Jean-Luc Ponty

They were even throwing some Chicago into the mix, and I didn't much care for them straying that far away.

But they had fusion like Pat Metheny, and so our jazz station turned me on to Pat Metheny and Jean-Luc Ponty had a couple of, well, more than a couple of solo albums out, kind of the electric violin.

And he had done some playing with Frank Zappa, actually, but he had some solo albums that got jazz airplay, maybe a little more serious than what we would call smooth jazz, a little more complicated than smooth jazz but still kind of in a in a gray area in its own area and i guess for lack of a better word that all fell into a genre that we call jazz fusion uh yeah tell me about jazz fusion well it's a fusion between jazz and rock so it isn't purely one and it isn't purely the other i guess we'd have to spin some records now but uh to really demonstrate.

But Pat Metheny is a good example of that.

by Frank Zappa from his classic 1969 album, Hot Rats.

This song features Jean-Luc Ponty on violin and Zappa's good buddy, Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart.

Now, this record, Hot Rats, you know, it's like, I'm making air quotes here, serious Zappa music.

You know, this has peaches on regalia and it's known for this, it's very intricate arrangements that are nearly impossible for like 99% of musicians to play, right? But this one song, Willie the Pimp, stands out on this record because it's essentially a one-chord vamp.

Yeah.

We saw Jean-Luc Ponty in the round.

That was cool.

Where was that? Indiana.

We drove all the way.

I was with you.

I drove all the way there to see Jean-Luc Ponty.

Yes.

I've also seen people, like great musicians, who don't navigate problems that well.

And that's interesting, you know? [laughs] You know, I went to see a Jean-Luc Ponty concert once, and I guess the sound was atrocious on stage.

In the room, it was awesome.

And he was bitching at the sound guy, like, I would say, you know, 30% of the time he's, like, screaming at the sound guy.

Yeah.

And then played the drums.

And then Jean-Luc Ponty and everybody else over-dubbed on top of it.

So it was, like, really multi-track, which is, doesn't sound like that, right?