Yeah Roy...mind blowing stuff. There are so many great players out there, and a lot of them are relatively unknown.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
Jaco a genius?
- Thread starter Stumbo
- Start date
Yeah Roy...mind blowing stuff. There are so many great players out there, and a lot of them are relatively unknown.
With all due respect, calling Jaco a genius is without a doubt some of the most pretentious and utterly absurd garbage I've ever heard in my life...
The only aspect where he could be a genius is playing technique and that's about it, and even that is debatable, there's a huge line between being a genius and practicing a lot. There's also a huge line between getting onto a bandwagon and deceiving your own intellect as opposed to actually thinking for yourself.
If you'd want to define geniuses, you need to get some standards. I don't consider Rachmaninoff to be a genius, yet he was thousands of times better than Jaco in every aspect and has created some objectively beautiful and mindblowing pieces of art and actual compositions. Half an hour of flow. Imagine that. Now, you might argue music doesn't really need good composition and flow, and that's fine, but then somebody will argue it doesn't need notes either, which is a pretty adopted idea in the 20th century and onwards. So go for it, if it's your thing I guess.
I think it's a little bit beyond the bass world. He wrote cool songs and did some great arrangements and in general was as much a complete musician as well as a bassist extraordinaire.
I'm not of any opinion as to whether I'd call him a genius. I don't really care, I just dig his music. I can't believe you'd say he didn't bring anything new to music, though. His first album is stone cold killer. Weather Report was never the same after he joined, he brought something completely new to Joni's albums. He was a fantastic composer and arranger in my opinion. As I said, that first album has some first rate playing and composing. Sure, it may not be as intricate as Rachmaninoff or Bach or Mozart, but it was soul/r&b/jazz fusion of FIRST RATE.
I tend to comment on Jaco a bit more aggressively because people idolize him like a God for some reason. Sometimes you need to put some balance, and considering the poll's results, a LOT of balance in this case.
As for digging his music, that's fine. I dig a lot of metal, like Gojira, for example. But in reality, it's cool noises, but rubbish music. For all I know, Jaco could be a genius at 'hitting strings with fingers' but not in the 'music' department which has had way more to it before the blues revolution. Jaco wasn't an artist, he was an entertainer. Obviously a person can be both, though.
soul/r&b/jazz fusion of FIRST RATE falls in any comparison to classical music of THIRD RATE, which is sort of what's one of my points. With the blues revolution music has started seriously degrading. Like it or not, classical music is objectively music of higher quality and you can't really debate it. Even our body handles it better. And I mean actual classical music, not simply 'music from classical period'. There was a lot of junk music written in Mozart's and Rachmaninoff's time too (guess what time it was, durrr).
As for digging his music, that's fine. I dig a lot of metal, like Gojira, for example. But in reality, it's cool noises, but rubbish music. For all I know, Jaco could be a genius at 'hitting strings with fingers' but not in the 'music' department which has had way more to it before the blues revolution. Jaco wasn't an artist, he was an entertainer. Obviously a person can be both, though.
soul/r&b/jazz fusion of FIRST RATE falls in any comparison to classical music of THIRD RATE, which is sort of what's one of my points. With the blues revolution music has started seriously degrading. Like it or not, classical music is objectively music of higher quality and you can't really debate it. Even our body handles it better. And I mean actual classical music, not simply 'music from classical period'. There was a lot of junk music written in Mozart's and Rachmaninoff's time too (guess what time it was, durrr).
That is your opinion and personal preference, nothing more.
Degrading? How, exactly?
"Objectively"?
Not my opinion, but opinion of many. And not my preference, I am not even INTO most of classical music. I am more into metal, in fact, but it is rubbish music. I play it just because it engages some hormones in my body and makes me unhealthy high.
Concerning the music revolution, anyone who doesn't think music has degraded somewhere in between Rachmaminoff's 2nd Concerto and Sex Bomb needs some serious help. There is such a thing as beauty, but there's also such a thing as grotesque. Both can be in form of true art.
Yes, objectively. There have been researches done on this subject, testing the sound alone you'd figure out metal is the worst possible choice for living beings (distorted waveforms are not healthy) and increased transients and groove rhythmic pulse of jazz and genres that come from it hardly helps our bodies work better, where a lot of classical music does. And that's only about sound. If you go deeper into analyzing scales and ideas associated with them that we're wired to recognize (not even TAUGHT), you'd get so far you'd stop playing music and shoot yourself.
