Guilty Pleasure: Fuzak

[Quantum Cat]

The 70s CTI stuff is great. Bob James' work has been very heavily sampled.

I really like Bob James 1965 album "Explosions" (the antithesis of Fuzak perhaps) but not familiar with the rest of his long, long catalogue. Any thoughts anyone on what an Explosions fan should check out next?

[Quantum Cat]

Not worried about hell, I have a solid arrangement with the western almighty: he doesn't smite me into the burning pits, and I don't regularly remind his followers that he doesn't exist

One can only remind the mindful.

[JJ88]

Bob James is an interesting case. He made a very avant garde record in the 60's, Explosions, before getting involved in the smooth sound. His later albums usually have some good tunes.

He'd worked with Sarah Vaughan for some time as well. I don't know that much of his, but the 70s stuff like 'Nautilus', 'Westchester Lady', 'Angela' etc. is really good. Also the Rod Temperton tune 'Sign Of The Times', which is as you'd expect, more R&B. I remember an interview with him somewhere and he was really pleased at how his stuff had been rediscovered and used for samples etc.

I generally find 80s keyboard sounds hard to stomach so I probably wouldn't venture too far into that decade. But I do like the 70s 'crossover' sound- him, George Benson, Grover Washington Jr. etc.

[pb2015]

Any thoughts anyone on what an Explosions fan should check out next?

Not much else like that, from him. The first track of his first CTI album gets mildly out there.

[Yaman Aksu]

Last few days I listened through a list of heavy cover tunes on youtube just to narrow down to a second list (of favorite approx 20), and then this thread popped up which takes things sonically somewhere too different, so I'm staying in heavy for a week or two and can revisit this thread later to see which Larry Carlton, Earl Klugh (a tune by him didn't sound so great some months ago but who knows), Bob James, Metheny albums might end up being the first ones to try *one day* — those 3-4 folks are probably the only ones I have CDs from among the various listed originally above. Wait a minute, can simply start with their *early material* actually, often works out for this sort of music, for me.
P.S. Might one of these days put that heavy covers list into another thread.

[Quantum Cat]

Not much else like that, from him. The first track of his first CTI album gets mildly out there.

Rats!

[rcarlberg]

I really like Bob James 1965 album "Explosions" (the antithesis of Fuzak perhaps) but not familiar with the rest of his long, long catalogue. Any thoughts anyone on what an Explosions fan should check out next?

Actually his second Bob James Trio LP, called "Straight Up" is straight-ahead piano jazz. Very tasteful.

[rcarlberg]

[pb2015]

The Wolfgang's Vault site has a few live tapes of Bob James at the Bottom Line in 1979, playing only piano and Fender Rhodes and backed by a small funk rhythm section. Good contrast to the studio albums which I find were often overproduced. A few cuts were on the All Around The Town live set.

[Trane]

I have a Pandora channel I like to read to, made up of electric jazz from the '80s, what is often dismissively referred to as "Fuzak" (a portmanteau of "fusion" and "Muzak")

i find the stuff colorful enough to not get tedious, but also undemanding enough that I can still concentrate on my book. It's a delicate balance.

I tend to equate Fuzak to the 80's soft/smooth jazz, but a bit also to the more new-agey 80's ECM stuff (as opposed to the livelier 70's ECM stuff), but I would blame CTi for the groundbreaking.

Metheny is Fuzak? Somebody should have told me 40 years ago.

That's not blasphemy in my book.

The 80s was my jazz phase. Metheny, Holdsworth, McLaughlin, Abercrombie, Special EFX, Cobham, Berlin… That’s all I was listening to.

TBH, in the middle third of the 80's, I was first discovering Bitches, Caravanserai (I knew of Santana's first three for ages then), Sextant, Inner Mounting Flame and such, and thought 80's stuff was (and still, is) quite lame §and tame)....
So I didn't pay much attention and dived directly into the 60's (Miles, Trane, Tyner, Mingus) in my last third of the 80's.

I never really connected with 80's smooth jazz.

I blame Wynton AND Brandford for that

Back in the late 80's and early 90's my wife was fond of WBMW 'Smooth Jazz' and New Age in the DC area. Got rebranded to WJFK later. Very fuzak

yeah, SJ and NA were very yuppy music, from my central Canada PoV

Bob James is an interesting case. He made a very avant garde record in the 60's, Explosions, before getting involved in the smooth sound. His later albums usually have some good tunes. (I tried streaming Fourplay and didn't find much there.)

I like Spyro Gyra as well, at least through the late 80's. I saw them live twice back then. Their keyboardist Tom Schuman is a monster player. (I saw that he is resigning from the group this month after a 40+ year stay.)

Indeed, BJ was hitting some mega notes with me (namely in BJ1 & BJ2 and some of those CTi albums), but also recording some very cringy stuff with awful string arrangement orchestrations. Often those CTi products were going too commercial to my eyes... and eventually it gave birth to smooth jazz.

As for Gyra, I saw them once (on Toronto's Exhibition islands in the early 80's), and didn't know much about them, and they didn't mover me much except for one stupendous "prog-epic-like" with great vocals track that had everyone on their toes. Never found that track on one of their albums, though.

I really like Bob James 1965 album "Explosions" (the antithesis of Fuzak perhaps) but not familiar with the rest of his long, long catalogue. Any thoughts anyone on what an Explosions fan should check out next?

Yeah, he really jumped the shark, didn't he?

But I do like the 70s 'crossover' sound- him, George Benson, Grover Washington Jr. etc.

