Jaco

This movie is brilliant. First of all, Pastorius lived one of the most fascinating lives of any artist in recent history, and that's a prerequisite for making a movie of this caliber. But then you have to execute, to produce a work that is worthy of the subject matter. And they pulled it off. And that took a lot of talent.

About the odyssey of a genius, a genius of the bass guitar, a genius who, like Mozart and many others before him, ended sad, in misery. After celebrating the peak of glory with another great genius, Joe Zawinul, in the legendary band of jazz fusion Weather Report, Jaco Pastorius followed a downward road, slept through parks, arrived at one moment in a madhouse, and died young, in a stupid way. But, better watch the movie, it's full of people who have met and admired him, famous musicians...

The movie tells the story of one of the biggest bassists that ever lived, who was at the top during the 70's when Jazz and Rock had a brief romance that blended the two together before music became a very segmented compartmentalized business.

I'll assume anyone considering the movie will already know the basic story of Jaco's rise and fall. If not, then I would certainly not recommend this documentary. Some documentaries work well for people that aren't even familiar with the central subject, and example would be Senna, or Finding Sugarman... Both of those two told a story that drew you in so that you felt a connection to the character even if you weren't familiar with him before. Jaco does none of that it pretty much just retread the information you probably already were aware of and throws in some old photos and film clips that you might not have already found surfing on Youtube when looking up Jaco.

The production values are generally good, the real down fall is that too much time is spent running old grainy footage from the past that doesn't really help the story as much as it simply serves as a media to throw out footage someone found in a basement somewhere.

What will probably upset more people even more is that the documentary was marketed on the internet using clips of artists such as Flea talking about Jaco, so that you expected to see more of that type of thing in the documentary... sadly it is missing. The majority of the interviews are with a few select people that worked or knew him personally but they don't give a lot of insight into him. You also are missing any discussion of what Jaco did or how he was doing it... I would have much preferred to have the film spend a few minutes going over the harmonics he was getting out of the bass and how it was achieved instead of hearing about how he used to crash at so and so's house and just hang for a days...

Sorry but I am a fan of his and was expecting more... this didn't deliver. Even a hard core fan will be hard pressed not to hit the fast forward button to zip through some of it... The up side is I think the only way you can see this is to buy the Blu-ray or DVD of it... I would recommend the DVD over the blu-ray because there is so much old grainy footage that you don't really need the clarity of blu-ray to view SD video... Don't expect to watch the whole thing in one sitting it too me two days because I got bored the first night and finished the second.

That's really all that needs to be said and you really should watch this to understand why that is not just hyperbole.

This is a documentary telling the story of Jaco Pastorius' life; like an epic movie story, you know that there will be no happy ending to this.

Jaco not only single-handedly reshaped the jazz genre, he opened up a realm of bass playing that was previously unheard of and reinvented the expectations of what an electric bass is able to do. He was the Jimi Hendrix of bass.

What I found really interesting is to see how bass players across the entire music spectrum pays tribute to Jaco. And as we've seen happening with so many musicians, there is a tragic ending to his story although his legacy will live on forever.

If you have a passion for music you should watch this, even if Jazz isn't your thing; this is the story not just of a musician, it's the story of how music evolves.

Jaco is a brilliant watch - anyone with a passing interest in music or artistic talent is always looking for clues to that elusive question What makes musical genius. Here, there are plenty of clues.

Jaco Pastorius single-handedly changed the bass as an instrument - his decision to remove the frets of his electric bass because of the Florida humidity, not only changed the sound, but also the timbre of the instrument - and this documentary uses previously unseen footage to document that change - and the man behind it.

Jaco has a great balance between interviews, footage, facts, and music - and for anyone who wonders where jazz went after Kind of Blue, without having to go through learning about Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman or Pharaoh Saunders, this kind of answers that question - it looks at fusion, and asks how rock and jazz came to live side by side.

More than that it focuses on the man - this slender reed that was a ball of energy heading to self-destruction - and gets close to some real understanding of his motivations, his demons, and his genius. No mean achievement.

This really does try to understand both the man and the music and it is a really fascinating, lively, and interesting watch. Definitely what a real music documentary should be.