Jaco also flexes his pianistic muscles on PDB’s Three Views Of A Secret. The evening is rounded off with a solo organ rendition by Pastorius of his Liberty City. Punk Jazz lasts for over 17 minutes thanks to a lengthy coda based on The Star-Spangled Banner and includes some announcements which suggest the set is from 1985. Groove # 1 is more than eight minutes of funky F7 with a dash of reggae and sounds like it was jammed up on stage Bullock as ever leaves no table unturned, quoting conspicuously from the Brecker Brothers’ Skunk Funk, but as with many an undirected jam, this groove gets stuck and is faded. The trio Invitation is dominated by Bullock’s careering guitar and ends with two bass solos, one grotesquely distorted, the other clean. Jaco’s funky Motown lick on Alfred Ellis’s The Chicken is as irresistible as ever, though low in the mix and soon obliterated by Bullock’s chuck-a-chucking guitar.

The piece ends with a protracted, largely unvarying groove it seems even giants run out of ideas at jam sessions. Teen Town is a trio by Pastorius, Dennard and Bullock, with Bullock’s guitar supplying the haunting saxophone chords before stretching out on a blistering solo. This is swiftly followed by Dania, a brisk swinger which is reminiscent of Eric Dolphy and has solos from all the horns. The New York set opens with the breakneck Donna Lee theme played by the ensemble.

Much of the repertoire will be familiar to those who know Jaco’s work in Weather Report and his own Word of Mouth big band, though these readings are rather cruder than the originals. These issues capture him jamming in New York and Boston clubs in the mid-1980s, and both have Walkman-like fidelity, although the New York set has the better level. Jaco’s discoveries have become a commonplace, his innovations standard elements in the electric bass vocabulary, but any new evidence of his genius is valuable.

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