Category Archives: Jaco Pastorius

Jaco Pastorius and Record Store Day

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Jaco Pastorius Record Store Day Poster

Tomorrow, April 19, is Record Store Day, and Jaco Pastorius figures prominently.

First up, we have a new Jaco Pastorius album release, available tomorrow only at participating independent record stores. I have no idea if the stores where I live will participate, but I’ll be checking it out.

The new release is Modern American Music… Period; The Criteria Sessions. The album contains the demo tracks that Jaco made in 1974 at the age of 22, which have either never been officially released, or previously released only in edited form. These tracks — with drummer Bob Economou, pianist Alex Darqui, steel drums players Othello Molineaux and Sir Cederik Lucious and percussionist Don Alias — led to Jaco’s first album, and you hear the early “demo” versions of many of the songs that Jaco later recorded. John Kelman of All About Jazz has a lengthy review.

In addition, Metallica bass player Robert Trujillo’s long awaited documentary about Jaco is the official film of Record Store Day, although it isn’t expected to be completed until late this year. You can hear Trujillo talk about Jaco and the documentary in an NPR interview that was published today. You can also follow the progress on the film at their Facebook page.

And finally, Jaco is the subject of the official Record Store Day poster (pictured above), which will be given away at select stores while supplies last. For more information, see the Record Store Day news release about Jaco.

Update: My local record stores did participate, and I saw both the CD and vinyl album at the stores. Didn’t see any posters, although by the time I made the rounds they may have already been taken.

Anil Prasad’s Zawinul Interview

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Anil Prasad, the journalist behind the superb Innerviews website, has brought back his 1997 Zawinul interview after being absent from the site for a few years. It’s one of the best Zawinul interviews you’ll find anywhere. A wide-ranging conversation, it touches on Joe’s relationship with Jaco and Cannonball, among other things. You can read it here.

Anil also provides a bit of behind-the-scenes story about the interview:

A true touchstone of my music journalism career is back on the Web in an extended “director’s cut” edition: My extensive Joe Zawinul interview. It’s from 1997 and is one of the most extensive interviews Joe ever gave. It’s the first interview in which I felt I was able to truly hold my own against an incredibly powerful personality. I asked some tough questions and didn’t waver, as you’ll see. Joe is my favorite musician of all time, so this was quite an occasion. Funny story: Joe and I did a number of interviews which were compiled into this piece. During one of them, he said some of the most outrageous stuff imaginable, cutting down musicians and music industry people in the most incredibly brutal way. It was amazing stuff. I noticed while he was going off, that he was looking at the recorder. He actually picked it up, looked at it, and smirked at me several times as he was engaged in this verbal assault. I left going “Oh my God, I got Joe Zawinul on tape saying all this incredibly controversial stuff!” I went home. The tape recorder wasn’t running. The tape was blank. Joe knew it all along and said all this stuff he knew I would have no record of. For the record, ever since this event, I run two recorders for every interview I do. 🙂 Miss you Joe….

Peter Erskine’s New Book, No Beethoven

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no-beethoven

Peter Erskine has written a gem of a new book. No Beethoven is his autobiography and “chronicle of Weather Report,” which he has published as an ebook, available from iTunes for the iPad. It’s a must-read for Weather Report and Zawinul fans, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the existing biographies of Wayne, Joe and Jaco. The book is packed with Peter’s stories and behind-the-scene anecdotes about the band, Joe, Wayne and Jaco — not to mention tons of photos.

Those stories are artfully interspersed with Peter’s narrative of his own life. As he recounts in the early chapters, he took to drumming at an early age and was something of a child prodigy, gaining admission to the Stan Kenton summer jazz camp at the age of seven despite the 14-year minimum age requirement. By the time he was 18, he was on the road with the Kenton Orchestra. Three years later, he quit to go back to school, but that was short-lived as a summer tour with Maynard Ferguson wound up turning into two years. It was with Maynard that Jaco first heard Peter, and that encounter ultimately lead to Erskine joining Weather Report in the summer of 1978.

At the time, they were finishing up the recording of Mr. Gone and getting ready for a tour of Japan. Erskine recounts in detail his first rehearsal with the band, Joe’s band rules (which really only consisted of one rule); his participation on Mr. Gone; and his “homework,” which consisted of book reading.

Peter’s relationship with Joe is a central theme throughout No Beethoven, and his insights into Zawinul’s personality are priceless. There are other books about Joe — Brian Glasser’s In A Silent Way being the obvious one — but No Beethoven offers a more personal take, one that gives us a more human portrayal of Joe than we’ve seen elsewhere. As Peter says in the book, “[Joe] was gruff and he could be rough as well as scatological and hyperbolic in the extreme. He was also a sweet and very funny man. Easily the most intense musician I’ve ever know.” All of that comes through in Erskine’s telling.

Having said all that, this is much more than a book about Weather Report. I must admit that when I first got it, I scanned through the pages looking for the Weather Report stuff. But I wound up going back and reading it from start to finish and thoroughly enjoyed it. Peter’s writing style is engaging and along the way he imparts pearls of wisdom about being a musician and about life. There’s plenty of material about Stan Kenton, Maynard Ferguson, Steps Ahead, and the many great musicians Peter has worked with over the years.

No Beethoven will eventually be available for the Kindle, Nook and Sony e-readers. German and Japanese translations are also in the works, as well as a CD-ROM version of the book to be released in Japan later this year. But for now, owners of iPads have a treat in store for them.