Dara Factor One - Music

Weather Report Was An Influential Jazz Fusion Band Of The 1970s And 1980s One Of The Bands That Defined The Genre. Their Initial Style Was Collectively Improvised Free Jazz With A Strong Rhythmic Pulse And Latin Influences Moving Into More Funk-Oriented Rhythms. The Sound Also Developed From An Acoustic Lineup To Increasingly Synthesised Textures As Keyboardist Joe Zawinul Embraced Successive Generations Of Technology. The Band Was Founded In 1970 By Joe Zawinul Keyboards And Wayne Shorter Saxophones Following Their Experiences In Miles Davis's Pioneering Electric Band Of The Late 60s Although They Had Been Friends For A Decade Before This. Zawinul And Shorter Were The Only Permanent Members Other Musicians Included Bassists Miroslav Vitous Alphonso Johnson Jaco Pastorius And Victor Bailey Drummers Alphonse Mouzon Eric Gravatt Chester Thompson Peter Erskine And Omar Hakim And Percussionists Airto Moreira Alex Acuña And Manolo Badrena With Numerous Other Collaborators And Guests. Weather Report's Earliest Releases Owe A Clear Debt To Miles Davis's Late 60s Electric Style But By The Release Of Mysterious Traveller In 1974 The Group Had Arrived At A Style Of Its Own Several Of The Tracks Depend Upon Propulsive Rhythmic Figures With Solos More Explorative Of Mood Than Technical 'excellence'. In This Respect They Were Always More Artistically Ambitious Than The Majority Of Other Jazz Fusion Artists. From Black Market 1976 Until Weather Report 1982 The Band's Line-Up Was At Its Most Stable With Zawinul Shorter And Pastorius Remaining Constant As The Group's Core. This Period Saw The Release Of Heavy Weather 1977 The Album Which Brought Weather Report To Its Widest Public Awareness With The Hit Single Birdland. Following Pastorius's Departure The Constant Revolving Door Of Musicians Coming Down From Their Peak Of Popularity And Conflicting Solo Projects All Took An Increasing Toll On The Band. Their Final Release This Is This In 1986 Was Dominated By Zawinul's Keyboards And Included Solos By Carlos Santana Shorter's Saxophone Was Hardly To Be Heard At All. A Full History And Discography Can Be Found At Http //www.Binkie.Net/wrdisc/. read less

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Erskine explained the genesis of "Dara Factor One" and "Dara Factor Two" to Brian Glasser: "The Dara Factors - that was one long jam. I remember they got this extra-large reel of tape, and when we were doing it they even ran a speaker out into the lounge so all the people working in the studio could hear it. We wanted to do a jam, and at one point I said, 'Joe, how about something like this? This would be fun,' and I played a kind of pocket groove. I thought it was cool. And Joe waved me to stop. He's standing in the center of the room, I'm in my drum booth, and he says through the microphones: "What's fun about that? I don't hear anything fun in that." So that's why Dara had that kind of ass-backwards beat, because he was always looking for something out of the ordinary." Brian Risner told Glasser, "Dara Factor was basically, 'Hey, we got an hour left. What are we gonna do?' And I was so efficient with the production on that record--we had two days booked, and we'd gone in and gotten two takes on everything, maybe three, and we'd gotten everything we wanted. So he had an interesting sequence pattern, probably on the Oberheim, and they jammed on that. There was a lot of work on post (-production) on it, because basically it was a groove and a basic melody, so we cut it and added a lot of the accents and stuff to make it work." Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.