Just the Facts
(Unusually for DTM, all three TBP members have vetted and contributed to the following post. Also, deep thanks to all the fans that write in and say the originals are the best things on our records; you can skip this one.)
TBP got a lot of press for PROG in the UK this past summer. A lot of the reviews were great, some of them were mixed, and there were a couple of solid drubbings. This is all normal, but a high percentage of the reviews seized on an "snarky" angle that mystifies us.
"Some think the joke is wearing a bit thin with the Bad Plus, the trio with a penchant for playing 'ironic' cover versions." -- Metro
"Once you've got past the jokey covers, it's difficult to say what the point of this Minnesota piano trio is." -- The Independent on Sunday
"…A subversive US group whose jazz stylings seemed calculated to send up the genre…too clever by even more than half." -- Evening Standard
"…the musical jokes are wearing a bit thin…" -- Mojo
"…Isn't it time to put the clever-clogs stuff on hold for a bit? ….they risk being like that party bore with the flashing bow-tie and shouting, 'I'm a laugh, I am.'" -- Birmingham Post
"…their new album takes their approach further towards gleeful parody." -- Coventry Evening Telegraph
"…as much macabre burlesque as it is a piano trio…" -- The Independent
"…tired of the group's ironies…" -- The Times
"…a slapstick version of E.S.T…" -- Manchester Evening News
"There's something awfully knowing about their arrangements…" -- The Sunday Times
First off, before we begin, we just want to thank every writer that has praised or panned us. It is very hard for any improvising instrumental band to get press, period. We bear no ill-will toward any of the above critics.
However, these 10 quotes illustrate a basic misapprehension about the band, which is that we play the covers as a joke or in a non-serious way. This is not true. We are serious about all the music we play, the covers included.
They are NOT a joke.
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Since Louis Armstrong, there has been a tradition of playing covers in jazz. Of course, they aren't called "covers," they are called "standards," but the principle is exactly the same: you take some popular song of the day and improvise on it. (Before jazz, classical composers would make variations on famous opera arias. It's too bad we don't have a recording of Mozart, Beethoven, or Liszt improvising on the latest hit song at a party.)
In common parlance, "standards" are songs from Broadway, Tin Pan Alley, or Hollywood from about 1920 to 1965. This is a wonderful body of music created by high-level composers occasionally touched by real genius. When jazz musicians play a standard, they usually take the melody and a simplified harmonic sketch of the original and weave elaborate variations on its structure. This can be sublime and far greater than the original.
(But not always! At any mid-level jam session in the world, the band will immediately sound better playing something the horns HAVE to play accurately, like a bebop head, than on favorite session standards like "What Is This Thing Called Love," "The Way You Look Tonight," or (horror) "Have You Met Miss Jones." Somehow the standards allow for limp and directionless noodling during the melody. This noodling is one of the major problems with amateur-level jazz playing. Cole Porter, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Richard Rodgers, Gershwin, etc, are worthy of serious consideration, not just casual appropriation. Miles Davis, Keith Jarrett, and Sonny Rollins are three artists who can play the melody of a standard with casual improvised beauty, but despite the claim of the fake book at the top, it's not that easy to do.)
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With the rare exception, TBP doesn't choose to improvise on music written from 1920 to 1965. Instead, we find it really interesting to search for ways to make rock, pop and electronica songs vehicles for contemporary improvisation. One reason that this material is not "standard" is that you can't call "Iron Man" at a jam session and pull off a mediocre interpretation of it the way you can with "All the Things You Are." There simply isn't a common language for it.
But just because the non-original songs we play can't be called at a jam session isn't the reason 10 English critics think it's a joke. Why do they think it is a joke? There are two possible reasons:
A) The original music itself is a joke: in other words, Nirvana, Blondie, Aphex Twin, ABBA, Neil Young, The Police, David Bowie, Burt Bacharach, Tears for Fears, Black Sabbath, Pixies, Vangelis, Rush, Led Zeppelin, Queen, Radiohead, Bjork, The Bee Gees, and Interpol is just inferior and not at the level of Tin Pan Alley, Broadway, and Hollywood. Implied is the phrase "rock is not worthy of the jazz tradition."
B) The way we play the covers appears like parody or at least highly ironic.
Both are wrong.
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As far as A) goes, let's compare the lyrics to Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Surrey With A Fringe on Top" (played by at least 10,000 jazz musicians, including a fantastic version by McCoy Tyner) with Bowie's "Life on Mars."
The Surrey With a Fringe on Top
Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry
When I take you out in the surrey
When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top
Watch the fringe and see how it flutters
When I drive them high steppin’ strutters
Nosey pokes will peek thru their shutters and their eyes will pop
The wheels are yeller, the upholstery’s brown
The dashboard’s genuine leather
With isinglass curtain’s you can roll right down in case there’s a change in the weather
Two bright sidelights winking and blinking
Ain’t no finer rig I’m a thinking
You can keep your rig if you thinking that I’d keer to swap
Fer that shiny surrey with the fringe on the top!