I got some very mixed feelings, going for extatic to mega-cheesy ... even inside an album (thinking of Geogre Benson, for ex)

[pb2015]

As for Gyra, I saw them once (on Toronto's Exhibition islands in the early 80's), and didn't know much about them, and they didn't mover me much except for one stupendous "prog-epic-like" with great vocals track that had everyone on their toes. Never found that track on one of their albums, though.

Interesting. I never heard of Spyro Gyra using vocals live, until the 90's when their guitarist started doing a Latin crooner ballad that I see in most of their recent setlists.

[aith01]

Pat Metheny's music -- especially with the Pat Metheny Group, but even on something like Wichita Falls... -- is deceptively "smooth" sounding, but is quite sophisticated. I wouldn't put him in the fuzak category, not that I have anything against fuzak. I like some Yellowjackets and Rippingtons and Fourplay/Ritenour.

Just a day or two ago I was listening to 4x4 by Casiopea and (three fourths of) Fourplay.

[wideopenears]

I like Bob James first two albums on the Tappan Zee label, Bob James One and Two. (1974 and 1975). They are not in the same bag as some of the Fuzak you've listed, IMO.....and Metheny is in his own category, I think, though I get that some folks find some of the PMG stuff "smooth." It is "deceptive" that way.

[Flightwave]

Mezzoforte and the Rippingtons are favorites of mine.

[Flightwave]

Pat Metheny's music -- especially with the Pat Metheny Group, but even on something like Wichita Falls... -- is deceptively "smooth" sounding, but is quite sophisticated. I wouldn't put him in the fuzak category, not that I have anything against fuzak. I like some Yellowjackets and Rippingtons and Fourplay/Ritenour.

Just a day or two ago I was listening to 4x4 by Casiopea and (three fourths of) Fourplay.

Casiopea I forgot to mention them, they are great too !!

[pb2015]

I generally find 80s keyboard sounds hard to stomach so I probably wouldn't venture too far into that decade.

I noticed one of the Bob James albums from the 80's mentioned the Yamaha GS-1, which I looked up on some Wiki type sites - a more expensive, impractical precursor to the DX-7. Chick Corea used it too at least once.

https://www.vintagesynth.com/yamaha/GS-1

[rcarlberg]

I noticed one of the Bob James albums from the 80's mentioned the Yamaha GS-1, which I looked up on some Wiki type sites - a more expensive, impractical precursor to the DX-7.

[Progbear]

Common misconception: the GX-1 (which was analog) is not the same keyboard as the GS-1 (which was an early implementation of Yamaha's digital FM technology). Yamaha also made a GS-2. These were luxury instruments owned by few, unlike the later DX7, which was and is still abundant. The Toto guys used either a GS-1 or GS-2 (can't recall which, offhand), as did Minoru Mukaiya of the aforementioned Casiopea.

Casiopea are a big time guilty pleasure. Their stuff is like Little Debbies: empty calories, but fun to have once in a while.

[SunRunner2]

I believe it was Walter Becker who shared this joke: you're in a room with Hitler, Mussolini and Kenny G and you have a gun with 2 bullets...what do you do? You shoot Kenny G twice, just to be sure.

I never really connected with 80's smooth jazz. 80's new age is another story.

Not worried about hell, I have a solid arrangement with the western almighty: he doesn't smite me into the burning pits, and I don't regularly remind his followers that he doesn't exist

And, since he "doesn't exist", your "arrangement" is null and void.

[Progbear]

Speaking of Yamaha's 80s synths and smooth jazz, there's the Japanese trio Cosmos, who were all kitted out with Yamaha gear, as you can see in this video (complete with CS-01 solo using the breath controller). Of of 'em is a very young Keiko Matsui:

[pb2015]

The Toto guys used either a GS-1 or GS-2 (can't recall which, offhand)

David Paich mentioned that the kalimba sound in "Africa" was the GS-1.

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

Well, this is a timely thread that I have to chime in on, although I don't want to lose Steve's respect, so I'll thread carefully

I love a lot of the 70s CTI stuff and related things. Early Bob James, Grover Washington jr's jazz-funk phase, George Benson around "Good King Bad", Idris Muhammed, all that stuff. I think it's important to differentiate this era from the later 80s "fuzak" or smooth jazz. The distinction is blurry, but it's there. If you look at the early Zeppan Tee or CTI albums from Bob James, they are works of art, whether you like them or not. Enormous amounts of care and love has gone into both the arrangements and the crafting of deep, deep grooves. And James used very unique palettes and textures, mixing horn arrangements with Chamberlin strings and choirs and such. So yeah, I love that era, and I think it deserves a lot more respect. My absolute favorite rhythm section is Harvey Mason on drums and Gary King on bass, and they are the ones that laid down a lot of those classic grooves.

I have just finished recording an album that is sort of a tribute to these guys, but maybe with a bit more of a prog and nordic jazz-rock bent. The project is called Solstein and features among others Steely Dan/Toto drummer Keith Carlock. We all had a blast getting into those 70's grooves!

[Jacob Holm-Lupo]

David Paich mentioned that the kalimba sound in "Africa" was the GS-1.

The GS1 was basically the prototype for the DX7, just housed in a very beautiful, harpsichord-like casing. Prog keyboardist Erik Norlander is selling his these days, it's an incredible collectible, only a handful remains.

[Mascodagama]

How much I dislike Kenny G, I would save those bullets for Hitler, who has killed far to many people.

Shoot Hitler, shoot Mussolini, tell Kenny he's next unless he quits with the smooth jazz and releases a 10CD set of free improv with Keiji Haino.

[Dave (in MA)]

That's right. In Becker's joke it doesn't say that the 3 bad guys know how much ammo you have.