The Final Fall of Wichita

The lack of appreciation for Pat Metheny and his close collaborator Lyle Mays outside the jazz community baffles me.  Much of their work is as groundbreaking as the output of widely revered artists like Brian Eno.  A listening session inspired by the death of Mays heightened my appreciation of their legacies.  Revisiting Metheny and Mays’ 1981 release As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls today, I was struck by how the 20-minute title track is echoed by my current obsession.  Beatrice Dillon explores the same sort of electro/acoustic and android/human divergences on her astounding debut album Workaround.  If I were a talented DJ, I might attempt to create a mix of As Falls Wichita... with drops of Dillon’s congruent tracks “Three,” “Pause” and “Ten.”  Dillon and her peers in the cutting edge of electronic music may not know it, but Metheny and Mays got there first.


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I contribute concert previews to The Kansas City Star.

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I reviewed a performance by Matt Villinger, Peter Schlamb and Zach Morrow at Plastic Sax.

(Original image by There Stands the Glass.)