toeknee4bz
Well-Known Member
Ponty's COSMIC MESSENGER was really a compelling album, but for some reason I could never get into any of JLP's other albums. Just never grabbed me.We had a great local radio station, WJZZ, that played a lot of the contemporary releases in the 70s and 80s, so that opened my ears a bit. Jean-Luc Ponty became a favorite when I was a teen, back when Cosmic Messenger was his newest, and I've bought everything since (and worked backwards).
The crowd I ran with back then was big into the funk/jazz scene in the late 70s/early 80s, so some of those records by George Duke, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, etc. had as much play among us as Earth Wind & Fire and their contemporaries. Maybe not strictly jazz but I don't care what it's called--music is music. Don't need a label if you like it.
Pat Metheny has been a big influence here as well, as much as Jean-Luc Ponty. Other than Zero Tolerance for Silence, I can't really think of anything he's ever done that I haven't liked in one way or another.
I've liked a handful of the artists who recorded for GRP (I have many here), but to be honest, Rippingtons were kind of boring after a while. Curves Ahead was a good recording (the track "Aspen" is a favorite), but they got too repetitive. I saw them (featuring Eric Marienthal) on a really odd triple-bill with David Benoit and Jean-Luc Ponty. (Odd because the Rippingtons/Benoit crowd were the khakis and loafer types, while the Ponty fans were in the 70s t-shirts and had the long hair. ) Benoit opened and sadly was not able to play too long of a set. Ponty's band kicked everything up a few notches, well worth seeing. As for Rippingtons...sadly, one song sounded the same as the next, and the song titles were all variations on tropical themes, and at least half of the audience left during their set. We stuck it out.
Glad we did, too--they totally floored the audience when during the encore, they ripped into a version of "Purple Haze" that gave Hendrix a run for his money. Freeman burned it up on guitar, and I think that entire band expended more energy on that one tune than they did their entire set. I think everyone had a chance to solo on that one, so it ran for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. So I can't knock them as musicians at all, but the music? They didn't even play "Aspen" which is arguably their most famous track. And the rest of it all sounded the same!
As for the jazz/funk scene, I can totally relate. Just look at my list above and you'll see what I mean.
Regarding Metheny's ZERO TOLERANCE... a friend of mine bought the CD and took it back because he thought something was wrong with it when he put it in the player!
And I agree, the Rippingtons are definitely an 'early on' band. After around 2000, I pretty much gave up on them because [as you said precisely] the rest all sounded the same. But then again, they were corrupted by the 'smooth jazz' muzak format dictated by Broadcast Architecture and the like. Their last album that really moved me was TOPAZ in 1997.