The Preciseness of Instruments

Jaco Pastorius was born on December 1, 1951. He died on September 21, 1987. He was barely 35 years old when he died at the hands of someone who cared nothing for his talent or genius, and beat him to death, assuming he was merely a homeless man. He was a tremendous bass player. He also had a serious and sad illness, now known as clinical depression, or manic depressive behavior. He was a musical genius, an intuitive, initial inventor of bass arrangements, and from what his family says, was a loving and gentle man. But his disease got the best of him, and led him to a sad end.

Why have I even brought this subject up? Well, it is mostly for the reason about the illness. But it is also about people who are in need of being remembered, not only for them specifically, but for what--and who--they represent:  people who are different than the status quo; different than what we cansider the "norm"; people who are "gifted" in some way, who are looked upon as abnormal, thus, are cursed in the conventional world....WE musn't forget these people.

It's coming on the annual rememberance of his death, and I wanted to give some kind of honor to a man who was gifted, talented, and ingenius, with musical creativity far beyond his time, but had a small problem that became larger with those around because they saw an opportunity to take advantage of a tender, sensitive, musical human being. I'm sorry it took place. He cannot be here performing and bestowing upon us more of his rendition of the musical world he heard inside him, but we always have these small tokens of remembrances...