DESCRIPTION:
Here is my version of Jaco Pastorius "Teen Town" from the Weather Report's seventh album, HEAVY WEATHER, released in 1977 through Columbia Records, the band's second album with bassist Jaco Pastorius... Hope you don't mind this interpretation... I sampled an interview of Jaco Pastorius by Jerry Jemmott that you can find in the DVD The Modern Electric Bass (Warner Bros Classics). And I also sampled Eminem but that is another story, lol...

John Francis Anthony "Jaco" Pastorius III (December 1, 1951 September 21, 1987) was an American jazz musician and composer widely acknowledged for his skills as an electric bass player.

"Teen Town" takes its title from a youth club where Jaco grew up. In addition to composing the tune and playing bass, Jaco also plays drums, explaining to Williamson that he played the drums first, and overdubbed the bass part afterwards. Jaco went on to describe "Teen Town" at length:

"It's... TRICKY! I'm a drummer: that was my first instrument when I was a kid, and I switched to the bass because I broke my arm in an accident. I didn't have to go to the bass, but I had to stop drums because I had no power left in my left arm, and from about age 13 to 18, my left arm was pretty useless. I couldn't push, man; and like, to play the drums, you gotta push. I was playing in a band on drums--one that I'd started actually--and I got kicked out! But they asked me back if I was playing bass, so I bought a bass and joined them again!

I was 15, I didn't know where the notes were or anything, I just started grooving, y'know? And I've never been out of work since, with the bass! But yeah, "Teen Town" was actually a place I use to go to dance when I was 13, and it was a church on the Intra-Coastal waterway, in Pompano Beach, Florida. I used to just wish I could be up there playing drums, that's why I sorta had to play the drums on this tune--because the drums are talking with the bass, too--because now I'm a bass player, but I can still play the drums, y'know? It's a lot of fun: "Teen Town" is like a little theater thing, yeah? You're a kid and you go to Teen Town; you're 13 years old; you wanna hang out with some chicks; there are all sorts of little ego trips going on in there; all that sorta shit is going on in there. And at the end, it gets a little mysterious, because you start growing up... It's all in there! (laughs)"

In In A Silent Way, Zawinul says, "You know what? This bassline is played by both of us! It was the Oberheim eight-voice which doubled his bass, and we played so well together that it sounds like one instrument. The bass is a wonderful instrument, but sometimes you need a little more attack on it to really cut it, and that's what it was on this song. Jaco brought it in, and it was very quickly done. As a matter of fact, the whole album was played as well as we have ever played in the studio."

In a 1977 interview, Brian Risner described how "Teen Town" had a long gestation period. The interviewer, Gil Podolinsky, asked Risner about the band's practice of taking a day's recordings home to see what they had. "Right," replied Risner, "every bit of 16 track is put on cassette and everybody goes home and does their homework. It's a constant evolution in the studio where a tune three months later will have the basic root but the rest has changed. 'Teen Town' is a good example. We lived with that tune for a month, and nobody was really pleased with it; then one afternoon we went in, brought the tempo up and changed it all around. Sometimes you just wait for something to affect someone's life so that he'll see the tune differently and then it happens."


Peace,

David Marion Bass Player

http://www.myspace.com/davidmarion