If there is a transcendent musical figure in my life, it is Pat Metheny. Unlike any other artist in any other genre, I have listened to him consistently over nearly 20 years, without ever getting tired of hearing what different turns he makes. He is capable of the most serene moments - One Quiet Night and Beyond the Missouri Skies being the best known - pretty traditional electric jazz on his many recordings with Lyle Mays spanning four decades, and the occasional break in to just plain noise. In the mid-1990's he released an album similar in many ways to Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. Zero Tolerance for Silence is, for the most part I think, misunderstood. It is a CD with track numbers only for the sake of convenience; in fact, it is roughly an hour of highly amplified guitar noise for its own sake. I will not go as far as Lester Bangs did in his effusive praise of Reed's contractual obligation album back in the 1970's - this isn't classical music, nor is it high art - but it has as much musical merit as anything else Metheny has done.
If you have never sat and listened, I mean really listened to any of his work, I promise this is a treat.
First, "Have You Heard":
"Phase Dance":
"September Fifteenth":
