3/2/01
John Scofield at Trax
Back in 1969, just as a young
John Scofield was pushing his developing guitar style from its soul and R&B roots toward straight-ahead jazz, jazz was itself being diverted by some of its most influential players into territory occupied by the burgeoning rock and soul movements, and new musics somewhere in the middle-- funk and fusion-- were being born. Scofield found himself with a foot in each camp, happily jamming the border between jazz improvisation and dance music. In the '70's he comped with Gerry Mulligan and fused with Billy Cobham and George Duke. In the '80's he was attached to that highest-brow of fusion battleships, the Miles Davis Band, and then went on to get freaky with ex-P-Funk drummer Dennis Chambers.
So it was no suprise that in the '90's he found himself spirtual heir to the title "godfather of acid jazz" as a new generation of jamsters started invoking jazz paradigms to conjure fresh respectability for their funky groove music. Pulling in fellow Blue Note records artists Medeski, Martin and Wood for his 1998 release
A Go Go only served to seal his cornerstone status, and the record became an instant funky jazz classic with a younger generation of hipoisie searching for better and higher musical experimentalists.
Now Scofield travels with a band half his age and attracts crowds even younger, but he still carries a drive for intellectual musical derivation that keeps his work cutting edge, if occasionally sending it right over the heads of his audience.
At Trax on March 2, this was definitely the case. He and his youthful crew laced samplers, sequencers and delays into their concoction of celestial jazz and funk, providing a simple but heady brew, at times settling into deep recesses where he could binge for bars of high-reaching jazz guitar antics. Unfortunately, it seemed that Scofield's interest in personal musical evolution wasn't perfectly suited to the young band and crowd's collective lust to funk, resulting in a dearth of real dance opportunities and a somewhat confused overall vibe. Still, a legendary scene.
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3/3/01
Sam Bush at Starr Hill
With two and a half decades as reigning guru of Telluride's annual bluegrass festival,
Sam Bush has shown more people what it means to rock out in a backcountry way than almost any performer in the genre. In fact, what is often referred to these days as "bluegrass"(after founding folkster Bill Monroe's band, the Bluegrass Boys) might more accurately be called Bushgrass, since without the work of the New Grass Revival and its founding prodigy mandolinist/fiddler/guitarist Sam Bush, the stuff that gets passed around as bluegrass these days probably wouldn't even exist.
Bush is one of the original instigators of the folk-instruments-go- to-Mars school of Appalachian cross-pollination and one of the first people to demonstrate that bluegrass and reggae share a common rythmic foundation (-- the off-beat chick-ka). He's also a famously praised session musician who's as popular redressing folk standards as he is covering rock tunes like Little Feat's "Sailing Shoes," and he's still out there, sweating and shredding like the cocaine never wore off.
March 3 he brought his quartet to Starr Hill and proceeded to do just that. Firing up with a medley of Bob Marley numbers before settling in for a night of everything from Cat Stevens to "Sitting On Top Of The World," Bush incorporated a gamut of stylistic twists into a hard-rocking night of charged Appalachia- delia. Backed by an acoustic guitarist, an acoustic/electric bass player and a full drumkit, his extended fiddle and mandolin tirades and "Rocky Mountain High" vibe resulted in one of the most refreshing bluegrass derivations I've experienced.
As it should be. While fellow New Grass member Bela Fleck shaped his Flecktones into a jazz fusion/adult contemporary folk exploratory troupe, Bush remained faithful to the heart of the party by keeping his Bushgrass close to rock and reggae and ripping with a friendly intensity that will never go out of style.
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3/7/01
Sugar Minott at Starr Hill
Reggae pop star
Sugar Minott swung through Starr Hill with the
Black Roots band and some bonus guests: vocalists
Shaggy Williams (who fronted the band for a few tunes and then spent the rest of the night roaming the crowd trying to hock his CD) and
Patrick McDonald, the original guitarist for the Skatalites. Watching this guy play rhythm was an education in and of itself, but Sugar, a consumate showman backed by a tight band laying down a seamless series of cool island hits strung together like so many pearls, was not to be outshown nor outspoken.
A tireless advocate for the merits of cannabis, Minott stopped the band at one point to request that someone up front put their cigarrette out, and even spent some time urging the crowd to light their spliffs (that's "joints" to you) before settling into a crushing extended version of his huge hit "The Herbalist." Interestingly, I don't believe anyone did.
Still, Minott delivered the goods, playing for what must have been two whole hours before finally bailing into the cold Virginia night. Roots, rock and reggae.
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