John Scofield "Uberjam" @ Blue Note Tokyo
Saturday, May 30th, 2015
First session, 5.00 to 6.40
First session, 5.00 to 6.40
Uberjam’ members:
John Scofield, lead guitar
Avi Bortnick, guitar & sampler
Louis Cato, drums
Andy Hess, bass
Set List
(not sure if this is perfectly correct, this is Set List for another evening just a few days ago, likely the same, sorry I can't be more accurate)
SNAKE DANCE
CRACKED ICE
NEW JUNGLE (actually, I believe John said 'More jungle', so maybe it was an adaptation? or just new)
POP HO
I BRAKE 4 MONSTER BOOTY (he explained this was from a few years ago, 12 or 13),
LOVE THE MOST
ENDLESS SUMMER
John Scofield, lead guitar
Avi Bortnick, guitar & sampler
Louis Cato, drums
Andy Hess, bass
Set List
(not sure if this is perfectly correct, this is Set List for another evening just a few days ago, likely the same, sorry I can't be more accurate)
SNAKE DANCE
CRACKED ICE
NEW JUNGLE (actually, I believe John said 'More jungle', so maybe it was an adaptation? or just new)
POP HO
I BRAKE 4 MONSTER BOOTY (he explained this was from a few years ago, 12 or 13),
LOVE THE MOST
ENDLESS SUMMER
John Scofield created something new on the stage tonight. He said they were 'new songs', but beyond that, it felt new, like some kind of new way of creating jazz. This was jazz with the borders well and truly pushed back, or jazz irrigated with such diverse influences from other music it had become a new entity altogether. I hadn't expected that. Of course, I've been out of the loop for a long time on John's music. More anon.
Now for a bit of retro background..... (If ya wanna skip this, scroll down to 'Tonight's Gig')
John Sco & moi.
I've been listening to him since the late seventies. I think the first thing I heard was a Billy Cobham album. I remember thinking the guitarist was good but somehow it wasn't quite the heights I was used to, having been weaned on John McLaughlin. Then, I heard him on the great Chet Baker album 'You can't go home again' and was mightily impressed. There was something dynamic and insistent there, and the blues in it had a hard edge. Still, John was evolving. The next time I heard him he sounded like a different guitarist altogether. Now he was confident, and he had developed that hard-edged Blues thing into his signature sound, yet he was shaping round melodies at once beautiful and engaging and melodies fast but complex. Complexity was nothing to him now, a kind of playground where he did more on a fretboard than most people can manage with a fretboard, keyboard and drums in combination. The latter is important because there was a percussive thing going on, or a physical engagement with the guitar that drew you in. It would go hand-in-hand with his performance on stage. Dynamic on the fretboard, dynamic on the stage. Every gut-wrenching lick had its gut-felt pose, and the audience loved it. John Scofield was passionate and he was exciting beyond the normal in the putative arena of jazz. Jazz? Blues? Rock? What it was was a fantastic meld of each and it was all his. John Scofield has created 'John Scofield' as a music category. You don't just listen to it, you experience it.
As I said, I've been out of the loop recently. I did see John many times before. At the North Sea Jazz Festival, for example, at my hometown's Belfast Festival, the Guinness Spot, and, hugely memorably, in Munich, around 1981, not with the trio that made the fantastic 'Out like a light', but with a Charles Adams outfit of kind of experimental but groovy jazz. I can never forget John crinting across the stage, a cigarette hanging from his lips (or, maybe stuck into the headstock of the guitar?). It was pure Chuck Berry. The sound he got from his set-up was electric in the musical sense of the word. At the end of his spine-tingling soloing, he'd be tuning the bass E string down, octaves and octaves... Where was he going? Legs bent, exploring his instrument like a true pioneer. Like a true rocker, or jazzer, whatever it was he was/is.
On that occasion, I was very lucky to have the chance to talk to John between sets. I told him that just a few days before I had seen, with my bro Jim, John McLaughlin's 'Mahavishnu' (with Bill Evans) at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, after which we had run round to Ronnie Scott's and taken front row seats to watch Joe Pass. 'And now I'm here in Munich, watching you!' 'Guitar madness', John quipped. Indeed! (He knew whereof he spoke!)
'Shinola', 'Holidays', 'Techno', whatever. I have always loved his playing and his sound and his passion and rank him as among the very greatest players on the planet. I also sometimes hoped he would be more consistent with his compositions. Some, I felt, would be lacking in something, but, I suppose, I had already pegged him as a pure genius so whatever he played was fine with me.
