Black Market is one of Weather Report's stronger efforts; "Gibraltar," "Barbary Coast," and the title track are my favorites from the album, which found the band continuing to sound slicker and more polished in a definitely groove-oriented manner. Heavy Weather built on Black Market's formula, which moved the band away from its earlier, leaner jazz attack and toward the electric-fusion style introduced with Sweetnighter (which still has one of my favorite WR tracks, "125th Street Congress").

I Sing the Body Electric, Mysterious Traveller, and Heavy Weather are the key WR albums, but I don't think the band ever cut a bad album--some formulaic ones, perhaps (Night Passage, the 1982 Weather Report set, its second eponymous album--not a good sign creatively), but every release had its highlights.

A Hall of Fame act? Perhaps, although the band is caught in the middle: Of all the fusion groups, it remained closest to jazz--it never employed a full-time electric guitarist, for instance, although Jaco Pastorius's funk-rock bass could be a substitute--whi ch makes it harder to justify the "rock" element even though it was the most durable and creative of the lot. However, I suspect the Mahavishnu Orchestra or Return to Forever would be more attractive to rock voters because of their guitar-dominant approach.