until I was into anything from India. I even visited my grandmother to ask her to show me her Hindu Kush spoons. I have a sitar imitation on guitar. Deva Dip Carlos Santana. I read the Baghavadgita, the world's oldest book, read much more, and the art came alive, leading me to Egypt.

So Sunwaiter, you can see what a little samsara did for me. But my theme is this duality, furthered here. You talked about the theme of "MacGyver" (your spelling) as part of playing with a child. For about a year when I visited my parents, half the time MacGyver was on. This reminds me of the only really strong regret I feel about Canadian cinematic production. I really liked the movie Stargate. But getting MacGyver to star in the T.V. series, after finding a Daniel Jackson clone? Losing the sand and sun and going under a mountain? Not exploiting Samantha's cleavage? That's not Samsara, and I'm not Jack fishing in a pond with no fish.

Part of what you wrote made me think my enthusiasm for music makes being a non-musician sound wrong. Please, don't disparage your musical status. It's more the media and technology glamorizing others more than you do yourself that's doing that. I would only encourage you. When I was 25 to 27 years old, I only played guitar once in a while, filling in as emergencies, one lasting six weeks in a row, not playing outside the peninsula, living for a girlfriend. I spent almost a year driving around in a mint '62 Jaguar XKE converted Dtype racer. I'm lucky I'm alive.

How can you not believe in Samsara? These whirling subuniverses of gravitational energy are coalescing to magnetize and materialize as these words for you. There is no mastery of typistry occurring here, no fields of font, all just default of he who formatted. And what attention should you impart to these words, when a whim of choice over submit or delete decides their existence, not yours. Your actions will be decided by you when your attention is no longer here, but on the next circumstance of your own life's path. This writing is even no longer an extension of a message from me, but your own words even you don't have to publish to be read and for you to reread or to be thought of any more as being said here as you hear them from your attractional existence, and looking away, turning your attention from or turning off the screen, will be just a little less light in a more consuming sensory environment, unless you decide to lay back and groove in Electric Ladyland with the headphones on.

I better be careful. I don't want my new titles to be "Precedent, text limit".
Sunwaiter! Vous a faites les mots beaux. as always, John Watt.

[sunwaiter]

John Watt=

I like the concept of creating dualities, but not ambiguity. i hope i don't give such an impression. as far as my under-employed brain can remember, i've always wanted to know clearly which side i was, what i disliked if i didn't know what i liked, to make my points well set and clear; i 'v always wanted to understand things. not talking about meaning of life, ok? simply facts of life, its mechanisms, its yings and yangs, what is black, what is white. well, now i have understood that there's a lot of grey. the world is more a black and white movie, its movement making the two tones melt together, creating an infinity of nuances. it's more like this than like a color snapshot.

but i'm still a child and i still want to understand many things. my brother hates it, he hates the "why", the "why" children pronounce maybe at an average rate of 100 times per day. i don't use the W word as often as when i was five, but i still need it. i don't have any grief against my brother, after all, he's the only one i've got. but sometimes i pity him a little, because he sounds so tired. but i know we're quite alike and he enjoys life, wether he takes chill pills or not.

once more you / i - we can reconfigure and reconsiderate the samsara thing; when some concept seems too deep and complex in its possible readings, i always say that we can redefine it. maybe i'm too lazy.

i'm going to have my meal now. it's 13:00.

carlos and alice have been sampled by the cinematic orchestra and it's not a bad thing - is that an expression of samsara?

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! redefining... the story of my life. Letting events redefine my trajectory, letting people redefine my desires, letting nature redetermine my range, letting redefined love show the way. possible readings of deep and complex concepts... the unseen as debatable... the unknown as considered... what is redefined here is our self estimate as we travel past new thoughts...

What I had to do before I could return to professional music was finally be myself. Be as left-handed as I am. Mere design and expense. Having an acoustically responsive instrument work through an amplifier meant redefining the electric guitar. Too late to redefine myself for a return to violin, trumpet or piano, teen years. I didn't have to invent something and look for applications, I have a need. The grey areas of my life, the vague events of being present, not involved, waiting for my moment, became brightly illuminated, provincially publicized, highlighted by criminal responses and celebrated by those who only wished. Walking on the shoulders of churchmen and women, cossetted by authorities, visible beyond colour, known beyond flesh, sought out to be loved.

and what stirring of these elements can redefine a heart and mind, confident and strident as acute adherence clears away doubt, NOT je ne sais quoi.

