Jaco Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		4.0

Jaco Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 23, 2015

When Jaco Pastorius died at the tender age of 35 in 1987, he left a gaping hole in the world of jazz bass that has arguably never been adequately filled again to this day. Even folks who wouldn’t know a Fender from an upright were drawn to Pastorius’ fluid and at times florid style, and the pure sound Jaco was able to coax out of his instruments was something so distinctive that it was possible to often identify his playing within just an initial note or two. A friend of mine who’s a Downbeat Critics’ Poll winner for his magnificent guitar playing once told me, “In the world of jazz guitar, there’s Pat Metheny—and then there’s everyone else.” The same might be said of jazz bass with regard to Jaco Pastorius, even despite his now distant demise (and in the not so coincidental category, Jaco and Pat made some beautiful music together). But great geniuses are often also greatly troubled, and Pastorius’ life was not always a bed of roses. Jaco is nowhere near as innovative as its subject, but details both the triumphs and traumas of this fascinating musician, offering a wealth of well done interviews with a number of iconic music stars as well as Jaco's own family.

Jaco’s far reaching influence into genres rather substantially removed from jazz may be indicated by the fact that Jaco is at least partially the brainchild of Robert Trujillo, whom rock fans will recognize as the bass player for Metallica, an outfit hardly known for ripping through “Donna Lee” (Pastorius fans will know exactly why this particular jazz classic is referenced). When other unexpected folks like Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers also show up to exclaim about how much Jaco informed their own approach toward music, it becomes more and more obvious just how much impact Jaco's presence offered to so many. However, there’s an inherently bittersweet quality to much of Jaco from almost the first moment, as a sound montage of sorts offers a number of reminiscences about the man, all of course in the past tense. The foreknowledge that Jaco is not going to feature a happy ending casts much of the gorgeous music that follows in a rather melancholy light.

That melancholy is well on display in one of the first archival video moments the documentary offers, a dialogue between Jaco and another iconic bass player, Jerry Jemmott. Jaco is obviously addled, unable to make very regular eye contact and seemingly distracted by something (whether interior or exterior), and when Jemmott asks him about that very aforementioned influence Pastorius was already famous for, Jaco simply asks for a gig. How heartbreaking. This iconoclast, a largely self taught musician from the not exactly culturally astute environs of southern Florida (sorry, Floridians—Jaco actually is caught in archival audio talking about the glut of influences he was exposed to in this region), had already pushed the envelope so far that it no longer resembled an envelope, but had then succumbed to the dual rigors of substance abuse and mental instability. Jemmott, in contemporary interview segments, seems only too aware of the disconnect between the perception of a man as a Great Artist and the actual reality the individual was living at the time.

Jaco takes a resolutely chronological approach toward its iconic subject, detailing Pastorius’ childhood and youth in Florida and his rather quick rise to the top of bass playing ranks, a rise which ultimately led him to what many consider the paradigm of early fusion assemblages, the legendary Weather Report. Jaco perhaps shirks on some of the technical mastery that set Pastorius apart from almost the get go (though to be fair there are at least brief sidebars detailing elements like Jaco’s famous solo version of that aforementioned Charlie Parker classic). The documentary perhaps doesn’t know quite what to make of Pastorius’ increasing mental anguish, tending to simply offer a litany of symptoms rather than any root cause (and again to be fair, there may not be any actual rational explanation for the kind of decline Pastorius suffered).

Pastorius is virtually the very definition of a shooting star, an entity which zinged across the horizon with an unexpected light, only to fall precipitously far too soon. There’s a palpable feeling of regret to a lot of the anecdotes various friends, family and coworkers of Pastorius offer in this generally effective piece, but the real “lesson” here is how Jaco’s music continues to live on, inspiring new generations with its unique blend of technical mastery and emotional resonance.

Jaco Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Jaco is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of MVD Visual with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer (mostly) in 1.78:1 (archival video elements tend to have narrower aspect ratios that range from circa 1.55:1 to 1.33:1). As is always the case with these documentaries cobbled together from a variety of sources, there's a fairly wide range of quality on display. The contemporary interview segments are understandably the sharpest and best detailed offerings here, while many of the older video sequences exhibit a lot of anomalies like banding and ghosting. There is a glut of archival material here, including some wonderful home movies of Jaco and his family when Jaco and his siblings were very young. The historical import of these videos far outweighs any technical limitations of the sources.

Jaco Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

While there's quite a bit of music presented interstitially throughout Jaco, the Blu-ray's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track isn't really awash in immersion due to the fact that music is really the only element that utilizes the side and rear channels consistently, and the music is—interstitial. Otherwise, fidelity is strong if positioning is resolutely front and center on all of the interview sequences. There are no issues with damage, though some of the archival performances suffer from built in sonic limitations.

Jaco Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Disc One

• Credits Outtakes and Short Stories (1080p; 7:02) is listed as a separate entity and therefore presumably a supplement on the first disc, but is really just the final few minutes of the film, a collection of brief interviews and the like that play out under (and around) the credits.

Disc Two

• Outtakes, Anecdotes and Short Stories (1080p; 1:39:32) is a hodgepodge amalgamation of various elements, including longer uncut (or at least less edited) interviews with the likes of Joni Mitchell, Carlos Santana, Herbie Hancock, Geddy Lee, Mike Stern, Flea and a host of others. While at least some of those interviewed actually worked with Jaco (like Mitchell or Wayne Shorter), a lot of these tend to be more inconsequential talking head segments of current day celebrities simply waxing philosophical about what Jaco's music meant.

Jaco Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

For those of us who grew up listening to Jaco play with Weather Report or Joni Mitchell (to cite just two of his recurring gigs), there was no one who even came close to Pastorius' elegantly swinging sound (and, oh, those harmonics!). Jaco probably could have been a bit more innovative in its presentation, especially considering how iconoclastic its subject was, but the film does a good job of laying out the facts, if it frankly never really peels back the layers sufficiently to detail whatever roiling dysfunctions helped lead to Jaco's sad downfall. Jaco should be appreciated by jazz fans in particular, but as evidenced by the wealth of other genres' music stars appearing here, they shouldn't be the only ones. Highly recommended.