Customer Reviews

The Bandwagon

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Bud Powell, Earl Hines, Duke Ellington, Nat "King" Cole, Thelonius Monk, Mal Waldron, Cecil Taylor, McCoy Tyner, Andrew Hill, Ahmad Jamal, Abdullah Ibrahim: Dare we put Jason Moran in such company?

Yes, a resounding yes!!

Along with peers Jean-Michel Pilc, Danilo Perez, and Brad Mehldau, Jason Moran has staked out territory that puts him not only at the very top of the contemporary jazz-pianist sweepstakes, but among the essential players to have ever taken up the instrument.

Bandwagon, his latest, a live disc recorded at New York's Village Vanguard, is a thoroughly remarkable performance. Perhaps the most startling cut, "Ringing My Phone," featuring a "soundtrack" of a phone conversation in Turkish (playfully subtitled "Straight Outta Istambul") transformed into a musical statement that faithfully retains the voice-timbre of the Turkish speaker, nimbly matching on piano the sing-song nature of the speaker's voice, brilliantly documents Moran's highwire approach to both his instrument and his group conception. Some reviewers have carped about the gimmicky nature of such an endeavor. I don't agree. Yes, there's an unequivocable quirkiness about such an approach, but if it's pulled off--as it is, brilliantly, to these ears--why grouse?

The rest of the disc, gloriously recorded in such a way as to entirely capture the vibrancy of the monster group interaction, as well as the both the fullness of the leader's pianistic dynamism and the clarity of the unique instrumental voices of this most accomplished trio, lives up to the impossibly high standard set by "Ringing My Phone."

If you want to hear modern jazz at its most daring, do not hesitate to pick up this disc.

This serving by Jason Moran's piano trio adds to the already accomplished work in 'Black Stars' and 'Facing Left'.With 'Bandwagon' Moran submits his recipe for the Trailmix to the Village Vanguard crowd..a live performance that culminates in a prayer for a planet that rocks and this is a trio that rocks together;Jason's piano,Nasheet Waits' drums and Tarus Mateen's acoustic eletric bass producing a bowl of sound of subtle taste and ingenuity.Moran opens up solo on his 'cover' of Brahms'Intermezzo.Op 118,No.2 and then Mateen's bass and Waits drums are slowly drawn in....the slow simmering of the trio here adding intricate mellow tastes to Mateen's spiced starter 'Another One'.The Intermezzzo is followed by two extraordinary pieces,the first Moran's 'Ringing My Phone' which has marvellous interplay with the vocals from the Turkish singer Ahu Gural,then Jaki Byard's 'Out Front' in which Moran scatters the notes all over the kosmos winds them back in with some foot stomping bars and then eases you back down before breaking out for the sudden end...where you arrive is definitely not where you started out.The History Lesson 'Gentle Shifts South',already recorded a couple of times earlier,this time has Jason's piano with the voices of Andrew and Claudia Moran and Bennie Ruth Chester reminiscing about old friends and recalling their names.This is a beautiful atmospheric piece...you're there in the room with them, then the applause from the audience breaks the spell that's been woven.Later there's a fine cover of 'Body and Soul' and finally the gig ends,as it did at the London Jazz Festival,with the powerhouse 'Planet Rocks' which starts out as a march and then takes off with Naits' polyrhythmic drumming ...echoes of Tony Williams on Miles Davis's Quintet.This is Moran's masterpiece...infinitely rewarding.

I had not liked Jason Moran's studio work leading up to this CD but I was surprised to find that I really loved the performances captured at this Village Vanguard gig. But did Blue Note Records honestly expect that buyers in the year 2004 would accept such atrocious sound quality? I have heard bootlegs of ancient rock gigs from the 1960's sound better than this. Bruce Lundvall and his team need to put out another live CD of Jason's work and put some money into a decent recording. It is tragic to hear such a great performance foisted on the public with such appalling sound quality. Messrs Lion and Wolf would be embarrassed Bruce, if they knew you had done this.

I saw this guy with Greg Osby last year at the NJPAC in Newark, and I was absolutely blown away. Effortlessly, he made the highly touted Osby sound utterly dull by comparison, as the trio Moran pounded away with Matten steady on the bass and a virtouso Nasheet Waits on drums. The Bandwagon played mostly stuff off this album, an album I highly recommend.

However, as good as it is, the album does not do justice to seeing Moran live. It is, quite simply, astonishing. If you think "Ringing My Phone" is a groundbreaking masterpiece as heard on the CD, I can assure you that seeing it performed live (before I had ever heard it before) was among the most exhilarating experiences *of my entire life*. For you hardcore Moran fans out there, do yourself a favor and get tickets to his next show pronto.

I went to one of the shows at which music for this album was recorded. It was amazing, even for someone like myself who isn't particularly knowledgeble about jazz. Moran's music simultaneously looks to the past and to the future; it's a very eclectic sound. There's a good dose of Monk in him, but he is unafraid to incorporate ambient recordings and make use of hip-hop and classical music. I was awed by this performance. I must also note that Nasheet Waits is an incredible drummer.