In 1980 Toronto, I was asked to run through a set with a showband one afternoon. I was 29, they were early twenties and surprised I sounded like I knew the songs. That's a recipe for musical trouble for me, band members upset I'm getting strong reactions and interest for my playing, when I don't know the songs. But I was asked to sign a contract for eight weeks and fly east to play military bases, leaving that night, Europe following. The core group, chick singer, bass and drums were partying together hard core with pro sports and media divas. Sexuality and tastes were sampled and lurid. Clothes weren't needed. Too bad my stage show is so open for translation. The keyboardist that was there bunkered down himself, turning out to be a university graduate arranger and trumpeter, and a non-smoker non-drinker, although not a vegetarian like me. Too late to be friends, he just wanted to survive the eight weeks. Flights out east, playing in Newfoundland, one performance, three night stay. I shot my friendly mouth off at a radio station, pumping up my original guitar, earning the enmity of others for now we had a special appearance to visit a remote community for cultural exchange, playing with an auditorium setup of a popular local band. Twillingate, mentioned in many a song. "I's the buy that catches the fish and brings them home for Liza" being one. It seems you have to go through Twillingate for many reasons. Three of the best looking girls there wanted to pack and leave with me that night and live with me in Toronto. I managed to get out soon enough to see the ocean.

The next stop was Goose Bay Labrador. Over six feet of snow. Just a military base with one off-base lodge for travelling personnel, where we stayed. The second day I was getting restless. I got special permission to go outside. I got more special permission to walk to the gate house. All I heard was, you get caught after the sun goes down, you die. Finally, I earned special permission, rising above being a rock guitarist, to leave the base. I walked down the one-lane road, walls of snow on either side. I reached the lodge, and was standing there when I saw chrome shining, and a '57 DeSoto pulled up and stopped. A very wizened Inuit, very short, came over and asked me what I was doing. He thought my life was in jeopardy. We talked, and he invited me to come along. He said he was a tribal elder and worked for the government, managing a remote provincial hunting lodge and going to visit migrating tribes for a census. This cream and metallic brown DeSoto looked too good, so I hopped in.

We got to the end of the road, amongst the leftovers of the American World War military base. He said these Inuit shelter along the walls. There must have been about 150 people, no-one taller than 5'5", all in furs. My friend was popular. Everyone wanted to grab his arms, hug him, asking him to try their food. Whatever he said melted the hearts in their eyes, because I was looked at, touched curiously, held, and shared some love. This evolved into Inuit games, men wanting to run ten mile snowshoe challenges, mushing sled races, fishing hole contests, firing up huge snowmobiles for races to an island and back, all judged by the elder. I was in another world with different people.

There was serious discussion. They kept looking over at me. I was taken over where the dogs were, and told about their breeding, one-third wolf. The elder said if the dogs didn't like me, we could go. My hair was standing on end, never before was I looked through my eyes by blue-eyed animals like that. They settled down around me, and I could walk away. The elder said he borrowed a snowmobile and wanted to take me for a ride to show me something. This was still all too much for me, but I never once worried about my life being in his hands. And everyone was so nice, the elder passing on his treats to me, I had to accept. He said he would set me up on a trailer they would put old oil drums on for haulage, so I wouldn't freeze. So there I was, sitting on a box all covered in robes, some given by pretty twinkling eyes. By the time we rounded the bay, we were doing over 80 mph.

The elder could talk and his words carried past me. He talked about life before the white man. The real life, when The Great Spirit was heard throughout the land. There was no land in sight. It was all totally flat ice with patches of dry snow cover that blew up around us. I could look around and couldn't tell where the sky stopped and the ice began. I could hear this sound, he asked, I said yes, thinking wind friction. He stopped and shut off the motor. I could have been afraid, used to sno-beaters, but the sound was still there. He said I could hear The Great Spirit. It was completely calm. There was nothing to hear, but I could hear it. He started up again and kept going, the enchantment growing.

Somewhere, miles and miles out on the ocean, just ice, smooth, featureless and unending everywhere you looked, he stopped again. There beside us was a hole, kind of frozen over. He got out and said it was his turn to keep it open, and this is where they would fish for ocean smelt, filling barrels to dump on the ground as fertilizer for the spring. He chopped at this ten or twelve inch round hole until the ice started shushing up and down, and he cleared it out with his hand. He said I should watch the waves, the water going down four feet and rising back. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a long twine with a thin hook bigger than my curled finger. I said if you caught a fish with that it couldn't come up through the hole, and started talking about Lake Erie fishing. He said be careful, the blowing whale gets the harpoon.

