Steps Ahead - Steps Ahead

Sep

6

Steps Ahead - Steps Ahead

≡ Category: 1980s, Fusion, Highly Recommended, Music Reviews |
≅ Written by: Michael Kydonieus

JAZZBO NOTES HIGHLY RECOMMENDED RECORDING

Rating:

Back in the early 80s, Steps Ahead was probably the most forward looking jazz unit of it’s time. Composed of jazz players and studio cats out of New York City (with the notable exception of Brazilian pianist Eliane Elias), Steps Ahead forged a new sound out of pop elements, acoustic jazz, and R&B.

The altered chords that open Pools are a case in point. They use a rare combination of a dominant chord with minor 9th 13th followed by a minor 7th suspended 9th chord. That’s very rich harmony for such a poppy, R&B inflected tune. The initial melody is carried by Eddy Gomez on bass. Mike Mainieri’s vibes lend the tune a candy coated flavor, but make no mistake, there’s some seriously complex harmonic and rhythmic stuff going on here. When Michael Brecker starts his saxophone solo, it’s so effortless and has so many R&B touches, that you might fail to notice that he’s employing chord substitution techniques like crazy.

Most of the remaining tunes are variations on the pop/R&B/jazz theme, with one exception.

Trio, which closes the album, is a full-on free jazz improvisation. The challenge for the players is to incorporate the sensibility they’ve been striving for on the rest of the album in a free jazz context. Amazingly, they sort of manage it by strenously avoiding post bop cliches and by doing some heavy duty listening to one another. It’s a ballsy way to end a recording that was trying to bridge the gap between popular music and jazz.

Part of the problem for me in reviewing the debut recording of Steps Ahead is that I’ve probably heard it over a hundred times at this point. There’s the danger that I might take it’s achievements for granted and give this recording a lower rating than it deserves. I’m not sure if I succeeded, but I’ve managed to distance myself enough to acknowledge that Steps Ahead is a brilliant attempt to bring jazz back into the popular mainstream without compromising it’s intellectual complexity one iota.

In later recordings, Steps Ahead moved even further in the direction of pop music, eventually watering their sound down so much that they lost artistic relevance. But Steps Ahead is a terrific record, one of the best in that horrifying period of jazz history when self-appointed cultural guardians like Wynton Marsalis held sway.