record collection revisited special edition: Return To Forever "The Mothership Returns"

This is a special article on a brand new album.  Return To Forever "The Mothership Returns" has been released, documenting their 2011 tour from a couple of concerts.  It's very sentimental for me in a way.  Sorry to editorialize.  But, if readers go back to the August 2011 section of this blog and look at the article "Returning To Forever" describing my experience with seeing the concert RTF played at the Orpheum Theater and meeting the band in a meet and greet afterward, they'll know why the music of this band is so important to me.

Listening to this album, all those fond memories come flooding back.  The instrumental virtuosity between Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke, Lenny White, Frank Gambale and Jean Luc Ponty was stunning and listening to this record (if anyone had a chance to see RTF on their tour last year), will put a listener right back into the experience of the concert.  ...And, for those who may be listening to the band for the first time, it will illustrate why they are still relevant in the music world today even though they've existed in one form or another since 1973, so, nearly four decades.

The discs were compiled by the band and took their best performances from the tour, putting them together into two CD's and a behind the scenes interview DVD.  Listening to the record at least put me in a time machine all the way back to their concert in Minneapolis on August 24th, 2011.  The set list is pretty much exactly the same as it was at that concert except for the addition of another tune the band played on their European leg and also later in the U.S. tour called "Beyond The Seventh Galaxy".  Words cannot do justice to the music this band plays.  It has to be experienced live or on record and I am not just making that claim for posterity or to brag.  I wouldn't say that for no good reason.

So, not to give anything else away.  But, here's the track listing for "The Mothership Returns" and again, if anybody reading this blog happened to see RTF on their tour, it will be VERY familiar.

Disc 1:

1. Medieval Overture
2. Senor Mouse
3. The Shadow of Lo/Sorceress (the first song was actually misprinted by the record company on it's original release and is supposed to be called The Shadow of Io).
4. Renaissance

Disc 2:

1. After The Cosmic Rain
2. The Romantic Warrior
3. Concierto de Aranjuez/Spain
4. School Days
5. Beyond The Seventh Galaxy