He lowered the hook down with the water, and pulled it up with the water and kept going, a long fish on the hook that fell off on the ice beside him. He pulled a few more out, kicked the fish back in, and said that's what fishing used to be like all over before the white man, asking if I would try. I got two or three a few times, him kicking them back in, and then I got twelve in a row. I said that was too many to let go, I wanted to eat them. He laughed saying they were ocean smelt, holding one up and explaining it to me. All the same, about fourteen inches long with two darker brown stripes along the sides. Very passive fish, according to him, wanting to be caught. He said he knew the Inuit girls working in the lodge kitchen, and he'd get them to do them up with bear fat and bacon, traditional.

I couldn't guess where land was, but I got back before dark, having to be questioned by the base commander. Once he heard about my elder friend, he let me go. The party was raging. I had to skinny-dip in the pool with everyone else. I had to have a least two shots to be screeched in. An instructor left his wife to travel with the chick singer, who didn't go to meet him at the train station in Toronto. Fliers talked about a British pilot who downed over forty shots being screeched in, and falling down dead. The next few gigs were mainland, parties easy to avoid, and I walked away from the contract after the eight weeks, deciding to forget Europe. It's hard to be excited about a band that didn't rehearse. The bassist and drummer wanted to see me off, and the chick singer ran out onto the sidewalk, having a half-naked screaming ****-fit because I wasn't going to say goodbye to her.

All this is certainly a duality in me, the straight and narrow certainly. Being excited about flying, stewardesses would ask pilots and I was allowed to sit between them, looking ahead, seeing the sun rise above the clouds, and set, watching the city lights along The Saint Lawrence River. In today's uh, political climate, that wouldn't happen now. What's a band if the performance landscape is hazardous to your health? I want to redefine rock. I want the wondrous sound effects, the electrical energies, the environmental response, the stages, but I want acclaim for musicianship, a studied and intent audience, where rock was heading before the sex and drugs took over. Comedy was the next rock. Wrestling was the next rock. Now all of entertainment rocks. Even Corno Dolce thinks about rock. But who is taking the now global sound and creating a band with social relevance as performance.

I want to redefine rock. No-one knows I will be, the next Nicolo Paginini.
Audacity? Bravura? or too many notes, and not enough time?
I'm creating a wide, newly invented path for any others,
all wrapped up building my own musical mystery.
as always, John Watt.

Samsara? Years later, hiking alone along the river at the bottom of the Niagara Gorge at Queenston, I came upon a settlement of Inuit travellers fishing at the bottom of a hydro generator, small silver fish forming the wave from the outlet. It got quiet. Women held their children close, shushing them. Men stopped and looked. I smiled, shook my head sideways, and started clucking as I heard so far away. The tension melted, hands were offered, and I was asked to look and see who had the most in their buckets, and I spent another afternoon, a sunny summer day, getting into it with Inuit.
What voices and songs there are to be heard.

[sunwaiter]

John Watt[

i got more than high only once. you mentioned the great spirit you could hear there in the white land. i think i was able to hear it also that time.

i didn't have a job, and i was looking for one, not in a very active way, because i was drifting along. it was a calm period of my life, when i could enjoy sopme void. no girlfriend, no lots of friends, hardly some musical practice. i listened a lot of music, my walkman always plugged in my ears. that day i had an appointment in some college with a man whose work was to help other people finding a job. it was the first time i got on this particular bus, in some parisian suburb i forgot the name. the trip was quite long, maybe hal an hour to get there and another to get back to my starting point.the sky was the clearest i had ever seen. it was cold. few people were in the bus, because it was mid-morning. the music i was listening to was a mix i'd done, using klaus schulze, tangerine dream, and some other groups of the same kind. it was a real TRIP, as no other in my life, wether in a plane, on a bike, or the back seat of my crazy uncle's car, at 215 kilometers per hour on a highway near the sea. nothing could be compared with these moments on the bus.

