I usually pick up Pat Metheny's albums as soon at they're in the racks, but this time it took the release of Tokyo Day Trip, a sort of prequel to Day Trip which came out a few months back, to tip me into investing. I bought both simultaneously and listened to them in the order in which they were recorded rather than the order in which they were released. The later studio recordings came as a slight anti-climax after the Japanese live set.
The Tokyo disc appears to be the result of a rare example of the jazz lover who likes to own music in physical CD form fighting back against the pressure to buy sonically inferior digital files online.
'Tokyo Day Trip is an EP collection of music that was originally intended as online bonus material to go with the recent release from my trio with Christian McBride and Antonio Sanchez entitled Day Trip,' Metheny says.
'There was such an outpouring of demand from listeners that we decided to compile the recordings all in one place and release them together as a set.'
The term 'EP' - meaning 'Extended Play' and originally denoting four tracks crammed on to a 7-inch single size vinyl disc - doesn't really do this collection justice. It clocks in at around 40 minutes, and although CDs can now accommodate up to about 80 minutes, I've bought discs marketed and priced as albums that are shorter than that. HMV has the 'EP' on sale for HK$69 while the album, which duplicates none of the tracks, is still in the new release rack for HK$99.
However, obviously it would have been better value had the two been made available in a single package in the first place, and it would have been nice had all the additional online tracks been included, as Metheny implies.
As it is you can still only buy the 7:35-minute Whatnot from iTunes, which means in Hong Kong you can't buy it at all.