Also this issue:

Diesel Dork
Anti-folk hero Adam Brodsky returns from touring with a new CD and an all-star cast to play the release party.
-M.J. Fine

Back Again
Singer/actor Jimi Mooney's punk-princess alter ego finds love as Helen Back.
-A.D. Amorosi

Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
-Sam Adams

The Slats
-Patrick Rapa

Brother JT
-Brian Howard

Luciana Souza
-A.D. Amorosi

Billy Joe Shaver
-Sam Adams

The Swords Project/ The Gloria Record
-A.D. Amorosi

November 27-December 3, 2002

the gig

Nate Chinen on Jazz

Jazz and popular song have long enjoyed a curious relationship. Theirs is neither a heedless romance nor a pragmatic partnership, but something like Odd Couple cohabitation. Many of the earliest “jass” platters were mutations of familiar tunes -- and their syncopated rhythms fed back into the sheet music of the day. This imperfectly symbiotic union soon produced a deceptively titled “Jazz Age,” which led in turn to a ’30s heyday. Since that moment (when jazz was pop, alas), the two have seemed like asymptotes in reverse, starting infinitely close and arcing ever further apart.

Historically, jazz has "gotten" pop better than pop has digested jazz: Think of Miles Davis finessing "Bye Bye Blackbird," John Coltrane declaiming "My Favorite Things." But the advent of a popular culture steeped in rock 'n' roll complicated the equation. With just a few exceptions -- like Basie's Beatle Bag (Verve) and Miles' Bitches Brew (Columbia/Legacy) -- jazz musicians were at a loss in the new pop era. Fusion was to rock what Woodstock '99 was to Woodstock, a soulless, premeditated translation that encouraged flagrant excess.

We're doing somewhat better now, if you ignore the entire spectrum of smooth jazz (which is always advisable). Our most contemporary jazz artists, weaned on MTV, seem intuitively to understand how to use pop without pandering. Thirtysomething Brad Mehldau leads the charge, with much-ballyhooed renditions of songs by Radiohead (most recently, he's taken to performing "Everything in its Right Place"). Twentysomething Jason Moran fared brilliantly with Björk's "Jóga" on Facing Left (Blue Note). Greg Osby just turned in a thoughtful take on "All Neon Like" on Inner Circle (also Blue Note, also Björk, and also featuring Moran). Ethan Iverson just landed a Columbia Records deal on the merits of his band The Bad Plus -- which smartly covers Nirvana, ABBA, Blondie and Neil Young. And this is to say nothing of tongue-in-cheek cover arrangements by downtown fringe acts like Sex Mob and EZ Pour Spout.

But even the best intentions can easily go astray. Mehldau's solo piano rendition of "Paranoid Android" (on a compilation CD called Groundworks) succeeds because he approaches the tune as a springboard; the same song, produced with full accompaniment on Largo (Warner Bros.), falls disappointingly flat. Similarly, Moran's recent redux of Afrika Bambaataa's "Planet Rock" (from Modernistic, on Blue Note) sounds too much like an exercise, adding nothing to the original idea. And Dave Douglas' recent appropriations of Rufus Wainwright, Björk (what is it with her?) and Mary J. Blige on The Infinite (RCA) sound so contrived as to seem almost opportunistic. So yes, we're still learning. Remember that even these noble failures are stronger than, say, the Sinéad O'Connor "jazz" album. But that's another rant for another time.