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! I'm troubled for you. You are twisting this duality into my heart. I feel what you are saying and find inspiration with your words. You obviously have a very expansive and meaningful experience with music. But you are pin-pointing the actual time of a moment of Herbie Hancock's Headhunter's as your ultimate moment of funk. Didn't he record that solo? I only remember him and props as the video. Sure, if anyone could synthesize funk as a musical mischief, he could. But these are arrangements and studio tracks layered with synth sounds. If I could be typing here with each hand on a different keyboard with two screens, each hand playing and saying along the same things, maybe I could digress or accent on one hand and reading both at the same time you could experience literary funk. But that's not possible.

What disappoints me in myself is not having a referral for you. I can't say go here go there see this band, come visit hear us jam. I can't provide funk or turn you funky here. If you're not using it as a musical influence, you have to be dancing along to feel it. If nothing else, funk is a duality of rhythm, a harmony of rhythmic flow. Just like saying it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing, funk is a required feature of our musical landscape. I can see the travel factor of being on a bus, the passing landscapes and flashing poles, excluded by headphones with Tangerine Dream, providing a sensory funk, your brain acclimatizing itself with totally disparate inputs. This gives me an idea.

There's no sound card in this computer. It's nasty of me, posting here without hearing, and my one computer store customer is disappointed I haven't brought this unit in for a free upgrade. I've got three different speaker systems here, but I'm thinking of getting headphones for the computer to be quiet for others. I've never had a Walkman or portable headphones. It's hard to get into such tiny tech and sound. But what you've said moves me, and your headphone experience is intriguing. Et mon ami, tu sait, sur la route les femmes, le feu, is easy to forget la musique.
I'm now a Headphonehunter. Merci!

[John Watt]

[sunwaiter]

John Watt/

don't be troubled, please! everything's fine, as long as i can have access to music. any form. everybody has more or less understood that diversity is the key to breaking the daily routine. i'm not talking about love because i believe in my traditionnal not-hippie-at-all one and only relationship, i'm talking about what you can really use your senses for, and now you know i particularly get high on music. the trip on the bus got me high on music and sunshine, not to quote lionel and his commodores.

what is moving me in "chameleon", in the middle section, is the organicquality harvey mason, oaul jackson and bill summers give to the jam. herbie could have added a hundred of synth tracks (i've never been the biggest synth fan), this tune would have stayed that funky. because of the rythm section, because of the era, because of what was ont heir minds when they played this music.

lately i didn't practice much my instruments. i have a time and mind consuming relationship, yes, you are right to make this remark, women have this power. Mais elle sait que je n'oublierai jamais la musique, sauf peut-être quand mon cerveau s'éteindra.

if you still haven't visited, please feel free to do it anytime:

www.myspace.comolivortex.

i regularly replace some tune by another one.

[sunwaiter]

oops.

www.myspace.com/olivortex

[John Watt]

Ils ne bon, mon ami. We talk duality, and it strikes out at me. While online interest in my patentable guitar grows, so does the criminality of Welland against me. People come to this house, misrepresenting themselves. My friends dog was poisoned and died. I have bought a new domain from Bell to secure consistent email. When corporations offer help, you are suffering on the street. I've been told by provincial authorities I probably won't be collecting my inheritance. People say what I say makes my life suffer, and now that I've got a digital camera, taking pictures can get me killed.

People I was arrested as a mayoral candidate for calling a secret society of crime, are now getting convicted as Hell's Angels under the first application of gang membership laws. The assistant crown attorney, son of the crown attorney who tried to jail me, has been arrested twice with a judge and criminal family member for money laundering and cocaine. Outside enforcement finds it too easy to walk in Welland and observe and arrest. Of course, there is only me to blame.

All those all day, all day and night bike-hikes I leave on are gone. I've lost my sense of needing nature. Now it's a part of me. What great gift that has been, later in life, finding all the seasons outdoors, especially at night. That's a new world, and more active with animals and birds. I can see how they avoid humans. The Niagara Peninsula is my backyard. I can wade far out in The Niagara River and look over the edge, after the guards are gone.

I'm tapping and rapping my fingers, practicing patterns, working on speed, getting ready to play. A friend from south of Calgary, out west, just emailed saying his local radio station had a special on Welland, saying the province should issue an advisory for the youth to leave. It's been three years since my father passed away, and I can't collect a penny of my inheritance, or else I'd be catching a laptop message sitting in the shade beside you.

