John McLaughlin/Paco de Lucia - The Montreux Concerts discs 10-11 (July 15, 1987)
John McLaughlin/The Free Spirits - The Montreux Concerts disc 12 (July 4, 1993); discs 13-14 (July 18, 1995)
John McLaughlin/The Heart of Things - The Montreux Concerts disc 15 (July 11, 1998)
Remember Shakti - The Montreux Concerts disc 16 (July 8, 1999)
John McLaughlin with Santana/Paco De Lucia - The Montreux Concerts (bonus) disc 17
Whew. If anything ought to talk me out of discussing these recordings, it’s typing out those headers, especially for what I’d consider the lesser half of the entire box set. Most of these sets don’t particularly interest me, although there is an exception or two. For starters, his collaborations with Paco de Lucia do very little for me, whether it’s the full set or the “bonus track” on disc 17. De Lucia’s terribly talented, but the pairing of a flamenco stylist with McLaughlin’s jazziness never really worked for me and despite the great sound and the intense playing, after ten minutes I grow numb, especially with all the fast picking.
I saw the Free Spirits in the mid 90s, probably closer to the second date rather than the first and really dug the set, way more than I did any of the band’s albums. There’s obviously something immediate about the live environment, but McLaughlin’s choice of clean tones during this period gives his axe very little to cut through with and combined with DeFrancesco’s very choppy style, there’s just an awful lot of playing going on, in fact this is amazingly busy for a trio. Chambers is often the highlight, so it’s no surprise he was held over for the Heart of Things stint. Despite the larger band and the different instrumental line up, I felt like the band wasn’t doing music all that far from the Free Spirits, organ or not and like the album of the time, I felt fairly numb. I suppose it’s possible playing most of these in a row, something I haven’t done yet after a few listsens, would add to this feeling, but it’s hard to be enthusiastic about music whose fire is so muted.
So in a way it was a relief to get Remember Shakti as a follow up, despite the fact that they’re a rather limp and unimpressive take off on the original band, often meandering for minutes when the original band nearly made a career of perfect dynamic control. Again, the flat McLaughlin tone just doesn’t help, often obscuring the music. It catches a little at the end, but overall this show sits comfortably with the rest of the RS ouevre.
The bonus disc’s Santana track makes one wish it was pulled from the artists’ 73 collaboration, but this point in the game Santana’s Ligertwood-headed group was coming up more misses than hits and unfortunately the collaboration with McLaughlin is more of a non event than something to be commented on.
The summary of the whole box is that I feel rather comfortable retiring discs 7 through 17 without much of a look back. Personally I could have lived with a 2 CD comp of the original Shakti shows, just like I could have lived with the 2 disc 73 show on the Miles Davis box set. It’s honestly hard to imagine someone truly enthusiastic for such a wide swathe of different styles at this price and despite holding out no hope for separate releases of choice shows, I’m feeling it would have been a better idea.