Jaco Pastorius - Holiday For Pans (Comprehensive Brand New Edition) (2001)

Holiday for Pans (steel pans, that is) is Jaco's intended follow-up to his 1981 Word of Mouth release. However, when he presented the demo to Warner Bros. in 1983, they rejected it on the grounds that it was too esoteric and lacked commercial appeal. Recorded between 1980 and 1982, the project is basically a vehicle for steel pans master, Othello Molineaux, Jaco's longtime friend and colleague. Jaco actually takes a backseat on most of the recordings, at least audibly. The material features eight tracks, including three Pastorius originals: "Good Morning Anya," an upbeat, sprightly tune dominated by Wayne Shorter's breezy, atmospheric sax and, of course, steel pans; the CD's highlight, "City of Angels," a full-blown, jazz fusion excursion with excellent piano riffing courtesy of Mike Gerber, harmonica by Toots Thielemans and a peppering of acoustic guitar and violin; and "Birth of Island," a 23-minute session of "free play" which begins with Jaco shouting, "just play," but doesn't really show its teeth until the last 7-8 minutes. "Birth of Island" is grounded in percussion, with a smattering of sax and trombone. Jaco cooks, but not until the piece has nearly ended. While several minutes near the close are quite arresting, the track acts mainly as filler for a very brief and insubstantial project. In 1986, Pastorius remixed four of the tracks, but years later (after his death), Kenny Jackel claimed all engineering responsibilities for the project, stole the master tapes of the recordings and sold them to Super Stop, an Osaka-based distribution company. At some point along the way, Jackel had a friend overdub bass parts on some of the tracks in an attempt to compensate for Jaco's secondary presence on the album. While Holiday for Pans is not a recommended purchase based on the aforementioned circumstances, the CD does contain some great passages. -- David Ross Smith