East Coast Blow Out - Jim McNeely

Aug

28

East Coast Blow Out - Jim McNeely

≡ Category: 1980s, Essential, Music Reviews, Progressive Big Band |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES ESSENTIAL RECORDING

Rating:

True, I’d heard Jim McNeely play before. He did a bang up job in the piano chair playing John Coltane tunes on Dave Liebman’s classic Homage To John Coltrane. But East Coast Blow Out was the first time I heard Jim McNeely do what he was put on this planet for — to compose and arrange big band music.

I still remember the first time I put on the CD. I was in the car with my girlfriend at the time, who generally isn’t a big jazz fan. I popped in the CD and the opening bars of Do You Really Think…? blared out of the stereo, a series of banshee wails from the brass. I looked over in apprehension at my girlfriend, but to my surprise and relief, she was digging it.

Soon enough, the music settles down into a major 9th, major 9th flatted 13th vamp. The initial melody is unique in the jazz literature, seemingly inspired by an Irish jig.

Then composer McNeely starts to use the melody as a jumping off point for mutations of the harmony, at first retaining the rhythms of the melody, but soon enough departing into realms unknown.

Guitarist John Scofield, who has been commenting on the proceedings, gradually becomes immersed in a full-blown improvisation. From the sound of his solo, he is following a lead sheet. Scofield doesn’t seem to be constructing a solo, but rather reacting to what’s in front of him.

You can hardly blame him. Do You Really Think…? doesn’t have an A section or a B section like most jazz. It proceeds from a melodic motif and then expands on it, like classical music, except it’s using jazz (and Irish folk music) concepts instead of European classical or European folk music as the source materials.

Eventually, Do You Really Think…? drifts to it’s non-conclusion and Skittish begins. It becomes apparent that East Coast Blow Out is going to be a CD-long suite, and so it goes.

It’s would be hard to overemphasize how advanced and innovative Jim McNeely’s work is on East Coast Blow Out. He has come up with nothing less than a new way to write big band jazz.

John Scofield is predictably fine in his solo work. Other than his tone, which is more full bodied than his 70s work, what he’s doing here reminds me of his early albums with drummer Adam Nussbaum (who is also on East Coast Blow Out) and bassist Steve Swallow, when he was playing in full-on post bop mode. It’s great to hear Scofield play in this style again.

Jim McNeely is no slouch either. He leaves most of the solo space to John Scofield, but when he does venture out, his keyboard improvisations are knotty and challenging. McNeely doesn’t seem to think like most jazz musicians. He doesn’t follow the same old patterns, and that’s refreshing.

East Coast Blow Out is a revelation that shows that there are still plenty of new discoveries to be made in jazz, that not all the great tunes have been written yet. Joe Zawinul, the co-founder of Weather Report, once wrote a tune called Can It Be Done?, which despaired of finding a melody that had never been played. I think he would be delighted with East Coast Blow Out (or maybe green with envy).