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Jaco clip causing some controversy

#401
I have always looked at the bass as a rhythm instrument rather than a lead instrument. Is Jaco extremely talented? Yes, by all means, but his playing has always been much too busy for me. I can't listen to much of it for very long because it becomes grating on my nerves.
 
#402
Out of curiosity, I did a Google search for "Jaco Pastorius" -- 804,000 results
Then, since someone suggested that the average person might be more familiar with Chuck Mangione than with Jaco, I searched for "Chuck Mangione" -- 759,000 results

Doesn't prove anything really, except that, all these years after his death, there's an awful lot of interest in him, even far beyond the bass players community
 
#403
This.

I appreciate his mastery and his influence, he was a mind losing (edited: mind blowing) musician and a true innovator on our instrument. That said, aside from a few recordings (Shadows and Light being one of them) I don't get a lot if emotional pleasure from listening to his work, it is mostly respect and intellectual appreciation.

I saw him with WR in Montreal in the early '80s and his sound was shiny, bright, clear and huge, like no bass I had heard before. None of these clips or albums approach it.
 
#404
"Bass guitar": 5,430,000
"Flugelhorn": 617,000 hits

So Jaco has an Instrumental Impact Factor* of .148, while Chuck Mangione reaches an astonishing 1.23!

Chuck Mangione is almost ten times as influential as Jaco.

*Something I just made up but will somehow still be effective at rankling people
 
#405
One Drop said:
This.

I appreciate his mastery and his influence, he was a mind losing musician and a true innovator on our instrument. That said, aside from a few recordings (Shadows and Light being one of them) I don't get a lot if emotional pleasure from listening to his work, it is mostly respect and intellectual appreciation.

I saw him with WR in Montreal in the early '80s and his sound was shiny, bright, clear and huge, like no bass I had heard before. None of these clips or albums approach it.
Click to expand...

I'm envious. By the time I finally got a chance to see Weather Report, Victor Bailey was in the band. No slouch, but no Jaco.
Band was still great -- always a treat seeing the great Wayne Shorter.
 
#407
Tampabass said:
P.S. I'm seeing some "confirmation bias" in your response, too -- In your conversations with others, Jaco's name almost never comes up, and his name comes up rarely even when you talk with bassist. So then, it must be true that he's not very well known outside a very small group of bass players and '70s fusion fans. ... Not really a good measure, you know?
Click to expand...

Well, then we get into the mechanics of trying to prove a negative (which kind of came up above).

In my case, it's not confirmation bias as such, because every time he does come up, that is evidence against my thesis that he isn't that well known in general, rather than evidence for it which would be confirmation. I'm noticing the contrary evidence and subjectively assessing about how often it occurs.

I mean, if the guy was really such an iconic musician to the general public, it does stand to reason that I would hear of him from time to time in random other situations, as I do many other musicians that I'm not personally into. Even though I play bass myself and know lots of other musicians, and like I said, Les Claypools' name comes up a lot more often.

Maybe I'm imperfectly assessing it or forgetting some of the times he has come up - certainly that's possible, and I don't know what I don't know, so I can't evaluate that. But that would be a different type of logical fallacy.

Either way people just generally tend to think that their experience and perspective is more valid or accurate than others, which on some level makes sense considering this is the only perspective they will ever be able to literally experience themselves.

That's a problem when this extends to making assumptions about what other people's experiences, influences, and cultural context must be as if they had the same background, values, and tastes as yourself.

To give you a broader example, I've been playing bass since '83. I make no attempt whatsoever to "keep up" with bass playing in and of itself. I do not care about what other bass players did hot solos that were written up in magazines for other bass players. I don't think the bass playing I love the most came from that kind of place, either.

I've got probably 7 or 8 thousand jazz records, and if I named for you my favorite musicians, or favorite writers or soloists or whatever, or if you spent as much time as you liked looking over my collection, based on that information alone you would absolutely not be able to tell that I am a bass player (or guitarist as I am as well).

The whole idea that you should identify yourself as a bassist in such a way that it changes your musical tastes and values, and that awareness of and an ongoing comparison to other bass players should affect how you play personally, is absolutely and completely not necessary to playing the bass, or playing the bass well.

