Jaco Story, the rock opera.
Many thanks to Bill Milkowski for the mention of my rock opera in the latest edition of the book 'Jaco, The Worlds Greatest Bass Player'. The rock opera is based in part on Bill's book and in part on things that people told me who had dealings with Jaco. There are 28 compositions featuring 15 singers. The work was finished in the year 2000 but never released due to lack of funds.
Jaco, the rock opera makes no attempt to emulate his music. In fact I had heard very little of his music when it was written. It is more of an exploration into why great geniuses sometimes self distruct. The work was not particularly well received by his family and that is understandable as they would like him to be remembered for his great musical works and not his wild and sometimes insane antics.
The reason the rock opera was never released is that I never obtained releases from all the singers. The whole thing was done on a very tight budget and I didn't have the nerve to ask someone who only got payed 100 bucks to sign one! Dumb of me and now I don't even know where to find half of them. One of the singers I heard singing in the subway at the Atlantic Ave station in Brooklyn. I loved his voice. I thought Jaco would have apprietiated me using local street musicians. It also features Dumm-Dumms singer Jimmy Catlett and x-Secret singer Andy Roland.
Copies of my Rock Opera are available to anyone who has a legitimate interest in either licensing the work for a performance run (ie;college theaters etc)or anyone who might have an interest in financing the final completion of the project which would include paying the singers (probably scale) to obtain their releases. email me at leif@leiferich.com Thanks!