Pat Metheny Group - Pat Metheny Group (1978)

Ideated from: In a way, the 80s started in 1978. A lot of huge 80s artists and their signature sounds were just debuting or just getting up to speed in 1978.

Metheny is another artist I’ll never get tired of talking about. But he’s a true original who has really blazed new trails, so you’re gonna have to just indulge me.

The late 70s and 80s were a weird time for jazz. No longer a dominant musical form, a lot of artists had to make decisions about what parts of the legacy of jazz to honor, and what parts to throw out and rebuild. There was a lot of debate (I mean, there still is) about what makes jazz jazz: the notes or the creative attitude.

Metheny entered the conversation in the second half of the 70s with bold ideas: harmonically complex music that didn’t really sound like classic jazz but had a lot of the same hallmarks of invention and adventurousness.

His guitar lines are always fluid and expressive, and he was already creating wide open harmonic spaces to play in. He lets the piano and bass often cut across that harmonic space he’s built up, but it never sounds dissonant. It just expands the world he’s creating.

Tracks I Liked

Phase Dance - there isn’t a lot of late 70s jazz in the grocery store canon, but I’m pretty sure this is. The extensive bass and piano section builds into something dense and luscious before Metheny comes back in with the lilting melody line.

Jaco - named after gone-too-soon electric bass wunderkind Jaco Pastorius, an early Metheny collaborator