I don’t really like most early jam-fusion like that found on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew or on early Weather Report records. To me, it sounds like abstract jam band stuff that doesn’t tell a story. No, that’s not true. It tells a story the way a time lapsed video of fungal growth tells a story. It develops, it morphs, it has feelings, and most importantly, it’s valid. Maybe I just prefer more plot in my stories.
Here I go putting my foot in my mouth again. Let me know that you support seeing my mental decline happen in real time by leaving a comment after reading. Do you like jam-fusion and/or jam bands?
Early fusion sounds like an ecosystem. Imagine hiking out to a pond in the Amazon rain forest and sitting down for an hour. You’d observe the various plants, insects, birds, sloths, etcetera. Sometimes they would bump into each other and interact but it would largely be a moving screensaver of multiple life forms living alone together at once. The general impression of such a place is captured with the more free form jam band style of fusion, let’s call it jam-fusion, so prevalent in the 1970s.
The thing is, I can go there. I can hear the different voices expressing themselves like creatures in a forest. I can hear the beetles fighting and chasing each other. I can hear the squirrels jumping from tree to tree. I can hear the duck waddle out from the woods to an open field where it’s forced to contend with new obstacles, such as a hunter and a dog.
It is a very cool way to listen but I find that it takes too much faith. I have to believe that the notes truly mean something to the players. It requires a belief that the meaning my own mind is deriving from the sounds is somehow tied to the real intent of the musicians. Or else it could all just be jive like a Jackson Pollock, right?
Seriously, couldn’t you get a seemingly artistic sound from a bunch of guys randomly playing whatever they want as long as they all agree to play intermittently and to get louder and quieter together?
Maybe I was simply born too late to appreciate the weight of such music. After all, it’s not hard to find videos of Miles Davis leading jam-fusion bands (this one filled with jazz giants) in front of crowds numbering in the quintillions back in the day:
I do believe that being able to dive into the abstract as a listener and as a player is to be able to touch the essence of musical expression without the aid of lyrics or words. One of my favorite bassists, Gary Willis, says that instrumental music is abstract and that modern minds are less adept at abstract thinking due to the pizza button.
Ok, he didn’t quite say it like that but you get the idea. Put another way, younger generations are less concerned with things being “trippy.” You don’t have to be high to appreciate the trippy, although it helps. But trippyness comes from an irrational, emotional, subconscious place that can’t be explained with words. It’s amazing to imagine a time when so many people listened to music from this space.
I must be too left brained and sober to appreciate jam-fusion. Or maybe I see through the smoke and mirrors of its pseudo-artistic aesthetic! C’mon, I don’t really think it’s pseudo-artistic. Too many of the world’s best modern improvisers have dabbled with the style for it to be a lie. Plus, it probably has a huge social component that I’m missing that contextualizes it and helps provide meaning. But unless I squint my eyes and take a leap of faith, to me, jam-fusion just sounds like globs of notes randomly thrown onto a canvas. 😬
So. Much. Noodling… (usually) Just could never get into jam bands
Well you got me going w/ this rant. Jackson Pollack Jive?? Random sounds? What you are missing ( in my opinion) is context & history. Pollack does not seem radical to you because you first saw his work in a book or slide show in HS. If you’d been alive in the 40’s- 50’s, looking to create a new expression that fit the anxiety, excitement & mix of post war art, you might know the radical ness of this work. Is it good? Does it hold up? Are you open sufficiently to see it ( or hear Miles) w/ fresh eyes & ears? Difficult setting our conditioning aside. Narrative in music & Art is an overlay, a template, with which to have the noise make sense. Fusion & “modern art” is difficult because there is no plot: no beginning, no middle & no resolution at the end. You don’t have to like it, but if, like a dream you’ve had, it stirs you, makes you wonder, opens passages to the great mystery then there is value in that. Peace.