Loud Cloud Crowd

Okay, the article…

As Nate Chinen hints at, Gold Sounds -- the new record of Pavement covers by James Carter, Cyrus Chestnut, Reginald Veal, and Ali Jackson -- is a producer-driven project. The boys behind Brown Brothers Recordings came up with the concept and brought the musicians -- who by their own admission, didn't know Pavement from Melt Banana -- into the studio to execute it.

A brief blurb in Now (Toronto) gives us the origin story:

Ever wondered what Pavement songs would sound like if interpreted by the best of the new suit jazz crew? Neither have I, but Alan Suback and some fellow Pavement fans went to a benefit concert and thought, "What if Wynton Marsalis 's kick-ass band - Cyrus Chestnut , Reginald Veal , Ali Jackson and James Carter - lent their serious chops to Summer Babe, Cut Your Hair, Trigger Cut, etc?"

Now, there's nothing inherently wrong with producer-driven jazz projects. [I've only heard one track off of Gold Sounds so I can't really comment on this particular record one way or the other -- but if you wanna check 'em out live, Carter et al. are at the Iridium this week.] But it's an odd lede for an article that is mostly about jazz musicians who do actually listen to indie rock (broadly construed -- Radiohead and Wilco count as "indie" here) and incorporate those influences into their music in a significant way. The remainder of Chinen's article artfully traces those paths.

Now, everybody knows about Brad Mehldau's several Radiohead covers, but it's also not hard to hear echoes of the band's oblique harmonies and cinematic song structure in Mehldau's own writing, and even his approach to standards. And, on Largo, Brad collaborated with golden boy producer Jon Brion (whose star is rising thanks to his work on Kanye West's Late Registration and the rejected-but-widely-circulated original version of Fiona Apple's Extraordinary Machine).^[1] The rock/pop inflections in Brad's playing and trio concept would be just as obvious even if he never played any tune written after 1955.

The Bad Plus are infamous for their wry covers of "Heart of Glass," "Chariots of Fire," etc, but their real strength is in their brilliantly constructed originals. (Last Saturday, opening for Ornette Coleman, the only cover was Ornette's "Street Woman.") There's a widely-held misconception that indie rock fans only like the Bad Plus because they play "Iron Man," but it's actually the opposite -- I know a lot of indie rock snobs who hated The Bad Plus until they heard originals like "Frog and Toad" and discovered that TBP weren't the jazz equivalent of Dread Zeppelin or Hayseed Dixie.

Chinen goes on to briefly touch on the long established noise-rock/avant-jazz axis (Sonic Youth, Yo La Tengo, Nels Cline, etc) before discussing some of the younger indie-influenced jazzers like Kneebody (also in town this week) and other Shane Endsley projects, Todd Sickafoose, my friend and fellow NEC alum Mike Gamble, and Eivind Opsvik -- all great players who embrace the indie-rock DIY spirit.

The point here is that the musical values of the people who read Pitchfork -- and the people who mock the people who read Pitchfork -- communication, integrity, sincerity, intensity, freshness, broad-mindedness, relevance -- are all exactly the same as what our musical values should be as creative jazz musicians. And if you, as a jazz musician, are serious about reaching the "indie rock crowd" -- which seems to be shorthand here for "intelligent music fan, age 21-35, always looking for new bands but doesn't normally go to jazz clubs" -- you have to prove that you can communicate those shared musical values to someone whose record collection is wildly different from yours. There are no shortcuts for this. You don't establish your indie-rock cred by, say, coming out with a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah cover record. You do it by taking whatever you value in that music and making it yours.

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[1] Which looks like it just might see an official release after all.

Comments

[mwanji]

1.

"The Bad Plus are infamous for their wry covers of "Heart of Glass," "Chariots of Fire," etc, but their real strength is in their brilliantly constructed originals."

Exactly, I've felt this to be the case ever since I first listened to "These Are The Vistas" and was always surprised that all the nay-saying jazz establishment could comment about was "Smells Like Teen Spirit". I also have the FSNT debut, but no others. "Suspicious Activity" is getting a lot of interesting press, have you heard it?

[DJA]

2.

Hey Mwanji,

I haven't picked up Suspicious Activity yet (is the malware-free version in stores yet?) but I've heard most of the tunes played live several times now (most recently last Saturday when they opened for Ornette Coleman), and the tunes are notably more cohesive, subtle, melodic, and heartfelt than on previous records. It feels like now that they've established what they're all about, they have less to prove and have more freedom to stretch. I think "Anthem for the Earnest," "Rhinoceros is my Profession," "Let Our Garden Grown," and "Knows The Difference" are some of the strongest tunes in the Bad Plus book.

On the other hand, I can't say I felt a burning desire for a "Chariots of Fire" cover from this (or any) band, but oh well, it's just one track.

Anyway, I've been meaning to write a "Why are the Bad Plus so controversial?" post for a while -- this not a rhetorical question, I'm genuinely baffled. And I'm not talking about the Stanley Crouch crowd or the people who have only heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." Lots of musicians and listeners whose taste I respect and who are sympathetic to the idea of reaching out to the indie rock crowd absolutely hate The Bad Plus -- have walked out of their shows, seem genuinely traumatized by their "Street Woman" cover, etc, but never seem to be able to adequately explain the intensity of their antipathy.

[Maggie Osterberg]

3.

I think I need to check those guys out, as I'm firmly in the Yo La/Nels Cline camp.

Thanks for the pointers, DJ!

[mwanji]

4.

Thanks for the TBP appreciation. I don't know if the XCP version has reached shelves (here in Belgium or elsewhere), but I'll probably be buying it at some point. Is there a way to tell which version contains the software and which does not?

[DJA]

5.

Hey Mwanji,

I don't think the XCP discs were ever released in Europe. Also, as far as I know, the affected CDs were all marked with the XCP Logo.

Sucks that this was inflicted on Sony bands without their consent or knowledge. Apparently nobody had any idea what was going on until the shit hit the fan.