Weather Report

And, you know, the combination of rock and roll, which is, you know, it's got the emotion and it's got, you know, the power and all of that.

It's one of the reasons why I love the jazz fusion era that you touched upon, like the Mahavishnu Orchestra and, you know, Weather Report and the like.

Because to me, it had the power of rock and roll with the improvisation and the complexity of jazz.

What do you think? Yeah.

Then I had to kind of go up to Prague to like, yes, and, you know, Kansas and all that kind of stuff.

And then I...

Went up, you know, from there, Weather Report, Mahavishnu, Jeff Beck, Larry Carlton, you know, Chick Corea and all those, Return to Forever and all that stuff.

And, you know, it's...

True, and that's where the second influence comes in.

The sources highlight the band Weather Report, which introduced Jenkinson to shifting highly complex rhythmic structures.

Okay, so that covers the bass and the rhythm.

What about the electronics?

His career is proof that machines can possess a heartbeat if you learn their language, and that human hands can execute with the blistering precision of a digital sequencer if you practice hard enough.

You gave us a phenomenal topic today.

We have traced how Tom Jenkinson took the fluid improvisational blueprint of jazz fusion from legends like Pastorius and Weather Report and violently crashed it into the rigid, high-speed digital world of breakbeats.

He essentially taught the drum machine how to swing by fighting against it.

I got really into funk.

And then I discovered Jocko and Weather Report kind of when I was about 18, 19 years old.

And yeah, so I just... kept digging more and more into it.

And then, um, went to school, went to college after high school.

And so like all of those experiences definitely informed how like I approach the instrument.

You know, it's like I went to school kind of.

just figuring out who like Jocko and Weather Report were and so it's like I had all these like, I like learned all like the chili pepper stuff, I learned all the Primus stuff, I had like done all, like I had all the chops and then I went to school and then just got beat down because it's like none of that matters, can you read, can you play the part, you know? It's like being molded, you know, reshaped, right? And then you get out of school and into the real world, and it's like, same thing again, man.

It's like you just get molded and reshaped, you know? And it just kind of keeps happening.

Life gives you, you know, at most 100 years, and you guys put all the different things you want to do into that time, right? He's like that, you're like that, right? Why not? Why not, I say.

uh but this period i'm just fascinated by this that you were into electronics before things like weather report happened before the whole area of fusion happened and i was wondering how we when that did happen then it got quite popular and chicken everybody yeah did you like that stuff did you do oh

yeah i loved i loved that stuff i i loved weather report man i thought they were marvelous man

Because it was funny because, you know, as a young kid when I was in high school and I first heard jazz, the stuff that spoke to me most was very high energy stuff like Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders or Web Report, you know, stuff, anything that was loud.

It took me a while to develop a sense for the more subtle aspects

And, you know, it went out into the world, and it did whatever it was going to do, but it didn't change my life or anyone's life who was a part of it.

Years later, Todd lives in New York, and he hears that Wayne Shorter, who's the famous saxophone player from Weather Report-

Right

... and is, is one of the great living people from the jaz- you know, from American jazz.