Wednesday, February 01, 2017

Jaco

Like most kids from my generation, we learned the recorder from school music classes. I also took Chinese music lessons after school learning dizi and erhu, on which I could barely play a few tunes. And my mom bought me a harmonica which I enjoy its sound a lot. However, bass guitar is the first instrument that opened the door for me to play some "serious stuff", especially with other friends, and in a rock band setting. Compared to other years in high school, the last year was a relaxing one and I got to spend quite some time to have fun outside of studying. And nothing was cooler than starting a band with my buddies. I started out as a drummer which was a struggle for me. And our bassist bailed on us a lot so I was encouraged to sub for him: "it's so easy to pickup" (which was partially true as I got by with always playing the root of each chord as 8th notes for all songs!) I was already a metal head at that point and had quite a few favorite bands and their guitarists as my heroes. After starting to play bass, I felt that I have joined an even more exclusive "club", bass hero worshipers! The most heralded bass players at that time included Steve Harris from Iron Maiden. However, I got curious about the two guys who won all those magazine polls as best bass players: Billy Sheehan and Stu Hamm. Sheehan's live recording with his old band, Talas Years, was so hard to buy but I eventually get to listen to his highly regarded bass solo masterpiece: NV4 3345. And Stu Hamm's "King of Sleep" was one of the first cassettes I bought after I entered college. I dug his jazz fusion style very much. And surprisingly, at this point I still hadn't listen to any music of Jaco Pastorius, who had of course influenced most bass players after him, including Sheehan and Hamm (he mentioned how impressed he was after seeing Jaco's performance) As I became of jazz fan, it become inevitable for me to hear some cover version of Jaco's tunes, e.g. Portrait of Tracy, and then a whole tribute album. Still, to be honest, I never really tried listening to his albums, like his ground-breaking self-titled album from 1976 or "Word of Mouth" from 1981. I guess my taste is too conservative for his music. I am most familiar with his playing on Pat Metheny's debut album "Bright Size Life". And I did enjoy the playing of his son, Felix, on his lone recording with the jazz fusion group Yellowjackets. These days I am going through Jaco's live recordings with the Weather Report.

To appreciate his genius, I strongly recommend watching his biopic "Jaco" (produced by a huge fan of Jaco and former Metallica bassist Robert Trujillo) It went through his years as a talented kid to joining famed fusion group "Weather Report" to becoming one of the most highly regarded musicians  in the jazz/rock/fusion circle to his demise. Now I understood why he was considered to be the bass equivalent of Jimi Hendrix: he completely reinvented how music could be played on this instrument.

The outro of the movie included his tune "Continuum" covered by another favorite group of mine: Rodrigo Y Gabriela. I was so inspired that I had the urge to play some music (for some reason I picked up my soprano sax first probably influenced by the footages of him and his Weather Report bandmate Wayne Shorter) I found a good tab on "Continuum" here.