Oh, Jaco Movie!

[JSngry]

Still have, at best, mixed feelings about the guy's ultimate effect, but it should be a good story if properly told. That the guy was a genius is beyond doubt, I'd say.

[mjzee]

Article in WSJ:

http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-electric-bass-wizardry-of-jaco-pastorius-1449006035

[JSngry]

The newly released Weather Report set has made me really reconsider Jaco as a force beyond just electric bass playing. The records really don't tell the whole story, none of them, not even the great Joni Mitchell albums. In real time, it was...messy. His impact was immediate, and, still, imo, often deleterious. But good god, listening to the WR quartet live cuts...that band did not need a percussionist, Jaco was doing all that PLUS holding down the bass end. And when they were a quintet, it really was future now.

Hearing that Jaco was living essentially homeless and endlessly playing basketball in NYC parks was not surprising, nor was the news that he had been murdered by some barbouncer thug. Sad, but not surprising. And I'd heard any number of Word Of Mouth bootlegs through the years that too often left me indifferent with their frenzy. But damn, hearing him playing in his prime with Weather Report at one of their primes, and hearing the focused mad geniuses of Shorter, Zawinul, and Jaco all on the same page and of the same mind...damn. That's dangerous enough company individually, but together? Look out.

[rockefeller center]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKYzva1Ltnw

Edited December 8, 2015 by rockefeller center

[catesta]

I was hoping HBO or somebody was going to pick this up.

[l p]

amazon and cduniverse keep running out of this release, which i guess is a good thing in terms of popularity. the documentary itself is the usual talking heads crap. but there's so much home footage included throughout, that you can turn the sound off and be satisfied with just the visuals. 

the criteria sessions cd was supposedly the best selling record store day item when it was released in april 2014.

[rockefeller center]

The editing is very creative sometimes. One example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRjcCI1bqiE

[l p]

yes, i saw that too. he was actually just listening to jemmott talk, but they took out the sound and made it look like he was contemplating jemmott's 'deep' question. 

the very first scene of the documentary, which is also from the above video, gives the year as '1983 or 1984', when they know full well that it's 1985 (summer). i wrote to  info@stephenkijak.com (the director) about this, and got this reply from kijak's assistant:

>>>Kijak stepped off of JACO over a year and a half ago - Mr Paul
Marchand was responsible for finishing the film so blame him for the fuck up. >>>

 

after a short while i just fast forwarded whenever an interviewee was on screen. peter erskine had some insightful things to say, and bobby thomas was ok too. but having 20 rock people talking in a documentary about a jazz musician is in poor taste. 

 

[rockefeller center]

Yes, plenty of totally obvious fuck ups in there.  I also kind of liked Yianilos' comments about WOM. Hahaha, Ricky Schultz still didn't get over this. 

[rockefeller center]

Was probably too much 'research' to flip the instructional video's case. A wtf moment right at the beginning. 

[l p]

i think they may have purposely changed the year to suit their timeline needs, whatever those may be. it's just common knowledge that the instructional video is from 1985. 

i kept hoping for some footage from 1987...

 

i don't usually look at these, but i kept wondering why my dvd wasn't shipped yet-

blu ray
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: 
#10 in Movies & TV > Blu-ray > Documentary

dvd
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#6 in Movies & TV > DVD > Documentary

 

[rockefeller center]

Still waiting for delivery of those discs, holy cow.

[mr jazz]

bought a nused br copy-looking forward to seeing this.

[JSngry]

Kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Steve Bailey story, never did, doesn't feel right?

[rockefeller center]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Kept waiting for the other shoe to drop with the Steve Bailey story, never did, doesn't feel right?

Because it isn't.

Quote

And later on, when I was at UM, I got to know Jaco very well, and we played together many times. I won’t go into the LONG story, but it involved a jam with Jaco, Teen Town, and my not knowing it, which culminated in Jaco saying to me, “Steve, that’s why I invite you over to play, because it is not like playing in front of a mirror.” Everyone in south Florida played Jaco’s tunes, some even banged out Donna Lee faster than he could, but NO ONE was as musical.

After that compliment from him I kind of went out of my way to NOT sound like him, and never learned Teen Town. Ha-Ha.

http://bassmusicianmagazine.com/2011/08/bass-musician-magazine-featuring-steve-bailey-august-2011-issue/

"Smoke base and jog direct a film"?

Edited December 17, 2015 by rockefeller center
Because