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My brother used to take bass lessons and he got this on VHS a long time ago. Although I am a keyboardist, I think I watched this video more than he did, mainly to see the trio's performance of 'The Chicken.'
Jaco Pastorius on bass, John Scofield on electric guitar and Kenwood Dennard on the drums.
This is one of the best musical acts I've ever seen on video.
The music: please, I won't even downgrade it by trying to describe it in words.
The performers: Three jazz gems who are as entertaining to watch as anyone I've ever seen.
Watch John play that guitar; you can't help but feel the funk eating away at you as much as it does him. He looks likes he's about to burst, but listening to him play, it's easy to see why.
Kenwood Dennard is just a MACHINE on the drums. His beats are straight-ahead, but so, so tight and funky. He violently shakes his head from side to side continuously with the same level of entertainment and accuracy executed in his drumming.
And then there's Jaco. If his actual bass playing is outlandish, his stage manner one-ups it. This guy is just so uncommonly funky that his strange and somewhat comical facial expressions can be explained by nothing other than that he even stupefies (is that a word?) himself with his cutting-edge musical fare.
As for the pedagogical value of this video, I don't play bass, so I'm not in the best place to give an educated opinion on this. I did watch some of the instructional portions, and Jaco's riffs seemed difficult (that's no surprise). My two cents: I reckon that purchasing this video with the hopes of sounding anything like Jaco is tantamount to hoping you'll achieve half the wealth of Bill Gates by purchasing Windows XP. Get this video for the inspiration of watching masters at work; your advancement with any instrument is more a function of your talent, desire and persistent hard work than what you get out of ANY video beyond inspiration.
FYI: Although I refer to him in the present, Jaco was murdered in 1987 by a nightclub bouncer who brutally ejected him from the premises and beat him to death. He was even homeless and broke for much of his life. It is unfortunate what this world gave Jaco in return for his genius, but he will never be forgotten by any jazz musician who is worth the instrument he plays on. There a thoroughly excellent biography called 'Jaco' that I read a while back; check this book out if you want to learn more about this incredible musical legend.
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