The Legendary Live Tapes 1978-1981 cover the highly-rated ‘Jaco Pastorius years’ with the band featuring founding members Joe Zawinul and Wayne Shorter, alongside drummer Peter Erskine, percussionist/hand drummer Robert ‘Bobby’ Thomas Jr and the pioneering fretless bass virtuoso Pastorius, who was pivotal in taking the band’s success to new heights.

This collection of previously unreleased performances was carefully assembled and produced by Erskine and Tony Zawinul (son of the late Joe Zawinul), who is also co-founder of The Weather Report Legacy Project and the director of This Is This, a new Weather Report documentary that is currently in production. The set captures many of Weather Report’s best-known tunes while they were still being road-tested prior to recording, in a state that Erskine has described as "completely, totally, unapologetically and insanely live" – with highlights from the 28-tracks including ‘Three Views of A Secret’, ‘Birdland’, ‘Fast City’, ‘Night Passage’, ‘Scarlet Women’, ‘Black Market’ and ‘Teen Town’. The performances are some of the most incendiary and ferocious that the band ever produced, with things peaking on a scorching 10-minute version of ‘Badia/Boogie Woogie Waltz’, which, on early listens, is truly astonishing in its intensity. Fans of the band are in for a serious treat, as few will have heard the group ever play like this before, such is the revelatory quality of this magnificent box set.

The recordings have been sourced from never-before-heard (other than by the band) soundboard tapes recorded by Weather Report's longtime mixing engineer Brian Risner, presented as ‘key performances’ of that era rather than one continuous concert recording. The 4CD set also includes extensive notes and song-by-song descriptions of the performances written by Erskine. The set also coincides with the release of the much-anticipated Jaco documentary that has been produced by Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo and directed by documentary filmmaker Paul Marchand, and features extensive archive footage and contributions from the likes of Herbie Hancock, Vinnie White, Joni Mitchell, Sting, Flea and Bobby Colomby among many others in a hugely evocative portrait of the late great bassist. The film will be screened as part of the EFG London Jazz Festival at the Barbican cinema on 16 November and is released on DVD on 27 November. For more info go to jacothefilm.com

– Mike Flynn