Pat Metheny Fans, Great Suggestions Please ??

Metheny has covered a lot of ground and a lot of styles, as you would expect from someone with such a long history and a well respected talent. I'll try to sum up the styles and best-of's within each period:

Primarily acoustic & "mood" jazz
- One Quiet Night
- Watercolors
- New Chautauqua
- Bright Size Life

Metheny Group (early &/or more acoustic)
- Pat Metheny Group
- Quartet

Metheny Group (more electric)
- The Way Up
- Offramp
- American Garage
- Imaginary Day
- We Live Here
- Letter From Home
- Speaking of Now
- Still Lift (Talking)

Metheny Solo & softer pairings
- Secret Story
- Reunion
- Beyond the Missouri Sky
- As Falls Whichita
- Jim Hall & ...

Metheny solo & more frenetic pairings
- I Can See Your House From Here
- 80/81
- Zero Tolerance for Silence

Enjoy,
Bob

Thankyou all, lots of Metheny fans !!

I noticed *Import Gold CDs* on Amazon.com for about $20-$25, anyone have these ?

Check out "Images of Metheny" by Jason Vieux. Not by the man himself, but a phenomenal guitarist playing 13 of Metheny's top compositions. Good listening, Dave

Two more comments, off the beaten path a bit; There's a cool album where he (and Jaco Pastorious, Peter Erskine, Michael Brecker) was a sideman: Shadows & Fog.

Also, you'll notice nobody mentioned his soundtrack: The Falcon and the Snowman. That's because it sucks.

If there's one thing I wish we'd have is, some really good recordings of his. Especially the early stuff. It really sounds bad (compressed, no details, etc.) Only "One Quiet Night" and "Beyond the Missouri Sky" sound exceptional.

Also, nobody has mentioned "Song X" with Ornette Coleman.

I think is Geffen period sound like "Weather Channel" music.

Another off-the-beaten-path soundtrack he did was for an Italian film called Passaggio per il Paradiso. It is actually really wonderful. He's not gonna fool anyone into believing he's a world class drummer or synth player but some of those melodies are just beautiful. He also played in Joni Mitchell's touring band in 1979-80 time frame and is featured quite prominently on her excellent live album "Shadows and Light" along with the afoementioned Jaco Pastorius.