Now for a bit of retro background..... (If ya wanna skip this, scroll down to 'Tonight's Gig')
John Sco & moi.
I've been listening to him since the late seventies. I think the first thing I heard was a Billy Cobham album. I remember thinking the guitarist was good but somehow it wasn't quite the heights I was used to, having been weaned on John McLaughlin. Then, I heard him on the great Chet Baker album 'You can't go home again' and was mightily impressed. There was something dynamic and insistent there, and the blues in it had a hard edge. Still, John was evolving. The next time I heard him he sounded like a different guitarist altogether. Now he was confident, and he had developed that hard-edged Blues thing into his signature sound, yet he was shaping round melodies at once beautiful and engaging and melodies fast but complex. Complexity was nothing to him now, a kind of playground where he did more on a fretboard than most people can manage with a fretboard, keyboard and drums in combination. The latter is important because there was a percussive thing going on, or a physical engagement with the guitar that drew you in. It would go hand-in-hand with his performance on stage. Dynamic on the fretboard, dynamic on the stage. Every gut-wrenching lick had its gut-felt pose, and the audience loved it. John Scofield was passionate and he was exciting beyond the normal in the putative arena of jazz. Jazz? Blues? Rock? What it was was a fantastic meld of each and it was all his. John Scofield has created 'John Scofield' as a music category. You don't just listen to it, you experience it.
As I said, I've been out of the loop recently. I did see John many times before. At the North Sea Jazz Festival, for example, at my hometown's Belfast Festival, the Guinness Spot, and, hugely memorably, in Munich, around 1981, not with the trio that made the fantastic 'Out like a light', but with a Charles Adams outfit of kind of experimental but groovy jazz. I can never forget John crinting across the stage, a cigarette hanging from his lips (or, maybe stuck into the headstock of the guitar?). It was pure Chuck Berry. The sound he got from his set-up was electric in the musical sense of the word. At the end of his spine-tingling soloing, he'd be tuning the bass E string down, octaves and octaves... Where was he going? Legs bent, exploring his instrument like a true pioneer. Like a true rocker, or jazzer, whatever it was he was/is.
On that occasion, I was very lucky to have the chance to talk to John between sets. I told him that just a few days before I had seen, with my bro Jim, John McLaughlin's 'Mahavishnu' (with Bill Evans) at the Hammersmith Odeon in London, after which we had run round to Ronnie Scott's and taken front row seats to watch Joe Pass. 'And now I'm here in Munich, watching you!' 'Guitar madness', John quipped. Indeed! (He knew whereof he spoke!)
'Shinola', 'Holidays', 'Techno', whatever. I have always loved his playing and his sound and his passion and rank him as among the very greatest players on the planet. I also sometimes hoped he would be more consistent with his compositions. Some, I felt, would be lacking in something, but, I suppose, I had already pegged him as a pure genius so whatever he played was fine with me.
Tonight's gig
I wondered what would be in store tonight. I was, as I said, out of the loop, and had never heard of 'Uberjam', which probably makes me into a complete amateur and the last person to write a report on his music. I hoped we would be treated to just amazing Scofield music, which meant playing of such über-cool that it didn't really matter what the compositions were like. They could simply be a vehicle for his playing. Wow! Was I surprised?!
What we got was Jazz Redivivus. What I mean by that is: for anyone who believes jazz has had its day and we have only reiterations of past glories to entertain us, think again. John Scofield just re-invented the genre. You could say it was 'jazz' because it was happening in a jazz club, and he was playing a jazz guitar, but precisely how we categorize the music is problematic. I knew none of the songs. They were mostly all 'new songs' as John told us a few times. There was the R 'n B thing going on a lot, here and there, but there was also Country n' Western! Reggae! Funk! Surf music! 50s Rock 'n Roll! Heavy Jazz Rock! Ballad! Atonality. Industrial/Ethereal Art-Ensemble-of-Chicago stuff, not to forget good ol' Chicago kick-ass Blues, and then... there was funny stuff too. So funny, I was laughing out loud. John tweaked his notes and tweaked them further with a pedal which stretched the sound out until it became cartoonish. Duck-walk in sound? Playing with playing? And then, as if what John was doing wasn't quite enough the other guitarist, Avi Bortnick, was offering a contrast and complement made in heaven. He was plugged into a Mac, using samples as well as his incredibly ordered picking to counterbalance and offset the physical force of John with his magic and his bag of tricks. In one solo, his sound became increasingly blurred and bassy, like it was melting, or morphing into a different creature. Then, at the moment of greatest weirdness, John bounced back in with some acid-jazz fire from his very ordinary yet extraordinary (because he's holding it) fretboard of wood and metal. Metal? That was there, too. Yet a Metal which didn't need to always race at breakneck speed but rather kept us guessing. John altered the pace of his playing, and the pace of the song, at will, which is a way of making the audience pay attention. It worked!
