Music Matters Albums Listen to samples of music that matters. Through iTunes Through Amazon Issue 15 Issue 16 Issue 17 Issue 18 Issue 19 Issue 20 Issue 21 Issue 22 Issue 23 Issue 24 Issue 25 Issue 26 Issue 27 Issue 28 Issue 29 Issue 30

Jaco Pastorius Jaco Pastorius 2000, Legacy Pastorius was a brilliant, though ultimately tragic figure. I marveled at his work on Joni Mitchell’s "Hejira" and "Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter" and his groundbreaking playing with Weather Report and Pat Methaney, but it’s the lamentable image of a drunken Jaco onstage with my girl friend’s lipstick smashed and smeared all over his sad, unshaven face fumbling through ‘The Star Spangled Banner’ that will for me somehow overshadow his towering musical achievements. But that’s not the point. Epic/Legacy has masterfully remastered and expanded Jaco’s debut – an acclaimed milestone in fusion— to create an even more feverish and invigorating masterpiece. From the fluid elasticity of Charlie Parker’s "Donna Lee" through "Come On, Come Over," the evocative "Continium," to the melodic, harmonically charged "Portrait Of Tracy" and the bop inspired fusion of "(Used To Be) A Cha-Cha," Jaco brought the bass to regions never before explored. No one, not now, not ever has played with the delicacy of command and the seemingly bottomless well of imagination that Pastorius did, making his early demise ever more painful some twenty-five years later.—Mike Jurkovic