About
Greetings. I am a photographer, writer, and retired software developer living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I am the author of Elegant People: A History of the Band Weather Report. I also occasionally write magazine articles, but not so much lately.
I am mostly self-taught as a photographer. Many of my images are taken with and manipulated on an iPhone. Others are taken with Nikon DSLRs. I am attracted to things that show the patina of age.
My work has appeared in publications including Smithsonian, Sunset, Wax Poetics, Trains, and Locomotive & Railway Preservation.
If you are interested in purchasing prints, licensing images, or wish to inquire about my services, please use the Contact page.
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Dear Curt,
Dropping a note of thanks and appreciation for your Zawinul web site. Was googling around wondering what Gary Paulson had done after his stint in the syndicate, after I had stumbled across a recent YouTube posting of a syndicate concert from Germany with him on guitar. The googling led me to your article where you quote Zawinul saying he had dropped out of performing, It made me wonder where all those musicians are today. Victor Bailey of course sadly passed away far too young. RIchard Boma went on to be a star and I see he is doing concerts in Europe.
Then I read the rest of the article and then I came across your piece about how you first met Zawinul, and I learned that you have recently put a book out on Weather Report which I am ordering.
I am 63 from UK and first came across Weather Report as a 16 year old when me and some mates were contracted by one of our parents (Peggy Seeger and Ewan Macoll – Peggy half sister of Pete) to strip the wallpaper and paint off a cottage in Lockerbie one Easter school break. We were supervised by the much older brother of one of us who brought a couple of cassette tapes one of which was Tale Spinning – we were there for two weeks and had two cassette tapes and we played it over and over – half of us had a teenage jam band going and this stuff just blew us away as being totally different. Hooked ever since.
I have a little Joe encounter story. Fast forward to around 97 or so in Manhattan, I was working for UNICEF at their HQ and would go to a gym on 13th street between 5th and 6th. I’m sweating away and look up to be amazed that Zawinul is a cross from me with a couple of minders using the machines. He was grumbling about his unfit he was and how it’s going to take a while to get back in shape. I did what was the usual for taciturn Brits – pretended not to recognize him but o played through in my mind an alternative where I’d gone up to him and blabbed out profuse thanks for his music. Around that time give or take a couple of years he popped up as a guest at. Salif Keita concert and later I saw the syndicate at the Blue Note.
Now I have rambled on too long – wil not spare you the story about how I bumped into Jaco Pastorius in a Chinese music shop the day after a Weather Report concert in ‘76 in London.
With great appreciation,
Roger Pearson