What we got was Jazz Redivivus. What I mean by that is: for anyone who believes jazz has had its day and we have only reiterations of past glories to entertain us, think again. John Scofield just re-invented the genre. You could say it was 'jazz' because it was happening in a jazz club, and he was playing a jazz guitar, but precisely how we categorize the music is problematic. I knew none of the songs. They were mostly all 'new songs' as John told us a few times. There was the R 'n B thing going on a lot, here and there, but there was also Country n' Western! Reggae! Funk! Surf music! 50s Rock 'n Roll! Heavy Jazz Rock! Ballad! Atonality. Industrial/Ethereal Art-Ensemble-of-Chicago stuff, not to forget good ol' Chicago kick-ass Blues, and then... there was funny stuff too. So funny, I was laughing out loud. John tweaked his notes and tweaked them further with a pedal which stretched the sound out until it became cartoonish. Duck-walk in sound? Playing with playing? And then, as if what John was doing wasn't quite enough the other guitarist, Avi Bortnick, was offering a contrast and complement made in heaven. He was plugged into a Mac, using samples as well as his incredibly ordered picking to counterbalance and offset the physical force of John with his magic and his bag of tricks. In one solo, his sound became increasingly blurred and bassy, like it was melting, or morphing into a different creature. Then, at the moment of greatest weirdness, John bounced back in with some acid-jazz fire from his very ordinary yet extraordinary (because he's holding it) fretboard of wood and metal. Metal? That was there, too. Yet a Metal which didn't need to always race at breakneck speed but rather kept us guessing. John altered the pace of his playing, and the pace of the song, at will, which is a way of making the audience pay attention. It worked!
Each song started out suggesting it would be like this, then it developed into that. 'That' was not a jam. I repeat 'Not a jam'. 'That' was where the players were headed. They had created this architecture of sound, all of them, and it was constantly surprising. I have been listening to John Sco for ages. I know his style and his music. But I was surprised. He has created something new here. This music is new. It does not exist elsewhere. This music is vibrant. This is exciting. This is John Scofield at 63, touring indefatigably, and wowing everyone with his magic. This is new music!
The drummer, Louis Cato, did a solo spot, as part of one song. He could have been Billy Cobham. If I had been given one of those blindfold tests I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Talk about power. Talk about speed. Talk about double-layering? Talk about triple-layering? This guy had it all and he is one of the best drummers I've ever ever seen. And yes, I've seen Billy. Throughout, Louis played fantastically, with passion unbridled, and a timing that was sweet to behold.
The bassist, Andy Hess, did no pyrotechnics that I was aware of. Neither did Rick Laird, of course. Yet, he was solid, and he was working throughout on the plan to bring us into weird sonic/melodic territories, or massively funked-up ones, too. He became particularly useful during one of the strangest episodes, when the melodic, nostalgia-tinged ballady thing that John was working out tremulously sank, little by little, into this Industrial Wasteland ethereal soundscape. The bassist led the way, as though with notes as steps down into the depths of this place I had never before visited in the music of John Sco. And, the rest of the time, the bassist underpinned the funk and the rock 'n roll of it all. (Some of the sounds John made during this, by the way, were startling. Chthonic guttural screams, crossed with sudden high-pitched atonal screams. It was modernist art in sound.)
Words. Too many! Words can't describe music. The point, however, is to impress upon the reader/lover-of-this-kind-of-music (or whatever), that John Scofield is making music that is startling and vibrant and engaging and questioning and questing and at once a journey into the past and at another a journey into the future.
The drummer, Louis Cato, did a solo spot, as part of one song. He could have been Billy Cobham. If I had been given one of those blindfold tests I wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. Talk about power. Talk about speed. Talk about double-layering? Talk about triple-layering? This guy had it all and he is one of the best drummers I've ever ever seen. And yes, I've seen Billy. Throughout, Louis played fantastically, with passion unbridled, and a timing that was sweet to behold.
