ASAD #8 Pat Metheny w/Jaco Pastorius & Bob Moses

Live in Boston, June 1975

My good friend Richard Niles was actually at this show, and this bootleg comes from him taking a 4-track tape recorder to the gig in Boston to preserve these performances of the Pat Metheny Trio with Jaco Pastorius and Bob Moses.

This is a little less than a year before the now classic Metheny album “Bright Size Life” came out in ‘76, and the contrast between what they were doing live and what ended up on the album is incredible.

This is a song called “All Sus 4’s” that was never recorded, and I’ve never heard it on a Metheny bootleg since. The audio quality is what you might expect from 1975’s technology, but I think it adds even more to the experience of listening to these immense musicians in the beginning of their epic journey of changing the sound of modern music.

When Richard gave me these bootlegs over 25 years ago I was one of only three people that had them. It was more exciting than you can imagine. As a fan of everyone in the band, and just starting my journey in this style of music myself, I felt like a had a secret weapon in these recordings and it taught me to have an incredible amount of respect for the history of improvised music, and of the aural tradition that is the learning process.

To think that Pat was only 20 years old, Jaco was 24, and Bob was the elder statesman of the band still only 26 years old. The music is so advanced, so forward thinking, and unlike anything anyone had heard at this time. The cutting edge of innovation from such young musicians and completely fearless artists.

Enjoy,

Janek