Once you leave the bubble of people defining themselves that way you see how limiting and limited that bubble is. You can't see it when you're in it, and if you've never left it, you don't know that it's a box.

For me the goal is to have whatever is played be an un - self conscious essential part of the song. That might mean playing a part with few elements, or it might be a crazy performance, I don't really care so long as it is stylistically aware and appropriate and present, and not some self absorbed ego fest from a guy with some personal insecurity that wants to prove he can play but never seems to make the point to his satisfaction so that he can let it go.

I am absolutely comfortable with playing a simple part of no particular interest to bass players as such, or even using a flawed performance on a recording, if the overall music is good.

I even kind of enjoy the feeling of letting go of caring about my own part as if it was it's own thing in isolation- because it's not. There's only the music as a whole, and when you listen to the music as a whole and the bass player is drawing your attention away from the soling saxophonist who is perfectly competent and patiently waited until the right moment for his expression, it's not good. Anybody who isn't distracted or operating under pre conceived notions can easily see that. Sometimes a lot of stuff at once is cool but we all know when people are talking over each other instead of listening.

Just like I've told many intermediate/"good" drummers: the minute you stop trying to prove you can play is the minute you actually do start playing really well.
 
#408
The Kazoo gets 5,410,000 google hits. Tiny Tim gets 2,270,000 google hits but despite his heart-wrenching rendition of 'Tip-Toe Through the Tulips' he admitted to Johnny Carson (5,260,000 google hits) on The Tonight Show that he had never played it on a kazoo - just the usual ukulele and voice. So this has absolutely nothing to do with Jaco although I dare say kazoo could never do justice to Three Views of a Secret which BTW gets 484,000 google hits - not bad compared to Bob Marley's huge, long-lasting hit Three Little Birds (2,720,000 hits).

Dang, I could have just learned School Days from start to finish... :|
 
#409
teleharmonium said:
I've got probably 7 or 8 thousand jazz records, and if I named for you my favorite musicians, or favorite writers or soloists or whatever, or if you spent as much time as you liked looking over my collection, based on that information alone you would absolutely not be able to tell that I am a bass player (or guitarist as I am as well).
Click to expand...

We have that in common ;)
P.S. my favorite musician in Weather Report was ... Wayne Shorter.
 
#410
slombovia said:
The Kazoo gets 5,410,000 google hits. Tiny Tim gets 2,270,000 google hits but despite his heart-wrenching rendition of 'Tip-Toe Through the Tulips' he admitted to Johnny Carson (5,260,000 google hits) on The Tonight Show that he had never played it on a kazoo - just the usual ukulele and voice. So this has absolutely nothing to do with Jaco although I dare say kazoo could never do justice to Three Views of a Secret which BTW gets 484,000 google hits - not bad compared to Bob Marley's huge, long-lasting hit Three Little Birds (2,720,000 hits).

Dang, I could have just learned School Days from start to finish... :|
Click to expand...

It makes you wonder how many hits "cat playing piano" got. :D
 
#412
In all seriousness, please pardon me.

It does not matter what Jaco did not do. It does not matter whom he did not touch nor what he didn't do for music.

What he DID do for music and whom he TOUCHED is what matters. That means me and maybe not you. I hope somebody inspires all of us to make great music. Jaco is not the only one who has inspired me of course.
 
#419
teleharmonium said:
Think about how many people you know who don't play bass and know of Jaco.

Then think about everyone you know. That's likely in the ballpark of 600 people, but obviously it varies.
Click to expand...
That was actually a good post, though there's one aspect of your analysis I want to contest:

Almost nobody knows who Jack Kilby and Robert Noyce were. I am one of them. I had to go out and find their names just now as the answer to the question "who invented the integrated circuit?"

Now, here we clearly see that influence doesn't rely on casual familiarity. It's an extreme example, of course - though I think that the fact that Jaco is only generally known to musicians should not on its face prove that he isn't influential. Virtually every modern famous bass player has been influenced by Jaco to some degree, except for the very young, in which case their influences held Jaco as an influence.
 

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