Customer Reviews

Lost Trident Sessions

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Opinions seem to be highly polarised about the perceptions of this TRIDENT disc. As a fan who had their records in 7th grade (1974) - Inner Mounting Flame was the record I pulled out for a friend who thought Ritchie Blackmore was the s**t - he became a quick convert. The record remains a guitar smoker with superb musicianship on every instrument. Now, many years later, comes this Trident disc. After several listens I find it hard to believe any true fan of this band would not be impressed with the TRIDENT disc. It has all the hallmarks of classic Mahavishnu- good compositions featuring astounding instrumental solos and interplay- the only thing better than it IS inner mounting flame. It is great to have studio versions of these live songs (from between nothingness and eternity)...In some respects the live performance is better in an over the top kind of way, but the good recording quality of Trident gives a new perspective on these songs- Goodman's violin in particular sounds superior on these studio renditions. The live album, unfortunately, was given poor recording engineering which for me makes it a little less appreciative. Birds of Fire's title track is probably my favorite song by them, but I like "Dreams" and "Trilogy" from TRIDENT more than the other compositions on Bird's of fire, the three other songs on Trident are good too, so as a whole I prefer this album slightly. While lumped into the "jazz/rock fusion" category, Trident and Inner Mounting Flame fall mainly towards rock- of the progressive variety- actually there are some parallels between Mahavishnu and King Crimson's live recorded work of 1973-1974...both bands had electric violin and virtuoso guitar/drummer line-ups...so adventurous listeners might wish to give Crimson's "USA" and "Nightwatch" discs a try. Given the opportunity to contribute my perceptions of TRIDENT sessions, I am pleased it was released and can recommend it to fans of this band without reservation. Mclaughlin himself is quoted in the retrospective notes... "I am very happy, actually, with the lost (trident) album"... Displeased listener/reviewers can always seek the "grail" elsewhere, TRIDENT is close enough for me... the actual Mahavishnu
grail was believed to be located within the Inner mounting flame.

Alot has been written about this CD, but this is what happened:

In June 1973, the members of Mahavishnu Orchestra went into the studio and recorded their third album. They later went out on the road and performed the album. They liked the live material better and released a live album, and shelved the studio material.

This CD (Lost Trident Sessions) is the release of that original studio album. It is 39 minutes long. The first three numbers on this CD are studio verisons of the live tracks that appear on Between Nothingness and Eternity. The studio versions are shorter and tighter. Arguments can be made on which versions are better; the longer, looser, rambling live versions or the more concise studio versions. Most reviewers complain that this new studio release isn't as good as the live version. But it is all relative and a matter of perception. If the studio version came out first, I bet these same reveiwers would be complaining that the live versions meander too much and are boring in spots.

The last three tracks on Trident Sessions have never been released. They total 12 minutes. One tune is a rocking guitar number, similar to some of the tracks on Visions of the Emarald Beyond. The other two tracks feature Laird on bass and Goodman on violin. All three of them are excellent.

Taken on it's own, this is an excellent album, with a sound that is closest to Birds of Fire. If you already own Between Nothingness and Eternity, should you buy this one? That is hard to say. You will get 12 minutes of "new" material. And I think the studio versions of the live material are different enough that they are worth owning.

I am as die-hard an MO fan as you can imagine, and was thrilled to find out about LTS and could hardly wait to get it. It definitely fills a gap, has some interesting additional material, and is a remarkably good-sounding album...BUT - I personally think that it is being overrated in comparison with BNaE. LTS sounds like what it is, a studio take of early sessions of difficult and involved material. BNaE is a realization of the same pieces after MO had more time to work out the improvisations and structural parts of the pieces. As others have said, compare the improvisations, especially "Sister Andrea" - JMcL was clearly exploring what to do in this solo on LTS, and by the time he did BNaE, he had more fully developed the improvisation.

Don't get me wrong, I like it, I like it a LOT. Get it. But it's not the Grail. Personally, I think the version of "The Noonward Race" on the "Mar Y Sol" concert album is the type of material I would like to hear more of. If you haven't heard it, the playing is ferocious!! According to an interview I read with JMcL, Colombia/Sony has a full concert album from this time period that they're sitting on. Please release it!! MO always....

It certainly is wonderful to have a "lost" album of music from the late, great Mahavishnu Orchestra, but to compare it favorably to any of the band's official previous releases is more than a little off the mark. The studio versions of the compositions released 25 years ago on "Between Nothingness and Eternity" pale in comparison - sluggish, studied, not extremely well-recorded. Play McLaughlin's solo on "Sister Andrea" here beside the one recorded for the live disc and you'll see what I mean.

Certainly even 25 years later this is the best Jazz Fusion disc released in 1999. The "new" material is a welcome addition to the canon and it certainly came as a big surprise to me when I heard this was coming out, but a Holy Grail it's not...maybe another teeming tributary entering the ocean of joy and spirit that was The Mahavishnu Orchestra!

Gee, if this had been released in 1973 before "Between Nothingness and Eternity" it certainly would have been a great let-down. Now, since 70% by duration of its material (I counted) appeared on "Between Nothingness and Eternity", you may well ask whether I was disappointed in that. Yes, a bit, but there the excitement of a live, loose, jam session with audience interaction compensated to a significant extent for the slightness of the compositions and for the stylistic incongruity of Jan Hammer's "Sister Andrea"--and John McLaughlin's solo on "Sister Andrea" there is blistering; the audience gasps.