I will obviously never win this debate because this is talkbass and there are certain dogmas that have to be reinforced all the time, but it'd be nice if people didn't idolize players just because they played a certain instrument and are popular. He's also popular in a peculiar way, his playing and composition were rather eccentric, so it's a good base to make a cult on, because he wasn't just a really good player who had groove and ability to play fast, he could also play stuff that is abstract and disconnected. Drop your peer pressure and try to think for yourself, sometimes you just have to realize it's possible. I've had people trying to convince me Jaco is the best composer who ever lived, and I've listened to a lot of his composition, whether solo, recorded, live or with WR. Also listened to his playing on piano. If anything, he's a mediocre composer and an extraordinary bass player. Notice how amazing violinists were never considered geniuses just because they were good at playing their instrument, shouldn't be that way with bass players either.
Notice how I don't say anything on people liking Jaco's music, that's fine, I like a lot of crappy music too. I'm just saying he's not as amazing as you try to make him seem. Nor do I bash Jaco as a person either, that poor sod hasn't had much luck in regards to health and psychological stability...
Concerning the music revolution, anyone who doesn't think music has degraded somewhere in between Rachmaminoff's 2nd Concerto and Sex Bomb needs some serious help. There is such a thing as beauty, but there's also such a thing as grotesque. Both can be in form of true art.
Yes, objectively. There have been researches done on this subject, testing the sound alone you'd figure out metal is the worst possible choice for living beings (distorted waveforms are not healthy) and increased transients and groove rhythmic pulse of jazz and genres that come from it hardly helps our bodies work better, where a lot of classical music does. And that's only about sound. If you go deeper into analyzing scales and ideas associated with them that we're wired to recognize (not even TAUGHT), you'd get so far you'd stop playing music and shoot yourself.
I will obviously never win this debate because this is talkbass and there are certain dogmas that have to be reinforced all the time, but it'd be nice if people didn't idolize players just because they played a certain instrument and are popular. He's also popular in a peculiar way, his playing and composition were rather eccentric, so it's a good base to make a cult on, because he wasn't just a really good player who had groove and ability to play fast, he could also play stuff that is abstract and disconnected. Drop your peer pressure and try to think for yourself, sometimes you just have to realize it's possible. I've had people trying to convince me Jaco is the best composer who ever lived, and I've listened to a lot of his composition, whether solo, recorded, live or with WR. Also listened to his playing on piano. If anything, he's a mediocre composer and an extraordinary bass player. Notice how amazing violinists were never considered geniuses just because they were good at playing their instrument, shouldn't be that way with bass players either.
Notice how I don't say anything on people liking Jaco's music, that's fine, I like a lot of crappy music too. I'm just saying he's not as amazing as you try to make him seem. Nor do I bash Jaco as a person either, that poor sod hasn't had much luck in regards to health and psychological stability...
He doesn't really get treated godlike around here, look at almost every Jaco thread, people are throwing rocks at him and they base their judgment on a few a cursory viewings of youtube clips of Jaco after his fall.
"Sex Bomb" by Tom Jones? Ok, that may not be the pinnacle of musical achievement of the western civilization. As for the Rachmaninoff piece, can't say, I've never listened to it. And probably won't, either, I'm just not into classical music, except Erik Satie. I'd rather listen to my favourite fruits of this "blues revolution" you mentioned, such as Muddy Waters's 1950's Chess/Aristocrat singles, Ray Charles stuff from his Atlantic period, Chuck Berry, Ellington, Sam Cooke, Mingus, Aretha, etc. etc. And I do think this stuff is artistically & musically as deep and important as any symphony ever written. Seriously.
EDIT: On topic, it's hard to find something to say about Jaco that hasn't already been said a thousand times, so I won't even try. I really like some of the stuff he did, like his sideman work with Joni Mitchell, the Bright Size Life LP with Metheny and WR's Heavy Weather album is a classic.
Agreed, entirely. The composition may not be as complex, but if you don't feel this music, you're dead.
Nobody has a gripe with you not thinking Jaco is incredible. Jaco is taking a back seat here. The problem is this obscene idea that music can be quantified and placed on a scale of greatness or worthiness, as it seems with you. I'd rather hear one note from Ornette Coleman's horn or Otis Redding's voice than any of the names you listed. And that's not to say I don't dig music from the classical, romantic, baroque etc periods. It just doesn't mean the same thing to me. It doesn't fit in your categorisation.
Not everyone will be moved by this and I kind of agree that music got simplified a lot once Free Jazz and Serialism hit the spot ... music went to very simple chord progression and with rythm guitar the harmony got filled and stopped being intricate and with drum the beat is so in your face it is like a big oversized metronome.
