The Bad Plus thrashed its way into the
jazz limelight after its 2003 debut on Columbia Records, These Are the Vistas, which featured deconstructed interpretations
of non-jazz songs, like Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” Blondie’s “Heart of
Glass” and Aphex Twin’s “Flim,” alongside original material that found a middle
ground between traditional jazz, highbrow classical and hard-hitting rock ’n’
roll.
But don’t get the wrong idea; these
aren’t the kind of jazz covers you’d hear at the supermarket.
“We’re very much against hijacking this
music and ‘jazzifying’ it,” says Bad Plus drummer Dave King. “That’s the one
thing we’ve always stood against: the jazz cover-version of a rock tune. We’ve
taken a lot of shit for not using jazz harmony, as if we don’t know jazz
harmony, which is ludicrous. We just don’t think that things are going to sound
better when you put a flat-five, sharp-blah-blah chord on it.”
And yes, The Bad Plus has taken a fair
amount of shit in the wake of their three Columbia
releases. Bill Milkowski, one of the genre’s most distinguished critics and
documentarians, sought to “bury” the group in one article, jabbing at King in
particular for playing “so little so loud.” The pan evokes a chuckle from the
drummer.
“Anyone that’s seen us knows we’re a
very dynamic band,” King says. “Milkowski didn’t even know who The Pixies were,
so I can’t justify a music critic’s opinion who doesn’t know The Pixies.”
For the most part the praising and
panning died down after Columbia
dropped the band following its 2005 release Suspicious
Activity?. They’ve since released two records on indie labels, and are
expecting a new release in September, an all-originals LP titled Never Stop.King says the choice for an all-originals record is a celebration of
the band’s 10 years together.
“There’s more of a classic jazz sound
to the record,” King says. “It doesn’t have the rock production we’ve had
working with Tchad Blake [Black Keys, Pearl Jam] and Tony Platt [AC/DC, Iron
Maiden]; not that we ever did shit that sounds like Radiohead, but for us,
putting a little something on anything was something we embraced.”
Because after all, The Bad Plus is an
acoustic jazz trio making a living in the jazz Mecca
that is New York City.
But as King points out, the concept of a working jazz band—a unit of musicians
that creates and tours under a shared name—is somewhat of an anomaly in jazz
these days. The fact that all three members of the band are each virtuoso
musicians in their own right but collaborating democratically is something that
sets them apart from other groups.
“To be honest with you, I’m more
disappointed than inspired,” King says about the landscape of modern jazz. “New York used to house
all these great working jazz bands. And now with how much it costs to live and
how splintered everything is, it’s like people are just reading charts on gigs.
I mean, flat-out, if you get a band like the Jason Moran and the Bandwagon or
The Bad Plus on a festival date, and you get a bunch of people who are great
instrumentalists that are reading charts, doing whatever, we will destroy you.”
Which is something that gets to the
heart of The Bad Plus sound, something that’s simultaneously composed and
improvised, both loose and tight at any given moment while powerfully dynamic
throughout. It’s the thing that allows them to hover around the point where
Vivaldi meets Monk meets Cobain, the thing that makes the band distinct and
indispensable.
“We’ve been around 10 years and lived
through the Columbia
hype,” King says. “We never said we were reinventing jazz, but we know what
we’ve done, which is a unique thing in improvised music, and we’ll continue
doing that. And that’s not an ego position, that’s literally a fact. We did it
punk-rock style, and we’re still doing it that way.”
Jazz in the Park runs from 6 to 9 p.m. every Thursday through Sept. 23 at Cathedral Square Park.
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