Ronny's Noomies wrote:
Jean Luc Ponty is a good example. His first few albums were adventurous, extended melodies, complex arrangements, blistering solos,etc. But then he realized the new age crowd likes the lighter stuff. So he ended up with simple heads and lackluster solos, tailored to that audience. He lost his edge, but sold a lot of albums, and his solo work today is still boring compared to those earlier efforts. There are other bands with the same arc: Michael Urbaniak, Passport, Al Dimeola, etc. Dumbing it down for the yupsters was enormously lucrative back then.
Hogwash.
Civilized Evil, Mystical Adventures & Individual Choice are FULL of intricate arrangements.
Also, even during jazz fusion's commercial peak in the '70s, most albums didn't sell shit. The most popular fusion titles barely sold 250,000 copies each in the US, if that...
I look at CE as the transition from fusion to fusion lite. It has a few songs in the old JLP style, but is much simpler than Aurora, imaginary voyage and Enigmatic Ocean. I like a few tunes from A Taste for Passion tho.
I agree that fusion wasn't usually lucrative. That's why some acts turned to New Age, which did pay better, as I recall, in its hay day.