It's ironic that The Note should host this leg of Blue Note Records' sixtieth anniversary "New Directions Tour," since there was a contretemps about the club's name when it emerged from the ashes of the Hothouse.
The owners had to relinquish the "Blue" prefix in deference to one of jazzdom's twenty-four karat trademarks. However, the venue at the sharp end of Wicker Park intersection is a prime spot for this streetsmart gig.
Playing devil's advocate, I once described M-Base (the eighties jazz/hiphop/mathmusic fusion devised by Steve Coleman and Greg Osby), with its jittery, odd-metered grooves, as "funk with Parkinson's disease." Such disparagement is water off a duck's back to alto saxist Osby (photo, far left), a man with little patience for the musical taste of the masses: "A lot of people refuse to change or to admit they may have changed their opinion about something they denigrated because they'd have to eat their words. Many jazz fans are wed to the idea of traditional acoustic mainstream music but when you visit their home they've got fifteen remote controls, a microwave oven and digital this and that- they move forward in other aspects of their lives but their musical tastes remain prehistoric."
Osby, who has spent nearly a decade on the Blue Note roster, has never been a top seller but helps maintain its edgy pedigree. Through hindsight, much in the Blue Note vaults can be viewed as meat and potatoes hardbop, ripe for repackaging, but in actuality the hallowed imprint gave breaks to many of the progressives of the day, including Monk, Sam Rivers, Eric Dolphy and Herbie Nichols.
Osby laments the recent trend for record companies to woo fetal talent, young musicians fresh from college who have little experience: "For a while it was getting almost collegiate at Blue Note, innocuous, I could imagine new signees wearing blue sweaters with a big "B" on them." However despite what he describes as his "semi-annual tirades" at the state of play, Osby is at home with a label that allows him to follow his unpredictable muse largely unmolested. Lately Bruce Lundvall's indulgence has been paying critical dividends, since Osby's sultry 1996 CD "Art Forum" received unanimous critical acclaim. This marked a turn toward a less intense acoustic environment after Osby's no-holds-barred commitment to melding his elliptical blowing style with hiphop, collaborating with the Bomb Squad's Eric Sadler and A Tribe Called Quest's Ali Shaheed Muhammed. Osby's latest effort "Banned in New York," is a paradoxically renegade yet ingeniously expedient bit of self-marketing. He managed to supplement his principal studio release of 1998 "Zero" by putting out a live CD, "bootlegged," unceremoniously recorded on a single minidisc recorder. "Steve Coleman and I had been listening to Dean Benedetti's tapes of Charlie Parker, low-fi recordings with lots of environmental noise but they never sound antiseptic."
Osby's morphing propensity stems from cutting his sound with DJs, but despite his desire to roughen production, preplanning remains in his music. He scores compositions meticulously, and on-stage musical divergences are signaled by visual or instrumental cues. Is he a control freak? "No, but there has to be some framework, some blueprint, otherwise it's pure randomization. I would never tell Jason Moran to play like Bud Powell here or Herbie Hancock there, but certain specifics have to be outlined. Writer's accuse me of not having a sense of humor in my music but what is humorous music. Do you laugh when you listen to Miles or Coltrane? What is emotion, holding a high note for five minutes until the audience goes into a frenzy or is it a matter of playing really loud, squeaking and squawking through the horn? I just get tossed up into definitions of what people think this music is."
Though Osby's music can sound subterranean and fiercely contrary - he's like a stickleback on the ocean floor, darting in and out between the cracks, defending territory - he has a sucker punch in reserve ready to woo the most fungal of moldy figs; he can eke out the essence of a ballad.
Though Osby is the senior band member for this gig, Blue Note has also launched the careers of vibraphonist Stefon Harris, pianist Jason Moran and tenor saxist Mark Shim. "We're trying to institute this latterday inner circle reminiscent of the great period of Blue Note when all the cats would play on each others records, collaborate, cohabitate and exchange information which is necessary in lieu of an official scene," says Osby. This fresh brew of Blue Note musicians are hoisted by the otherwise unheralded rhythm section of drummer Nasheet Waits and bassist Taurus Mateen.
(John MacCalkies)
Celebrate Blue Note's 60th Anniversary on Friday, March19 at The Note, 1565 N. Milwaukee, (773)489-0011. 10pm.
copyright 1999 New City Communications, Inc.