Life on Mars?
It's a God awful small affair
To the girl with the mousy hair,
But her mummy is yelling, "No!"
And her daddy has told her to go,
But her friend is nowhere to be seen.
Now she walks through her sunken dream
To the seats with the clearest view
And she's hooked to the silver screen,
But the film is sadd'ning bore
For she's lived it ten times or more.
She could spit in the eyes of fools
As they ask her to focus on
Sailors
Fighting in the dance hall.
Oh man!
Look at those cavemen go.
It's the freakiest show.
Take a look at the lawman
Beating up the wrong guy.
Oh man!
Wonder if he'll ever know
He's in the best selling show.
Is there life on Mars?
We're not claiming that all the rock songs we cover have lyrics as profound as Bowie's, but we do declare the lyrics of ANY of our cover pieces more relevant to the current human condition than "Surrey With a Fringe on Top." (Even apart from the lyrics, which is the better piece of music, "Surrey" or "Mars," anyway?)
We love all the original versions of the music that we cover, and would rather listen to good rock than much of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley. It's also what we grew up with and still surrounds us every day. We believe that artists should utilize their life experience, not turn their back on it.
Next, B), irony/parody/joke.
It follows that if TBP loves these songs, we love playing them. As far as irony goes, let's dismiss our versions of Nirvana, Bowie, Aphex Twin, and Pixies right now: there is nothing but respect in our reworkings of them. But at least three of our covers could generate confusion: "Tom Sawyer," "Iron Man," and "(Theme from) Chariots of Fire." Until you hear us play those three pieces, it is fair to think we are being totally ironic.
Tom Sawyer. Rush is unsexy and Ayn Randian. (The lyrics to "Tom Sawyer" are an easy target.) But Rush is also feel-good music: when this song comes on the radio, even girls like it. And we respect Rush for creating a universe with their bare hands, carving out their Monstrous Math Rock from the granite quarries of Toronto. There is also an intimate connection between TBP and Rush, since Reid Anderson and Dave King bonded over them when they first met. Face it: whatever you dig at 13, you will dig for the rest of your life. (See also this post for more of Dave on Neil Peart.)
Iron Man. OK, this is a pretty weird choice: Science fiction lyrics (He was turned to steel/In the great magnetic field/Where he traveled time/For the future of mankind) and the original Birmingham headbangers. Look, though, that is a powerful riff. When we kick this song, we AREN'T JOKING. We really try to bring the doom with just our poor little acoustic instruments. Our earnestness was rewarded with the ultimate compliment: Geezer Butler put our "Iron Man" on the Black Sabbath iTunes "celebrity playlist" with the comment, "Has to be the most original cover version of any song ever! Saw them at the Knitting Factory in L.A. -- mind-blowing!"
(Theme from) Chariots of Fire. Choosing to play this song is unquestionably ironic, especially if you check out Vangelis' original video, one of the corniest things ever made. But there is more than meets the eye here. First of all, this was one of Ethan's showpieces when he was 11. He loved it then and he loves it now. Also, it IS really a good tune. Soho the Dog just wrote about it:
"If you're a really honest composer, then you know that the question isn't so much whether or not you'd give up a body part to write an earworm as indelible as the theme from Chariots of Fire, but rather, how many, and which ones."
Finally, our exploration of "Chariots" is an embrace of grand drama to express complex emotions. After the blackest, most dissonant free jazz we can play, the tune rises at the end in a mighty crescendo. The feeling is "WE CAN WIN!" There is no irony in this feeling. It's one of those moments where you can put a lot of people together on the same page: We remember an outdoor performance of "Chariots" in Prospect Park for several thousand people that went particularly well. The massive roar of the crowd afterward was not "that was a successful snark, guys!" but one of pure joy.
Irony -- and its allies: surrealism, sardonicism, and dementia -- do occasionally play roles in our music, just as it does in the work of many artists we admire. Consider some famous performances of jazz standards: What is more ironic than Thelonious Monk's "Just a Gigolo?" What is more surreal than Duke Ellington's trio version of "Summertime?" What is more sardonic than Charlie Parker's quote of "Country Gardens" at the end of many ballads? And what is more demented than Django Bates' "New York, New York?"
But just like with those artists, irony is just a small part of the story in The Bad Plus. Here's our real story: We love songs. We believe in the power of song. We write songs as well as we can. There is not anything in TBP's repertory that is not based on melody, originals included. Thinking that we are not serious about the melodies we play is incorrect.
Once, a very straight-ahead jazz player came up to us after a gig and said, "You know, I'm surprised! 'Heart of Glass' is actually a good song!" Hell yeah it is.
