8.30 (Limited Coloured Vinyl)

8:30 is the second live album by the jazz fusion group Weather Report, issued in 1979 and recorded at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, California. It was recorded live except for side D, which was studio recorded. It features a live version of the group’s signature piece “Birdland” and won a Grammy Award for Best Jazz Fusion Performance.

The album takes its name from the band’s habit of starting their performance at 8:30 pm. At the time of the tour, the band was a quartet who would take the stage continuously for around two and a half hours, each of the members taking a solo spot to give not just a virtuoso performance, but to give the others a break. Wayne Shorter sometimes plays percussion instead of saxophone on stage, and on one of the studio tracks, the calypso inspired “Brown Street”, Joe Zawinul’s son Erich plays percussion along with Erskine and Pastorius.

The 8:30 tour saw Weather Report at the height of their commercial success, and the playlist leant heavily on the recent successes, “Black Market”, “Birdland” and “Teen Town”. Jaco Pastorius played a notable solo, “Slang”, which melded a multi-part bass solo using tape loops, leading into references to “Third Stone from the Sun” by Jimi Hendrix, “Portrait of Tracy” from his own solo work, then onto “(The Hills are Alive with) The Sound of Music”. He finished off playing his bass with its own strap.