In my development as a fervent music geek and ardent appreciator of the tactile manifestation of it, there were two big shipments of records that arrived into my life that made huge, respective impacts. I wouldn’t be half the insufferable knowitall I am today without either of them.
I’ve spoken about both of them here before. One arrived, in the summer of 1986, courtesy of an otherwise largely ill-considered suitor of my mother’s named Arthur (although I believe I referred to him as Angus on this post), filled with a dizzying selection of rare, esoteric and seminal LPs by bands like the Fall, New Order, Public Image Ltd., Rip Rig & Panic, SWANS and several others. While I’d originally written-off the bestower (read this post, again, if you care) as a clueless opportunist trying to win points with me so he could date my mom, this was a gift far beyond anything I’d done to deserve, and it literally opened up whole new worlds for me.
The other box came several years earlier, circa the summer of 1977, also from a largely ill-considered suitor of mother’s — this one being my actual father. A decade after divorcing my mom (and my birth), he was living in London as a correspondent for Forbes Magazine. While there, he’d evidently befriended someone from Epic/CBS/Columbia Records, and that friend passed onto him a big box of promo LPs to send back home to my sister and I. Now, I don’t routinely give my father — who passed away in 2011 — a great deal of credit, given that he made a long series of dubious choices throughout his life, many of which at the expense of his loved ones. That all said, this was — to my mind — inarguably the greatest gift he ever gave to me, as it inadvertently served as the gateway to virtually everything I now hold dear.
Okay, that’s enough weepy preamble…
In that box from 1977, as I’ve mentioned before, came a slew of forgettable albums by ridicule-worthy names like REO Speedwagon, Heart, Ted Nugent and Joan Baez. There were also LPs by a lot of soul, disco and funk artists that my sister grabbed. For me, I immediately snatched the first Boston record (which rocks, by the way, and if you think differently, you’re just an idiot), a copy of Pure Mania by the Vibrators and a curious little artifact by a band I’d never heard of that ended up being the seminal debut (British edition, no less) of the motherfucking Clash.
With the covetable stuff officially divvied up, however, there were still several LPs that neither my sister nor I — nor my mother or step-father, for that matter — recognized. As a result, we spent much of the rest of the summer experimenting with the mystery LPs and discovering new music. One of those records was Heavy Weather by a band called Weather Report.
There were already several jazz LP’s in the house, thanks to my mother and my step-father, but those all seemed to be made by clean-cut, short-haried white dudes wearing ties. Weather Report, at first glance, looked more like a bunch of hirsute rock n’ rollers (actually, I more recently think lead Weather Reporter, Joe Zawnul, kinda looks like Holger Czukay from those crazy Krautrockers in Can). Dropping the needle on side one of Heavy Weather, the entire family warmed to the opening track, that being “Birdland.” In no time at all, it became one of those rare bits of music that everyone in the house enjoyed. We would play it and then, yea verily, play it again.
This was, of course, technically fusion jazz, a descriptor that seems to have since gone the way the wooly mammoth. Regardless, it retained enough melodic mellifluousness to appease my mom and my sister, but also it also kinda rocked, largely thanks to the contributions of their curious cat of a bass player, that being one Jaco Pastorius.
His was a sound you instantly recognize. Playing a fluidly resonant, fretless bass, Jaco’s playing — even to my nascent, untrained, KISS-loving ears — was something special, something distinctive. Hyperbole aside, like Hendrix before him (albeit on a instrument with a different number of strings), Jaco Pastorius did things with that bass that no one else thought possible.
I didn’t really know that latter part at the time. I only knew he played like a madman, and that it sounded amazing. That said, as I was nurturing my love for all things Punk and Heavy Metal, the notion of voluntarily listening to something that involved wind instruments seemed like a big ol’ waste of my time (I was young and stupid), so while I enjoyed Heavy Weather with the rest of my family, I never really gave it much more thought.
In later years, I befriended a guy named Brent Butterworth during my star-crossed tenure as a intern at SPIN Magazine. Brent, a copy-editor at the time, was a sharp, big-hearted Texan with an infectious laugh, a similar sense of humor and an encyclopedic knowledge of all things audio. Musically, he was an avowed fan of extreme metal like Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, as well as — to my ears — crazy jazz shit like James “Blood” Ulmer, Ronald Shannon Jackson and this almost metallic combo called Last Exit. As such, we checked out lots of live music, and my horizons were duly broadened.
At one point, we got on the subject of Jaco Pastorius, and Brent started regaling me with tales of his tragic story (I not knowing anything more than his participation on Heavy Weather by Weather Report). I’d no idea he’d pursued such a tragic road. I seem to remember some strange anecdote Brent passed on — allegedly from one Jaco bio or another — about the celebrated bass wizard driving a motorcycle into a hotel lobby, wherein he promptly struck a column, fell over and passed out. People rushed over to the unconscious Jaco to see if he was alright and ripped open his leather jacket to discover a live octopus hidden beneath. I don’t know if that’s true, but it’s quite a story.
Just recently, I’ve started watching the Jaco Pastorius documentary on Netflix, although I’ve yet to finish it. Finishing movies that not everyone in my apartment is enthused about is a difficult task, sometimes. In any event, the film is both wildly illuminating and heartbreaking so far. I already know how it ends, unfortunately.
Jaco Pastorius left us in 1987. Sadly, a year before his death, he was homeless on the streets of New York City. I was shocked to find these two photos on the `net from that period — shot right here in the Village (on 6th Avenue, across from Cornelia Street, just up the road from what is now the IFC theatre), allegedly by Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Here's one of the greatest bass players the world has ever known busking on the streets of New York City.
Seek out the Jaco documentary, as his is a story worth knowing and a music worth hearing. Here’s the track that still does it for me. Pour one out for Jaco.
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