A seminal live recording of one of the great fusion ensembles.
"I remember when Mahavishnu Orchestra was just breaking. I was still taking drum lessons at the time and my teacher was always bringing in new music for us to examine."
November 1st, It’s Thursday. Hope you all had a wild and wicked Halloween! I don’t know … this morning it just feels like there needs to be a little live Jazz—Fusion in the office air. So when that’s the case, what-say we go with a little live Mahavishnu Orchestra this morning on the “Live Vinyl Lovefest”?? “Between Nothingness and Eternity” is this legendary ensemble’s first live record. It was recorded in Central Park over a couple of nights in 1973. Although folks who were either there, or who have compared the release to bootlegs or whatever claim that all songs on this release were from the second night only. CBS finally released the un-released tracks from the previous night but only in downloadable form. Regardless, it’s epic stuff and if highly proficient musicianship is your thing this album offers quite a line up; John McLaughlin on guitar, Jan Hammer on keys, Jerry Goodman on violin, Rick Laird on bass and of course Billy Cobham on drums.
I remember when Mahavishnu Orchestra was just breaking. I was still taking drum lessons at the time and my teacher was always bringing in new music for us to examine. And one day he came in with their inaugural release; “The Inner Mounting Flame” and was kind of giddy about it in that he had clearly just come from the record store, which was right around the corner from the music store where we were doing our thing. So he ripped off the outer plastic sleeve and put it on the turntable. We sat there with our headphones on, looking down, listening intently. After about 5-6 minutes I saw this kind of “look” in his eyes and he pulled off his headphones and said something along the lines of “ya know what, I’m going to need to study this for a bit before we dig in on it. How about we go back to the Cream album for today?” Trust me … I was SO relieved. But from that moment on I was a fan and studied a lot of Billy Cobham and many other ridiculously talented drummers from that point on in my life.