Pat Metheny is a baaad motherfucker. I love Pat Metheny’s music, especially his work from 1978 to 2002. This is for those of you who need to know. Understand this: Metheny is to guitar what Kid (of Kid ‘n Play) was to the hi-top fade.
You ask: How bad is Metheny? Well, for one, he sometimes plays a custom-made 42 string Pikasso I guitar created by Canadian wizard, Linda Manzer. Get to that, knuckleheads! And don’t get me started on the Orchestrion (look it up).
Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays Lyle Mays. There, I said it. RIP, my brother.
Also, Jaco Pastorius; Mark Egan; Danny Gottlieb; Nana Vasconcelos; Paul Wertico; Steve Rodby; Pedro Aznar; Mark Ledford; David Blamires; Armando Marçal; Cuong Vu; Richard Bona; Antonio Sánchez; Luis Conte; Grégoire Maret, and a bunch of other bad motherfuckers. There, I said it.
So, here’s what you need to do, loved ones. Throw on We Live Here. Yep. Pay especial attention to To The End Of The World, otherwise you’re going to miss out on what I’m trying to tell you. To The End Of The World is to jazz what a key is to your woman’s heart
So, I’m listening to Afternoon, and the Vietnamese trumpeter, Cuong Vu is doing this singing thing and this shit is sounding GOOD! I’m diggin’ it! Strangely puts me in mind of Djavan’s Asa on Captain Finger’s Portrait album-another foreign language eminence.
Djavan sings this:
A manhã me socorreu com flores e aves
Suaves, soltas, em asa azul
Borboletas em bando
Diz que pedra não fala…
Yeah, look it up.
Cuong Vu retorts:
Get you to the magic love
Nose pericles
I dont javent yoy
Tooo lovin for me
Turuuutuuu
Tirambomparariipaaaa… and on like that.
I’m just foolin.’ Metheny is credited with writing those “lyrics,” which mean, what?! I’m going to ask him about this some day.
So, Pat came to Denver on 3 October of the year of our Lord 1992 and put on one of the greatest performances I had witnessed since Miles at Detroit’s Masonic Auditorium during The Man With The Horn tour. Checked Pat out with The Queen and Baby Bro at the Paramount on Glenarm Place just off 16th Street and afterwards staggered out of the theater, dazzled. Gobsmacked.
You hip to San Lorenzo? It’s on Pat’s eponymously titled album. Mays, Egan and Gottlieb weren’t sweatin’ the small stuff. This was the musical equivalent of LeBron James, Mike Trout and Pat Mahomes just doing what they wanna do from jump street. Killin’ it straight out of the box. Ain’t no half-steppin.’
How can somebody be this tuff just off the top? Yes, he did cut his eyeteeth with Gary Burton, but then he hyper-pulsed past Burton like The Intimidator scalding the whole field of Talladega cats.
He’s won a whole bunch of GRAMMYS®, blessed us with an epic Kenneth Gorelick rant (not hip enough to have a cool nickname), and famously engaged in an extended slap fight with Wynton Marsalis - wasn’t mentioned once in Ken Burn’s famous Jazz documentary in which Marsalis was a primary contributor. I guess it is what it is.
Have I told you yet about Are You Going With Me. That one’s on Offramp - early Pat, and just as bad as he wanna be. I’m tryin’ to tell ya.
Back to To The End Of The World: Lyle Mays quietly introduces himself at about the 3:10 point, eloquently presenting a lip-smacking solo, adding a dominant rendition on top of the theme. Mays: Tasteful and elegant (as always), and then subtly overtaken by Ledford and Blamires with their wordless vocals, and then Pat… oh my God, Pat! and his eerily soulful guitar… inexorably leading up to a mind crushing crescendo at around 9:05. Damn! I just creamed my jeans again.
Also on We Live Here: Something To Remind You is so slow-drag gorgeous, so ethereal, so profound, it should close out all PMG performances or even mentions of Pat.
