YMMV / Pat Metheny

• Archive Panic: Metheny's works listed on the main page roughly cover half of his output over four decades.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
  • The title track of Offramp. Six minutes of free jazz sandwiched in between "Eighteen" and "James", two songs of Metheny's signature "Heartland jazz" with melodies strong enough to convert new fans.
  • "Forward March" off of First Circle, which was the Group's tribute to their teen years playing in high school marching bands. They all trade instruments for the piece and it's deliberately kind of awful. It's the first thing one hears when listening to that album, and the LP won a Grammy.
  • All of zero tolerance for silence, despite Metheny releasing a few free jazz songs earlier in his career. The sticker on the cover featured endorsement from Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, if that helps gauge where this album goes.
  • We Live Here is basically Pat Metheny Group trying a serious hand at making corporate-approved smooth jazz. Less of a BLAM once the shock value wears off, though closing song "Stranger in Town" features usually subdued bass player Steve Rodby playing a ferocious slap bass line throughout.
  • "The Roots of Coincidence" from Imaginary Day. While the full album stands out already for being progressive and epic in scope and for folding in strains of Iranian and Indonesian music, "Coincidence" drops everything to thrash out drum and bass percussion under distorted rock guitars, rounded out with jump cuts and a symphonic outro. The song's chorus required legendary pianist Lyle Mays to pick up a guitar and play power chords when it was performed in concert. The song also won a Grammy, this time for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, which is itself its own BLAM as Metheny usually wins under several Jazz and even New Age categories.
• Broken Base: zero tolerance for silence, an album of ferocious solo noise guitar, is the one Metheny album that most of his fans can't stand. He absolutely stands by it.
  • In 1997 he made The Sign of 4 with avant-garde guitarist Derek Bailey, drummer Gregg Bendian and then-drummer for the Pat Metheny Group Paul Wertico—a triple album of intense and sometimes incredibly noisy and abrasive guitar and drums music, two discs of which were recorded live at the Knitting Factory, the other in the studio. This has the distinction of being the album that managed to break two fanbases: lots of Metheny fans felt like it was zero tolerance for silence but worse because of this Bailey guy, while lots of Bailey fans were contemptuous of (as they saw it) a lightweight mainstream jazz guy like Metheny presuming to play with someone with the rugged integrity, etc. of Derek Bailey. For anyone who appreciates both Metheny and Bailey, it's a great album, but...
• Fan Nickname: "Last Train Home" was used in a very successful Christmas commercial for American grocery store chain Publix. As a result, even Metheny has jokingly called it "The Publix Song" when he's performing in Florida.
• Growing the Beard: Arguably, the one-two punch of As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls and Offramp is the moment where Metheny really came into his own as a composer.
  • For older jazz fans who were only aware of his work with the Pat Metheny Group (and hadn't listened to 80/81), Song X was for years the album that cemented Metheny's willingness to be adventurous and venture outside the Group's sound. It didn't hurt that it was a collaboration with Free Jazz pioneer Ornette Coleman.
• One-Scene Wonder: Percussionist Naná Vasconcelos' appearances on As Falls Wichita... and Offramp, and to a lesser extent on the accompanying live album Travels.
• Signature Song: "Bright Size Life", "Are You Going with Me?", "Song for Bilbao", "The First Circle", "Last Train Home", "Have You Heard" and "Into the Dream".
• Vindicated by History: Outside of jazz circles, Metheny's genre-defining 1980s jazz fusion work tended to get lumped in with lesser smooth jazz and contemporary jazz artists. In the 2010s, his works have gotten regular praise from a variety of guitarists and electronic music producers in a number of different genres. Song X in particular is widely hailed as one of the great jazz albums of the 80s.