Then marketing put their dirty hand in it and now music is like fast food, you consume it then throw it in the trash can and immediatly search for something else. In some places it helps sell booze, cloths, a feeling of belonging ( rap, metal and country ) or sell all others things and to do that you need to hit the lowest denominator !
Like x1000 , music has sunk so low, none of todays music last past 3 months .i was just listening to Miles Davis today and it stopped me dead in my tracks. I was sorta cleaning and straightening up when a particular song of his came on and I just had to stop and listen, it metaphorically moved me somewhere far away from where I was standing in the kitchen. None of today's bands I hear have made me feel anything like that.
Comparing Jaco Pastorius to Serge Rachmaninoff, or Blues music to that written during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic eras, is ludicrous and hamfisted. These are extravagantly disparate genres of music. There's no winnable one-upmanship in comparing them.
Jaco had both great heights and bitter lows, as did your dear Sergei, who struggled with depression, writer's block and audience indifference, and who underwent therapy accordingly. None of these people are gods. They are, in the best sense, merely men who have the technique and insight to create deeply understood, enduring work.
As a young orchestra player, I had numerous opportunities to perform Rachmaninoff's works. I also heard the Russian Chamber Chorus of NY perform live his stunning 'Liturgy of St. John Chrynsotom' recently. This is a complex, mysterious work, full of dazzling harmonies. However, his First Symphony has flaws the the composer himself admitted, and the performance of which in fact almost derailed his career. I'm also very familiar with Sergei's "Bells" symphony, sections of which are eerily derivative of Stravinsky's "Firebird"- so we see that no one comes to the table without influences.
All Baroque, Classical and Romantic composers built on what came before- so your premise that what Jaco accomplished "was already done long before" can also be said with pinpoint accuracy and example about every composer you worship- and no doubt about your "Gojira" band as well.
There's no need for an axe to grind regarding Jaco and his contribution to the electric bass. Why not accept and enjoy the fact that he was undeniably the first one to take the electric bass (and its role within a jazz ensemble setting) to such technically skillful, sensual and lyrical places? "Donna Lee" soloed on an electric bass, in 3 keys, at a brisk tempo, accompanied only by congas, in a performance that's still being studied and approached by bassists? Yes, Bird wrote the tune. But Jaco was the first to turn it into an electric bass showcase.
If you're privy to some bass player who put all the elements together as Jaco did but who broke that ground previously, someone that the rest of the world isn't familiar with, then please share that game-changing information with us.
and now, it's time to split for tonight's gig.
anyone would be stupid not
to consider him a genius, his knowledge of music is extensive, not just his amazing technique and intonation. it seems the smart ppl that are to smart for their pants get ****ed up, i know a guy with an IQ ( not related to music ) of 155 and he has severe isomnia and always hooked on some type of upper. and it didnt help that jaco was bi-polar,
he is one amazing human being
to consider him a genius, his knowledge of music is extensive, not just his amazing technique and intonation. it seems the smart ppl that are to smart for their pants get ****ed up, i know a guy with an IQ ( not related to music ) of 155 and he has severe isomnia and always hooked on some type of upper. and it didnt help that jaco was bi-polar,
he is one amazing human being
I vote yes. I certainly agree that the term "genius" is overused and often mis-applied to cases in which it is not really appropriate. This is not one of those cases.
I go along with popular vote on this one I would consider him a genius as well. As a musician and composer to be self taught and building these kind of songs when no one else was even creatively close as a bass player in those days and just don't look at his bass parts, break away and listen to other instruments he wrote the music for and know it took some very very talented musicians to perform those pieces. So not only in his bass playing but in his composing I dare add the word genius.
If you love the bass then you have to love Jaco. He alone showed us the way to a new form of playing, a form that actually makes you connect and love the instrument. On that regard alone, Jaco is a genius. There were no Jacos before him but certainly there are myriads of players whose sound, one way or another, were influenced by his art. That is the sign of a genius. Sorry, there aren't any bassists in his class, as flashy and extravagant as some may be.
Well, as far as sound and tone goes, Alphonso Johnson
(bassist before Jaco in Weather Report) used the fretless
while favoring the back pickup type sound BEFORE anyone
ever heard of Jaco. Jaco went on after that to add horn-like
phrasing for bass solos and songs written using only harmonics
and using guitar distortion on bass. But Jaco didn't "create" or
was the first to use that burpy bridge pickup sound.
(bassist before Jaco in Weather Report) used the fretless
while favoring the back pickup type sound BEFORE anyone
ever heard of Jaco. Jaco went on after that to add horn-like
phrasing for bass solos and songs written using only harmonics
and using guitar distortion on bass. But Jaco didn't "create" or
was the first to use that burpy bridge pickup sound.
