Among my favorite musicians ever, Jaco Pastorius belongs near the top. Generally understated and a team player, Jaco redefined the electric bass forever. Here is his big band, featuring some unusual instruments and brand new sounds in a nice, upbeat bit of sparkling jazz.

I’ve relaxed a bit much recently, enough to take a long look at what I’ve gone and created with this blog and enough to stutter-step my way into whatever is next on it. In the midst of the “stutter”, while considering the redesigns to come and some of the changes in here, I think I’ll just relax and hand over the earphones for a bit. Let’s check out the Weather Report, shall we?

Weather Report are responsible for a few things. Among other things, the core group of Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul and – at least at first – Miroslav Vitous – were melodic and tonal geniuses. Like many pure jazz artists, they could set a mood, tweak it and leave you in whatever shape they wanted to – they were that good at their instruments and with their amazing ears. Joe Zawinul I have featured in here before (right here, check out his music 40 years later) and Wayne Shorter is simply my all-time favorite saxophonist. But both were totally brilliant. At the time this piece was performed – in Japan, in 1970 – they had already made large murmurs within jazz which was then debating the Miles Davis move into electronics and – in many cases – lamenting all of it – this more “rock and roll” (read simplistic) movement away from what had gotten stodgy, in my opinion. Purists, harumph! Well, these guys sure woke folks up, some kicking and screaming, others, like me, relishing an entirely new direction in music itself. Up-tempo, melodic (almost!), and frighteningly and very directly hitting the soul, right where it gets tickled the hardest. These guys were definitely in the genius category, musically,  and they stood the world on its head for a while. Later, they discovered and exposed  the very best musicians in the world, who clamored to play with this “best in the business” bunch. But this is their first work, from their very first album.

Weather Report

“NFAK” is short for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, a Pakistani who teamed with Eddie Vedder on the soundtrack to “Dead Man Walkng” in a most memorable tune of great emotional impact to me.  Maybe it is my advanced age, lol, but I am puzzled why I find all these fabulous musicians who are now passed. There are times when I feel plain dumb. This guy is quite the revelation to me. His vocal abilities are so absolutely unique, I have yet to see anything or anyone who startled me quite as much with their incredible vocal range, their play with sound itself  and their obvious joy of performance. You can say there are people whose voices are instruments – Bob Dylan does that nowadays – but this guy takes the cake.

I’m posting 2 musical vids – take your time – of his collaborations with some of the more exotic rock and roll artists. Peter Gabriel has been a favorite of mine for long years. His innovations have set high standards for the progress of rock music to a level which borders on Jazz, yet still maintains a gritty and muscular feel to it. Make no mistake, both these videos are of rock and roll music. They – in other words – rock.

Which makes NFAK’s involvement that much more interesting………..we’ll go with the more approachable one first, a very cool live performance also featuring Louisville’s own favorite daughter Joan Osborne, Tony Rich, Gloria Estefan and Natalie Merchant, then take off into the more bizarre,  second, also a live performance.

I hope you like these tunes. It’s times like these when I love having a good old irresponsible blog. I can show off my musical tastes as if I was doing the work!!!  Yeah, shameless, I realize. But – hey – I do happen to know what I like. I hope you do as well.

“In Your Eyes“:

“Signal To Noise”:

This is from one of her very first albums, back in about 1962. I had a leg up on some of my friends back then, having very a smart brother and sister who were in college at the time and privy to the newest fashions, so I got first dibs on the developing Folk Craze, right off the get go. I’ll never forget one of my buddies coming over and us putting Bob Dylan’s first music on the box. “Man, he can’t sing for nuthin’!” Imagine young boys thinking that! But there was much to like with this fine-tuned young woman, as we can see.

Joan Baez set a standard for me at that time. Her voice seemed as pure as the driven snow. Since then, a few ladies have met the standard, but not many. See what you think about this very early tune, her adaptation of a gospel song from the 1800’s.