Jazz is blessed with an incredible array of talent now, and it's a pity that the marketplace is so tuned in to the ephemeral. So many young lions and seasoned veterans are making the music of their careers that it is somehow culturally criminal that America, and most of the rest of the world, is stuck in navel gazing, be it Beyonce, Shania or whoever this year's model is.
With regard to Jason Moran, you could make a strong, very strong , argument that jazz is presented with its most creative and philosophical thinker since Thelonius Monk. All of his CDs are genuinely satisfying to the soul, the mind, the spirit, and there's always something for the trunk as well. This current CD takes his extraordinary high standards of excellence up a notch. A huge notch!
Recorded live at the Village Vanguard (a place that seems to pull genius out of artists), except for one taped and looped Turkish phone call, Moran and his mates deliver an unparalleled, exciting set. Visiting standards, original compositions, the mix of found sounds a la Holgar Czukay (remember "Persian Love Song" from MUSIC AND RHYTHM on RealWorld records from the early 80's?), Brahms, and Afrika Bambaata, it is an absolute wonder how he has re-considered, dwellt poetically, uncovered a ground of truth about Music itself in this brilliant display of the Buddhist sense of Interbeing. The interlocking grooves, polyrythms and dynamics will have you hitting replay loads of times.
This is a CD that will be written about for generations, much like Evans, Coltrane and so many others who somehow found a path beyond themselves opening up in the live setting of the Vanguard. By all means purchase this, it is a work of wonder, and when is the last time you can say you were honestly wonder-struck by a recording?

Have you ever encountered something, a book, painting, movie, that was both so astonishing and communicated with you with such a power of truth and beauty that it felt as if someone had just pushed you off a cliff . . . ?

Welcome to The Bandwagon. Jason Moran is a great pianist and important jazz musician, conscious of the great tradition that his works stands on and also of bringing that tradition into the future, the part of it he can carry himself. And he can handle a heavy load.

This music is rooted in the blues, in swing and in the basic interplay of small group jazz improvisation that has been around at least 80 years now. But the style is what is happening NOW! Moran is exploring what can be done with that style, including a surprising and effective use of taped accompaniment, spoken words with which he plays along, in the general manner of some of Steve Reich's pieces, though this is definitely jazz. And great jazz.

Like great jazz, the music is built on a foundation of extremely fine musicianship, and the interplay between piano, bass and drums is about the finest you will ever hear, on the level of the Bill Evans trio with Motian and LaFaro, or Cecil Taylor's Feel Trio. What a disc!

The best thing I can say about THE BANDWAGON is that it is different from the kind of straight-ahead jazz I normally listen to, and the musicians are talented. That being said, this is one bandwagon I'll stay off, thank you.

For one thing, there's not much music on this disc. There is a lot of playing of instruments, but not the playing of actual music. Just as a group of people standing around talking does not make a play, three guys playing instruments does not always constitute music.

The biggest problem for me is that there isn't a beat to be kept for most of the disc. And when a beat is kept, it's mostly a simple sounding tap-tap-swish type beat. The second biggest problem is there is not much melody except in the barest form of a laydown before the band begin pinging away are seemingly random notes.

Every once in a while the sound congeals into something pleasing, as in parts of "Out Front", but it doesn't last long. It never lasts for an entire song. The best you can hope for is a minute or two or music in the middle of a five-minute clatter of instruments. At worst, it sounds like three guys playing three different practice warm-up sessions.

Maybe I'm just too dumb for this kind of music. Maybe it plays better live. Maybe these guys aren't as good as some people think. Whatever it is, I know I could go the rest of my life without buying another of their discs.

Jason makes an explicit link that so many jazz greats (most notably Coltrane) had in the background all the time - melody is speech. Ringing my Phone is a brilliant working out of the "Love Supreme" principal. It really grooves too, which is no mean accomplishment.

First a disclaimer: I am a classic music listener for the most part but I enjoy much jazz. Especially when it involvbes my favorite instrument, the piano. So I love Keith Jarret, for example, not only for his playing but very much for his compositions. I find similarities in the Moran CD under review. Fine pianism; a lot of surprises and variety; different moods and (as far as I can tell) styles. I particularly loved the second cut which sounded so much as though it came from a composer of the romantic era in classical music. and yet near the end it became carefully more modern, keeping with the mood generated before then.
There are many surprises that delight me, so why only 4*'s? (I really wish I could give it 4 1/2.) It's because at times I find the piano part a bit annoying. Its frequently rapid passages, though cleverly and often intriguingly interrupted by the band, seem to me to be too similar from cut to cut. Clever and witty, all right, but please: not so often!
Still, this CD is a definite keeper for me.
Many people may feel very differently about the qualms I just expressed. I know I am picky