Amazingly, the Mahavishnu Orchestra (sort of) released some singles. MO Mk 1 saw ‘Open Country Joy’ released in a few territories; MO 2 had the atypically brief ‘Can’t Stand Your Funk’ released in a few, including the UK. But several US radio promo 45s were released, almost all featuring exclusive edits of longer tracks.

Should anyone here wish to hear the 4 minute 34 second US radio promo edit of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s ‘Sister Andrea’ – recorded live in New York in August 1973 and hitherto never released on CD or other digital form – here it is, digitised from my vinyl collection. The B-side had the unabridged 9:56 full version of the performance (an 8:37 edit was used on the live album ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’). The unabridged track first appeared on CD, unannounced, on the remastered ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ that was included in the 2012 box set ‘The Complete Columbia Albums’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7Q5_9ljw3Y

And he does so right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPpP_UHc8tU

Drummer Gregg Bendian recorded three tribute albums to the ‘Vish in the 2000s, performing live in the US with variations on the theme – including a large ensemble to reproduce the MO Mk2 era – in that period too. After a long hiatus, they’re back – in blistering four-piece form – with this recent livestream and live shows in the offing. Hurrah!

It’s been a while since I posted anything on the MO, so indulge me. 🙂 On 11 May 1973, the ‘Vish played Milwaukee Arena. Photographer Rich Zimmerman shot 17 minutes of silent 8mm film. Much of it looked to me like it had been filmed during an extended ‘Dance of Maya’, which featured pizzicato violin and a John/Billy guitar and drums duo section within it. Three years ago, I had some of Rich’s film edited to a recording of ‘Dance of Maya’ from another show in 1973 (the one from Milwaukee not having survived on the partial soundboard of that night). See below – if you have 15 minutes to spare, it’s mesmerising stuff.

The second item of note this week 50 years ago is the MO concert at New York’s Felt Forum on 16 May 1973. UK music press news items later that month referred to Columbia Records having recorded this MO concert, and planning to record another in Montreux, with a view to the next Mahavishnu Orchestra release being a live album. During research for my two McLaughlin books in the mid-2010s, Michael Panico, Archives Manager at Sony in New York, confirmed that Sony does indeed have 2” » Continue Reading.

…that the Mahavishnu Orchestra Mk 1’s third and final album ‘Between Nothingness & Eternity’ was recorded. Three tracks from two nights in Central Park, New York, on August 17-18 1973.

This is the (splendidly) remastered sound from the ‘Complete Columbia Albums’ box set of 2011, which added around 90 seconds of music edited from the original vinyl plus an extra disc of one take each of all but one of the other tunes played over those two nights. If I had the opportunity to curate a Mahavishnu box set we would, of course, have every note played over those two nights.

The great man is 80 today. Here’s some silent film from a show in 1973, taken by Rich Zimmermann, which I edited to a tune that was played that night, and which a fair amount of the film clearly related to – albeit that we had to use soundboard audio from a different night as the Milwaukee soundboard was incomplete. It works surprisingly well. 🙂

Jaygee mentioned this yesterday. Released 49 years ago today – the pinnacle of all albums in the rock era, in my view. Here’s a version from vinyl that someone has just uploaded.

July 16, it seems:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-R-lwlJvrQ&t=9s

Stay home, stay safe, work on those Mahavishnu tunes…

Just ‘out’ today, it seems: a ‘grey area’ live album featuring three US radio broadcasts 1971-72. I’m posting here rather than as a noticeboard item cos I don’t have an image to upload (a required part of posting a Noticeboard item). The 1971 recording, incidentally, is the earliest MO live recording around.

https://music.apple.com/se/album/clouds-of-unknowing-live/1494731602

Forty-seven years ago yesterday, 30 December 1973, the Mahavishnu Orchestra Mk1 (John McLaughlin, Jan Hammer, Jerry Goodman, Rick Laird Laird, Billy Cobham) imploded in the snow.

Here is an extract from ‘Bathed in Lightning’ covering that period, and a fabulous recording from their fourth-last-ever concert, New York’s Avery Fisher Hall on December 27th:

EXTRACT

Over two editions of Britain’s New Musical Express back in July 1973 Ian MacDonald had taken stock of John McLaughlin’s career thus far, from a time when he ‘had a reputation for being one of the remotest and most difficult people to work with in London’ to his current status as a ‘Hero’ who ‘bestrides the world of the electric guitar like a solitary colossus’. ‘Ridiculous speed is the transcendental essence of McLaughlin’s recent work with the Mahavishnu Orchestra,’ he wrote. ‘[T]he fastest passages in The Inner Mounting Flame and Birds Of Fire are now being played so swiftly that the ear has difficulty in separating bar from bar, let alone note from note… This, in purely musical terms, means that in about six months’ time the Orchestra will be no more than a shrill aural blur with the members fading visibly into hyper-space, like Captain » Continue Reading.

…somebody called John McLin – maybe the presenter thought there were no Laughs involved. The walk-on music is ghastly – but hearty congratulations to John for the award, for his solo on the Mahavishnu re-run ‘Miles Beyond’ on ‘Live At Ronnie Scott’s’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL3pGb8OEIU

I’ve hesitated to start a new thread on this, as I posted a tour heads-up thread and a ‘wow – he’s back to double-neck’ thread within the past couple of months, and I fear annoying people with too much Maha… But… dammit, John McLaughlin has just played his last ever tour in America, where he made his name (relocating to New York in 1969 after a remarkable 10-year British career under the radar, but popping up in all sorts of places, traversing all sorts of scenes – a Zelig of the Swinging 60s in London) and where the Mahavishnu Orchestra burned bright and then burned out, 1971-75.

It may well be that he has played his last ever show (as opposed to tour) in America – at UCLA Royce Hall, Los Angeles, a couple of days ago. The tour was remarkable for him playing a load of Mahavishnu tunes for the first time in decades, including a full separate two-band set of the stuff with tour co-headliners Jimmy Herring’s Invisible Whip.

Here then is a glimpse of the last homage in America to the Greatest Band That Ever Was, ‘Eternity’s Breath’: