Crack open a can of boat lacquer

[Billster]

And marvel at some Jaco

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JalSofa7KDQ

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQDfMqLlFPU

[d halfnote]

Somebody @ YouTube doesn't want us to see the 2nd clip...

Here's a link to the same clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQDfMqLlFPU

 

 

I've always been torn between marveling at JP's abilities & what, I have to say, seems the overblown reaction to it by many. In some ways it seems similar to the acclaim lavished on Flea.

Both skilled players & dedicated to a certain quality but really so much better than others in their game ?

 

Still, a loss, possibly comparable to the willful drift down of Charlie Parker, though Parker seems to've had no innate mental problems, just a lack of or disinterst in self-control.

 

I find the thread title quite apt.

While some speculate that JP's downfall began when those Zawinal-esque skullcaps & the tons of cocaine that Weather Report drove through bagan squeezing his brain, I think he was genetically doomed to schizophrenia, even before he crashed ever downward into a life ended by being beaten to death by a chump.

 

 

[Billster]

I've always been torn between marveling at JP's abilities & what, I have to say, seems the overblown reaction to it by many.

 

By now, he's been thoroughly digested and recycled by every fretless player on the planet. But what Jaco was doing was pretty much unprecedented, so when that stuff hit you in 1975 it was like

 

 

[d halfnote]

Not to debate the point too much b/c JP did bring something new to the game & was a great player but I think other jazz bassists set the stage for him &, outside that genre, Rick Danko's fretless playing w/The Band has always been sadly unappreciated.

 

I guess I think it's comparable to the massive popularity of figures like Elvis or Beatles, where they're undeniably greatly talented but they're accorded deific status.

[Billster]

Not to debate the point too much b/c JP did bring something new to the game & was a great player but I think other jazz bassists set the stage for him &, outside that genre, Rick Danko's fretless playing w/The Band has always been sadly unappreciated.

 

Another one in that route is Andy Fraser with Free

[d halfnote]

See, I didn't even know about him playing fretless & "All Right Now" is one of my fave rock guitar solos!

[Billster]

Check out "Mr. Big", the song, not the hair metal band

[Caevan O’Shite]

I can enjoy the second vid- "Birdland"- a lot better than I can the first, its meandering free-form noodling just not suiting my musical mood of late.

 

Love the popping, burbling way he plays kinda busy yet "just-right" throughout "Birdland"; and those vocal parts!

 

Dig the picking-hand harmonics that Jaco pops out there early on in "Birdland"! They have an almost keyboard-like quality, in a good way; and I'm psyched to see that he's using his thumb (p) to strike the "nodes" of the harmonics, picking with his index-finger (i), as opposed to the "classical" technique which uses i touching the string to create the harmonic-node, and p and the remaining digits to pluck the strings. For years now, I've been doing it the way Jaco does in this vid but on guitar, and had no idea he had been doing that.