Customer Reviews

Hear & Now

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

So happy to see this album finally again!
I first bought the record in the Miami airport in 1980 and the after many years of constant enjoying and inspiration finally got the cd in Tokyo a few years back.
This is THE ultimate fusion album or at least one of the best,ever.
Well,at least in my opinion.
Stan Samole is the incredible and otherwise sadly totally underrated guitarplayer here.Along with Narada Michael Walden on drums and Michael Brecker on sax the lineup is almost perfect.
Although this is music that most Don Cherry fans weren't that crazy about - as it is not the type of avantgarde jazz or as acoustic and minimal as most of his other stuff - it is still one of the absolut highlights of his career.
He seems to be really inspired and spiritually connected and takes the whole band up to the highest peaks of fusion enlightenment.
Track one is building up slowly into an almost funky groove with a sort of mystical tension.There is a lot of eastern influence throughout this album but just like a bit of spice,not too much.
Second song features D.Cherry singing and again is build upon a really cool groove.
Third song is my favorite ( well,hard to say as they are all so good..).
It has got this hymnlike quality that not many musicians easily achieve but so many seem to strive for.
Stan Samole is at his best here and also D.Cherry lifts it up and reaches up there high...
If you like Don Cherry you will apreciate this one but bear in mind it is not his usual avantgarde type stuff.
Very enjoyable!Be sure to also check out "Brown Rice"(if you haven't already..),"Codona I"(with Nana Vosconcelos and Colin Walcott),and maybe some of the stuff he did with drummer Ed Blackwell on ECM and maybe just to take it a bit further you could also look into "Elements" by Joe Henderson (with Alice Coltrane!).
So get this one soon ,sit back and enjoy the flight!
Cheers!

Back in the seventies when jazz/rock fusion was starting to take place, most people were concentrating on Mahavishnu Orchestra , Return To Forever, Weather Report and Tony Williams Lifetime. Those groups were the defacto jazz/fusion pioneers which came out of Miles Davies's influence. Now, almost 30 years later when I listen to Don Cherrys Here And Now, I feel that this album is as great a collection of music as all of the others I mentioned although it never received as much notoriety. This is a great CD which leans a bit more on the Jazz side of the fusion movement. It never gets old.

I have always had difficulty distinguishing between good fusion and bad fusion -- almost all of it has this dated, untenable sound to it that I just cannot take seriously, from the spacy keyboard stylings to the ring of the electric guitar... I love the work of Don Cherry, and I love his willingness to explore different genres and styles of music, and I even accept this is good fusion; but anytime I've put it on, it's been because I've been TRYING to like it. I never actually get past the TRYING TO part. The only cut I really enjoy is a half-minute improv called "Eagle Eye," written for Cherry's son, then very young, that has no fusiony touches whatever (percussion and flute, if I recall). The rest, while not by any stretch a betrayal of Cherry's musical concerns, and not offensive by any means -- just HAS not won me yet. If you're a Cherry fan wondering if his presence is strong enough on this disc to make it sound less trite than fusion usually sounds, the answer is NO. If you're a fusion fan, buy it, by all means, don't let me stand in your way. Why can't someone reissue HUMAN MUSIC or RELATIVITY SUITE or HOMEBOY or the CITY SPIRITS and TAMMA projects Cherry worked on? They're all a whole heck of a lot more interesting than this'un.

To me this is a great Don Cherry album. There is some beautiful music on this album. Don't pay any attention to reviewers on here...including myself. Judge the music for yourself.

Some of the best multi-cultural sounds predating the world music of today without sounding prehistoric. Narada Michael Walden's contribution (Surrender Rose) is one of his all time finest compositions.(Then he went off dancing in the disco, who can figure? But that is another story all together.) I'm keeping an "eagle eye" pealed for a copy of this one...my record is long over-played! Check out Don Cherry's work with CODONA. Super stuff, as well! High Praises!

After owning many jazz and avant inflected cds by Cherry i never thought i would hear him in a Fusion / Funk / Disco outing such as this. Some songs are not bad at all but others are just not for a prog head such as my self. Get this after you get his Blue Note cds, and his other classics.

This CD is almost totally a waste of Cherry's time and energy. Those of us who bought it as Cherry fans when it first came out called it "Disco Don" and gave it away or sold it (cheap). This is standard funk jazz, faceless and hysterically excited about nothing. The biggest shame here is that an otherwise unrecorded Cherry composition, which begins wistfully with Collin Walcott's sitar, a piece that in concert was brilliantly played by Cherry on piano and trumpet, is hereby immortalized as yet another piece of fusion tripe. A reviewer a little ways up the ladder here says Relativity Suite should be reissued, and when that happy day comes may Disco Don also vanish without a trace---except for those few seconds....