This drives me. I'm going to act out publicly again. I'm going to the police station and nail a statement to the wall. Yes, a Lutheran influence, not Straus or Wagner, but what is made known to be public and shown to the public is my only defense. I was born a musician, but I have to strive to walk like a man. I think I'm going to put on some of my parents albums tonight. "Victory at Sea" by The Frank Chacksfield Orchestra, "The House of Blue Lights", "What Did He Say (The Mumble Song) and those muted and wah-wah trumpet jive records my mother loved.

I shall visit your site, sunwaiter. Thank you for the personal invitation. It may be taking me out of this domain, something I didn't want to do, wanting to respect the privilege, but with my own musical domain now online, as temporary as this generic format choice is, I now am pulled between two orbiting worlds of words of music, and you have caught me in between.
I dread this sense of finality. It is my life I see ending.

[sunwaiter]

John Watt'

i can feel the toughness. i'm going through weird times too, and not the most enjoyable of all, but it seems i can't envy yours. i hope it's not as bad as to make you lose the essential. this inheritage thing is terrible, and always a source of troubles, unfortunately. but at least there is one thing they can't take from you.

i'm not really ever waiting for the sun, i mean, it's the sun that always catches me in a moment of oblivion. we always find what we are not looking for, so i wish the best to whom may read this.

[John Watt]

Sunwaiter! So you are catching fresh rays of the sun and serving us so light. I wonder where that moment of oblivion comes from. You know what I do to answer nasty email? I just got my first camera two weeks ago, digital, from a computer store sign customer. Being a guitarist with stretched fingers, and a used to be very thin six feet tall, I took a picture of my hand in front of me against a wall, delicately holding the smallest Fender pick pointed out, with my fingers fanned out bent at all the joints, all fingers visible. I say take a look, do my hands look like they're shaking.

Losing the essential sounds deeper than having a hard time being patient enough to make signs or build my guitar when I'm angry or my brain is bent. Surprising enough, I'm starting to cry again. I used to always get tears watching Touched by an Angel with my parents, or missionary videos. Sure, I was used by some congregations, my tall presence and reputation, sitting quietly in a strangers' residence, tears falling from my eyes.

What finds me when I'm not looking for it is always Amazing Grace. With my family, it's only sung at funerals. Having that added as a hymn may be a nice touch for Ministers when I'm there, but I've never been able to make it through the second verse without crying. Standing at the back, to be observant, I can't not sing with all my heart, and my Gaelic ululating (Yule-you-late-ting) always makes my voice occupy empty spaces, and when I start breaking up people turn to look. My Parisien ami, you might not find that word in your dictionary. But may those shining eyes of son waiting love meet your eyes another day.

And sunwaiter, I am purposefully losing the toughness. Going on bike-hikes to get away from my home town, still paying for two vans vandalized beyond repair, evolved into all day and day and a half journeys, the Niagara Peninsula becoming my back yard, and the night becoming an enchanting place to be. But my fingers tightened with handlebar grip. I stopped riding six weeks ago, soaking in as many hot baths as I can take, working my fingers, and my hands are softer and for the first time in years I can pop each joint and move them independently again. That only started this last week. Not only crying again, I'm tapping and rapping patterns to my own beat and grooving along with tunes walking down the street. The world is opening up to me, for my whole love to see. That same sun, and that same pale reflection, are shining on us both today, and tomorrow.
Il fait le neige, et il est froid, mais ton stylo est chaud.

[uno_musicjunkie]

I like Sofistifunk and I think that it's their grooviest song :-)

- Ryan

Read insightful and entertaining articles plus free music reviews for music fans, by music fans. Visit the site for all music junkies.

[garethbarnes]

Weather Report are my favourite band of all time - at least the version with Jaco in it. I first saw them in October 10 1978 at the Oxford New Theatre as it was called then. I got my sister to smuggle in a mono cassette recorder and so have a precious tape of Jaco at his peak. He was an unbelievable performer. I saw him a few more times with WR and then with his own Word of Mouth band at the Hammersmith Odeon.

Just to put a point straight from an earlier post, it wasn't the drink and drugs which killed him, although they contributed of course. He was actually beaten up and put in a coma by a martial arts bouncer outside a nightclub. Jaco's life support machine was switched off two weeks later. You can google the name and the 'punishment.'

WR were an incredible mix of amazingly talented musicians.
Jaco and Joe together were tremendous and unparalleled in music.