Since leaving Weather Report, Jaco Pastorius has been moving in the direction of big band music and the results are exhilarating, but not entirely successful.
It is the solo contributions that impress, not the ensemble work. Pastorius’ supple, resonant bass rumbles along, anchoring every track and interrupting the even flow of the brass-led ensemble with a few well-chosen statements. His solos on the largely unaccompanied Amerika and Continuum are models of how to provide intelligence without cliché.
Trumpeters Brecker and Faddis provide a fiery solo apiece, and Molineaux hijacks Coltrane’s Giant Steps by taking the theme at speed on steel drums, which is not nearly as ghastly as one might fear.
And yet – this is a Pastorius-led band and despite the variety of the tracks, taking in funk and soul, R’n’B, and straight mainstream jazz, I for one expected something more adventurous. The band is stuffed with talent, yet its ensemble arrangements are for the most part pedestrian in their traditionality, playing uptempo, upfront lines just like every other band. There is little unusual or original use of instrumentation, and little use made of the rhythmic and harmonic possibilities a 21-piece band affords. Only on the all-too brief Evans/Davis composition Eleven does the arrangement do justice to the band.
Discography
Invitation; Amerika; Soul Intro/The Chicken; Continuum (18.39) – Liberty City; Sophisticated Lady; Reza/Giant Steps/Reza; Fannie May; Eleven (22.07)
Jaco Pastorius (elb); Don Alias (pc); Peter Erskine (d/tim/gong); Othello Molineaux (steel drum); Jean Toots’ Thielemans (h); Randy Brecker, Elmer Brown, Forrest Buchtel, Jon Faddis, Ron Tooley (t); Bobby Mintzer (ts/as); Mario Cruz (ts/sps/cl/af); Randy Emerick (bs/cl/af); Alex Foster (ts/as/sps/cl/ pic); Paul McCandless (ts/o/ce); Peter Gordon, Brad Warnaar (frh); Wayne Andre (tb); David Bargeron (tb/tba); Peter Graves, Bill Reichenbach (btb). Arrangements by Jaco Pastorius except Invitation by Bobby Mintzer. Recorded live in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, 1983(7).
(Warner Brothers Records, 92-3876-1)
