Yesterday afternoon I was pleasantly surprised to see a large Monarch butterfly flitting around in our front garden outside the kitchen window. The Times used to publish letters from readers who claimed to have heard the first cuckoo of the year, and it occurred to me to inaugurate a “First Monarch of the Year” in NZ — early onset of spring and all that. So I was mildly disappointed to read of Danaus plexippus in my copy of Collins’ Field Guide to New Zealand Wildlife by Terence Lindsey and Rod Morris that, “through the winter the butterflies often fly around on unusually mild and sunny days”; sadly having been overlooked by me until yesterday. Today, the early morning gloom has returned and a light drizzle is falling. However, the sky is blue over Cornwall Park, the mist is lifting and it looks as though it might yet be a fine day on which to be a butterfly. “Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole”! (Check that link if you’re wondering why I’ve gone all ‘Nature watch’ on your asses.)

This is one of the coolest photos of Jaco that I know; especially bearing in mind that Pastorius was killed at a time when most guys looked rather more like this. I’ve written before on NZBC about Jaco’s fretless Fender Jazz and about the sensation and controversy created among fans and bass players when that bass — stolen from Jaco while he was homeless and hanging out around New York’s Central Park shortly before he was murdered — was “rediscovered” last year and given some celebrity substantiation. While reading again through coverage of that event, I stumbled upon Paul Calandrino’s 10-minute play, Sergei Dibbs and The Bass of Doom. It’s wonderful; funny and sad, a three-hander packed with reverential observations any bass-playing Jaco fan will find themselves smiling wryly about:

Laundry powder.

Has anyone else noticed how in the last few weeks most brands have launched 500g packs. All around the same time. And how these small packs all seem to be on sale at the same time. And how the old 1kg packs have, err, doubled in price. All of them. Together. No matter what brand (except Reflex, which I bought today for the first time). Now the 500g packs cost what the 1kg packs used to.

Anyone?

Anyone at the Commerce Commission maybe?

We do still have a Commerce Commission, don't we?

My latest bass project, after learning the notes to Jaco Pastorius’s best-known recordings of Charlie Parker’s ‘Donna Lee’ and his own ‘Continuum’, is Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Dry Cleaner From Des Moines’, the single from her album Mingus. I make no claim to being able to play any of the foregoing even close to the way Jaco did, but it’s the page of a score in an ongoing homage, as well as a journey of self-discovery. This video, from Joni’s Shadows and Light shows Jaco in live action on the tune, but it doesn’t stream properly.

‘The Dry Cleaner’ is a startling song, in many ways – from its out-of-kilter middle section, to the stabbing horns and freshness of the overall sound – but it’s Jaco’s bass that still surprises, even 30 years after its release. Most startlingly of all, it was his own horn arrangement, and you can hear his trademark sound in every lick; he unmistakeably owns it.

For many of Mitchell’s fans, this was probably the first time they’d heard Joni Mitchell sing true jazz, and the melody is catchy and well-phrased. But analysing the bassline, note by note, reveals more. For instance, how much soul Jaco could inject into the simplest phrases, and what a phenomenal grasp of rhythm he possessed. His bassline complements the vocal rather than interfering with it, as you might have expected. The bass part is deceptively fluent; he’s not playing a traditional groove, instead punctuating it with pauses and muted notes.

I recently found this fascinating panel discussion honouring Jaco’s memory, and was overjoyed to read that his most famous instrument, the legendary, fretless “Bass of Doom” – a 1962 customised Fender Jazz stolen in Central Park when Jaco was living on the streets of New York in 1986 – was recently rediscovered in a New York music store. What a find. By all accounts, it still has Jaco’s magic in it. The live version takes even more risks and therefore isn’t as polished, but it’s a superb recording. Get the DVD.

Here's a salutory tale for New Zealand: Two US judges have been convicted of taking kickbacks to send kids to private detention centres.

In what authorities are calling the biggest legal scandal in state history, the two judges pleaded guilty to tax evasion and wire fraud in a scheme that involved sending thousands of juveniles to two private detention centers in exchange for $2.6 million in kickbacks.

That's just you common corruption of course. A much bigger issue is the "prison-industrial complex" that has grown around private prisons, big companies, political donations and pressure for longer - and more profitable - sentences.

Underpinning the talk of “increasing the longevity of wholesale funding”, and righteous anger over disgraced executives disappearing in private jets with their underperformance-related bonuses, is the sound of otherwise intelligent people behaving as though they’re the Witch-Finder General. Listen to Justin Urquhart Stewart of Seven Investment Management, quoted from a TV interview in The Guardian Weekly (20 February), talking about the rushed takeover of HBOS by Lloyds TSB:

“I don’t know what I am now. A whispering out of the dust. Dried blood on a sword and the sword has crumbled into rust and the wind has blown the rust away but still I am, still I am of the world, still I have something to say, how could it be otherwise, the action never stops, it only changes, the ringing of steel is sung in the stillness of the stone.”
Russell Hoban, Pilgermann

So long, Johnny Too Bad. John Martyn’s 1980 album Grace And Danger has accompanied several memorable spells in my life, especially the stunning ‘Sweet Little Mystery’ with a still cool Phil Collins (prior to his solo career MoR lows) playing drums and adding shimmering backing vocals. That album is a masterpiece but was almost never released. He also recorded one of the best ever cover versions of ‘Over the Rainbow’ (get the one on the hard-to-find Sapphire, rather than the live version). Martyn was recently awarded an OBE in the New Year’s honours list, so we must presume his death was expected; he died in an Irish hospital, cause TBC. He wrote one of the 20th Century’s classic folk songs, ‘May You Never’. There’s an obituary here, with the now ubiquitous YouTube link and over a hundred comments. Apart from a unique voice, he had an inimitable electric guitar style. His solos were logical and melodic; he never noodled. It’s good to see some nice obits have already been written; at the time he lost part of his leg to septicaemia a few years ago, it proved virtually impossible to verify the facts online. I smiled at his recent comment about wanting to record with jazz saxophonist Pharoah Saunders: “We’d best get on with it before one of us dies, though. He’s 74 now, and I don’t feel too well myself.”