No "Guitar & Bass" -- But A Solid "Best Of" CD
Dane | OAK PARK, Israel | 01/15/2005
(4 out of 5 stars)
"As a Jaco fan, I bought this CD "blind," hoping based on its title that it might contain some of Jaco's later small band work. But the title "Guitar & Bass" is highly misleading, if not downright fraudulent: of the 12 cuts on the CD, a guitar turns up in exactly 1. If you're looking for bass & guitar, look elsewhere.
So why 4 stars? Well, "Guitar & Bass" is acually a single-CD Jaco Pastorius "best of" collection, as such, it's not half bad. It's put out by Sony International, which I believe owns both Columbia, which put out the Weather Report CDs, and Epic, which released Jaco's original solo CD. So 7 of the 12 cuts here are the Weather Report originals of some of Jaco's finest work (including -- I think -- the live version of "Portrait of Tracy" for WR's "Live and Unreleased" CD), supplemented by 3 good cuts from "Jaco" and a couple of rarities from Herbie Hancock 1978 and 1980 CDs.
As far as I know, there is no similar "Best of Jaco" collection in existence. The Warner/Rhino "Punk Jazz" anthology contains almost no Weather Report material, while Weather Report's compilation "The Jaco Years" contains only Weather Report material (and was poorly remastered).
I didn't award this 5 stars because (1) it misses a couple of the really important Jaco standards (e.g., "Continuum," "Teen Town") which could and should have been included since they come from the same source CDs as the rest of the material here; (2) it also misses Jaco's later Word of Mouth material (which is more forgivable, since I believe it was released on a different label), (3) the liner notes are in French, and (4) the CD title is inexcusably misleading.
If you're a Jaco fan and have other "essential" Jaco CDs, then you probably already own most of this material. But if you're a new listener looking for a first taste of the great and tragic Jaco Pastorius, this is probably as good as it gets."
Track Listings (12) - Disc #1