Thursday, August 08, 2013

Best Of Jaco

These are my favorite pieces featuring Jaco Pastorius.

Birdland, from the Weather Report Album, Heavy Weather.


Three Views of a Secret, from Jaco's album, Word of Mouth.


Teen Town, from the Weather Report album, Heavy Weather


Scarlet Woman, performed live by Weather Report in 1978 - This recording, to me, features some of his most deadly, other-worldly playing ever.


A Remark You Made, from the Weather Report album, Heavy Weather. Jaco at his most beautiful.



Continuum, from Jaco's first solo album, Jaco Pastorius



Okonkole y Trompa, from Jaco's first album, Jaco Pastorius



Fast City, from Weather Report's album, Night Passage, featuring Jaco playing INSANELY FAST TIME (in his own incredibly skewed way). Charles Mingus died a second time when he heard this shit.



The Juggler, from Weather Report's album, Heavy Weather.



John and Mary, from Jaco's album, Word of Mouth



The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines, from Joni Mitchell's album, Mingus



And finally, Jaco with Michael Colombier. The composition is Deamland.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Working my way thru them. I read the available information on Jaco. I never knew how he died...made me want to punch out my laptop.

Anonymous said...

Scarlett Woman; yes that was desert island disk!

Pastorius said...

I'm so glad you liked Scarlet Woman. That is a very odd piece of music, given that it has no melody or song structure, just a repeated downward-slashing riff that explodes out of nowhere and lapses into a heated and foreboding silence.

Jaco's playing is amazing to me, because it creates that undercurrent of foreboding, incredible tension. He plays alternative melodies, which ordinarily would be used to lessen the tension, yet somehow he just keeps ratcheting it up. I'd call it demonic, but I don't want to give anyone the wrong idea.

Certainly, now that you know how Jaco died, we can guess he did wrestle with demons, and he expressed them well, even beautifully.

I never lose my love for the incredible sensitivity of his playing.

He made an unwieldy instrument, the Electric Bass Guitar, sing with a human passion.