Main Lines, Blood Feasts, and Bad Taste - Lester Bangs [43]
When an avant-garde becomes a Preservation Society, what can it do to guard its however virtuosic woofs and tweets against creeping fuddyduddyism? Well, one court of resort is humor, as Roscoe's album made me realize immediately. It was always in there anyway (cf. any number of old pieces by Ornette and Archie Shepp too, not to mention Coltrane's pre-free but nevertheless immortal “Hey fellas, where's the beer opener?” tag for Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet), so if I tell you that it is largely with affectionate amusement that I listen to Full Force, the Art Ensemble's latest waxing, I hope you will recognize it as praise, not condescension. Everybody takes all this stuff with such utter solemnity; meanwhile these guys are in the studio obviously having fun. Yeah art and all that shit, and sure they’re all composers as much as Glass or Reich or anybody, but jazz was originally goodtime music and in large part that's what the Art Ensemble (when they’re good) play. So even if it doesn’t always shake you to your foundations (rarely, if ever, in fact) it's still usually fun. Even the goddamn gourds and windchimes and beads on drumheads.
What I do take issue with is the contention (reiterated in the band's current bio) that any of this is really “new music.” Actually it is several types of relatively “old” musics played side by side or slowly segued together. And you pretty much have to take the jive, which is painless by now, along with the real stuff.
The first side of Full Force is a perfect case in point. All but 45 seconds of it is tenanted by Malachi's “Magg Zelma” (Christian Vander lives!), which opens with about four minutes of miscellaneous percussion and celeste-vibes-glockenspiel and what can only be called barnyard action (duck calls, etc.), all going nowhere leisurely. Then there's a moving prayerlike tenor solo by Joseph Jarman. And into the interior: a bass vamp, driving African percussion, chugging reeds, acerbic Lester Bowie trumpet solo, the whole falling somewhere to the right of “Tears for Johannesburg” on Max Roach's 1960 We Insist: Freedom Now Suite and to the left of Shorty Rogers albums from a couple of years previous to that like Afro-Cuban Influence and Shorty Rogers Meets Tarzan. “Atmospheric,” as they say, but it's got some soul. After that “Magg Zelma” sorta peters out over several minutes of inconclusive jamming. But you’re shocked awake by Roscoe's 45-second “Care Free,” a gorgeous Latin-tinged unison statement by the horns that's the most beautiful melody on the album. That they chose not to elaborate on it seems absolutely perverse.
The other side is equally whimsical or erratic, depending on your attitude. Jarman's “Old Time Southside Street Dance” opens and closes with a shrill but invigorating ensemble theme that's highly reminiscent of Albert Ayler: the solos in between are fast and fairly directionless except for Maghostut's almost rock ‘n’ rolly bass twonks. The complex title cut is intermittently inspired; the highlights for me are the sustained blasts at the climax (almost ruined by rattling bells) and one section where Roscoe starts repeating something that sounds like “Hojo” through his horn over and over again, ending in a laugh and a whinny straight from the Three Stooges’ Curly. Bowie's Mingus tribute is appropriately Ellingtonian, and his growling trumpet summons up the ghost of Quentin Jackson's trombone on Black Saint and the Sinner Lady as well as Ted Curson in “Folk Forms, No. One”—it's a heartfelt performance, but neither mournful enough to truly qualify as elegy nor explosive enough to recall the Mingus I worshipped.
No way does