The best by far of the remaining 30% is McLaughlin's raga-ish "John's Song #2".

I reacted to Rick Laird's "Steppings Tones" in the way I would expect a Beatles fan to react to a Rutles recording. I was amused at first and then slightly annoyed at this clever parody of McLaughlin's compositional style. As actual music it isn't any worse than some of McLaughlin's self-parodies on "Visions of the Emerald Beyond", but it certainly isn't a worthy successor to anything on "Birds of Fire".

Jerry Goodman's 13/8 two-bar riff "I Wonder" parodies McLauglin's metrical technique in "The Dance of Maya" from "The Inner Mounting Flame" (it adds a redundant eighth note), but--speaking of the Beatles--harmonically it is a parody rather of the introduction to John Lennon's "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" from "Abbey Road" (much less sophisticated, much more conventional than "I Want You (She's So Heavy)": diatonic tertian triads and a secondary dominant)--and, fortuitously or not, in the same key.

So...this may have been lost, but not until after it had already been abandoned--I should hope. I certainly don't appreciate the hype and dissimulation surrounding it, but my star rating doesn't deduct for that, nor does it deduct for the vapid liner notes and cheesy cover.

You may be content to buy a record for one short piece ("John's Song #2), but I suspect you'll be much happier with the lovely and exciting and largely ignored "Natural Elements" by Shakti (featuring John McLaughlin and violinist L. Shankar). Consider.

This album is, simply put, one of the most stunning pieces of recorded music I have ever heard. I am dumbfounded, amazed, and just plain humbled by the depth and the power of this group of five musicians who, it would appear, just about gave it their all (and then imploded as a group).

The only description I have of the feeling of listening to these incredible sounds at full volume is, it made it feel like I was lying helpless in a middle of a highway, with wave after wave of Mack trucks hurtling towards me (I was sober, I promise). Just listen to the second and third movements of 'Trilogy,' and I think you'll see what I mean.

It is (sadly) a fitting coda to Mahavishnu Orchestra 1: I find it inconceivable that the intensity and genius--in fact, insanity--of the sounds in this album could be surpassed.

I am not a great fan of the recording industry. But when something like this happens, I have to reassess: To whoever was responsible, let me (humbly) say, thank you, for an incomparable end-of-the-millennium musical gift!

This record's liner notes ask us to imagine the excitement that a new Jimi Hendrix release would generate. In fact, Jimi Hendrix, like Ernest Hemingway, has been more prolific dead than he ever was alive. This is to demonstrate that the hype attending the "Lost Trident Sessions" is risible. More credibly these liner notes also mention a magazine article in which band members make unflattering remarks about band leader John McLaughlin as the efficient cause (in the Aristotelian sense) of the Mahavishnu Orchestra's demise. I tracked down the article (Crawdaddy, November 1973) and discovered that it mentions the "Lost Trident Sessions".

Crawdaddy: "It seems they [the Mahavishnu Orchestra] had just made an abotive attempt at recording a third album in the English studio where Birds of Fire had been done. 'The studio is so great, the sound was so incredible, but the music, the band just didn't play well,' [keyboardist] Jan Hammer explained to us later. 'We can't use any of it because we didn't rehearse....' [Bassist] Rick Laird corroborated Hammer. 'We'd come off quite an extensive tour of Europe and more less had gone into the studio the next day. We had no time to rehearse. Some of us had written new material for the first time, and because up to this time John had written it all, there was a certain amount of unease about the whole thing. As a result, I don't think we got anything.'"

Crawdaddy also says that at Central Park the group played a tune called "Hope Awakening", a Mahavishnu title I don't know. Is this what became of "John's Song #2"? (Jerry Goodman's "I Wonder" was incorporated into "One Word" in concert, a sort of introduction.)

This is a great album with much better sound than the live album, and to my pleasent surprise, when I played it, it turns out that this CD was encoded as a High Definition CD. This means that when played on a HDCD compatible player, it plays like a CD with a 20 bit word length versus a regular CD 16 bit word length. This gives it greater definition and depth (but again, to get this feature, you need to have a HDCD compatible player). Why would the record company make it as a HDCD and then fail to label it as having this very desirable feature I don't understand. Other cd's that are HDCD and not labeled as such:
Kansas's Device Voice Drum, Stephen Stills' Manassas, and Jean Luc Ponty's Live at Chene Park. In short, great album, great sound quality!

Apparently this album wasn't released when recorded because they(MO) decided it wasn't good enough.This album appears to have its detractors but I heard this record without knowing any of this and I thought it was just great. The Mahavishnu Orchestra was and remains one of the best ( maybe *the* best?) fusion bands to date. Even on their worst day they were incredible and they are on this recording too. We have precious little enough on record from this band and "The Lost Trident" sessions are a very welcome addition. And if you didn't know who Mahavishnu Orchestra was and you heard this CD you would say "Holy mackerel! (or something) what an incredible kick ... band!"
I wish I could have bad days like these guys!
Recommended

The first three pieces on this session were originally heard on the LP "From Nothingness to Eternity" in the early 1970s. The last three shorter cuts have never been released on the two other Mahavishnu albums. What a discovery! The group was arguably the best fusion unit ever, and this recording produces more evidence for that. The chemistry between the members is memorable; the intensity consistently high; the unreleased compositions are of a high quality; and the studio versions of previously released live material is different enough from the live recording to merit praise and repeated listening. A one-of-a-kind group gives us one more testament to be remembered by. It is too bad that it is only less than forty minutes long.

--Douglas Groothuis