The bassist, Andy Hess, did no pyrotechnics that I was aware of. Neither did Rick Laird, of course. Yet, he was solid, and he was working throughout on the plan to bring us into weird sonic/melodic territories, or massively funked-up ones, too. He became particularly useful during one of the strangest episodes, when the melodic, nostalgia-tinged ballady thing that John was working out tremulously sank, little by little, into this Industrial Wasteland ethereal soundscape. The bassist led the way, as though with notes as steps down into the depths of this place I had never before visited in the music of John Sco. And, the rest of the time, the bassist underpinned the funk and the rock 'n roll of it all. (Some of the sounds John made during this, by the way, were startling. Chthonic guttural screams, crossed with sudden high-pitched atonal screams. It was modernist art in sound.)
Words. Too many! Words can't describe music. The point, however, is to impress upon the reader/lover-of-this-kind-of-music (or whatever), that John Scofield is making music that is startling and vibrant and engaging and questioning and questing and at once a journey into the past and at another a journey into the future.
Addendum
He didn't play an encore. Despite the crowd clapping in unison for quite a long time after the band had left the stage. When John took a bow with his fellow players I thought I noticed this look on his face which seemed to express exhaustion, or maybe just ecstatic exhilaration. Whatever it was, it told me what I knew already, just confirmed it really, that playing like that had been physically and mentally demanding –no doubt as well as enjoyable, too. He did tell us not simply that many of these songs were new, but that they were challenging for them to play well. Well, it looked effortless, but, when you consider what it means not simply to play jazz -or improvisational- music, you must also know that 'effortless' is not quite the thing to describe it. The band were creating music. That is not an easy feat. These guys are not plodding through tried and trusted formulae, nor are they just jamming. Not even close: they are making music, and doing so by tearing up the textbook of what most people imagine that music to be. They creating art in sound. That has to be demanding.
We saw the first of the two evening sessions. 5pm to 6.40 he played, more or less. Our seats were directly to the left of the stage, and that meant that John often played with his back turned to us, into the group, so to speak. Whenever he did turn round, I drank in the beauty of his inimitable form holding that beauty among guitars, his old Ibanez Artist. We were given the choice beforehand of these seats or seats on the right side of the stage, at similar oblique angle. Had it been that, we would have been looking at the back of the other guitar player and seeing John beyond that. Where we were, we could see him directly at a distance of just about four or five metres. In the first song, soon after he took the stage, he made it clear to the soundman, near us, that he was unhappy about some setting on the gear, maybe the amplifier. Later, he also appeared to show some annoyance, but this time with a smile, at the setting of the microphone, which was sagging low and unable to be put up high. Otherwise, no problems, and he did make sure to say how much he loved being at the Blue Note, and that loved the audience for being so kind. (I actually then shouted out, rather raucously, 'John, you da MAN!', twice, but he didn't visibly fall for my adoring tones.)
There was an earthquake at about 8.30, which would have been thirty minutes before his second session. I wonder did it freak him and the band members out? It was fairly big and long (one minute) –the restaurant I was in at the time swayed, lights, yes, but you could feel the –concrete!- building sway too. I even wondered at one point about making a dash for the exit. Of course, once he took the stage, for what was his last gig in Japan this time round, he would have been making seismic waves of his own. (So, now that I think about it, the restaurant experience was actually the second time I had swayed during the evening!)
I just found out that John didn't realize there was an earthquake. I'm not surprised!!!
We saw the first of the two evening sessions. 5pm to 6.40 he played, more or less. Our seats were directly to the left of the stage, and that meant that John often played with his back turned to us, into the group, so to speak. Whenever he did turn round, I drank in the beauty of his inimitable form holding that beauty among guitars, his old Ibanez Artist. We were given the choice beforehand of these seats or seats on the right side of the stage, at similar oblique angle. Had it been that, we would have been looking at the back of the other guitar player and seeing John beyond that. Where we were, we could see him directly at a distance of just about four or five metres. In the first song, soon after he took the stage, he made it clear to the soundman, near us, that he was unhappy about some setting on the gear, maybe the amplifier. Later, he also appeared to show some annoyance, but this time with a smile, at the setting of the microphone, which was sagging low and unable to be put up high. Otherwise, no problems, and he did make sure to say how much he loved being at the Blue Note, and that loved the audience for being so kind. (I actually then shouted out, rather raucously, 'John, you da MAN!', twice, but he didn't visibly fall for my adoring tones.)
There was an earthquake at about 8.30, which would have been thirty minutes before his second session. I wonder did it freak him and the band members out? It was fairly big and long (one minute) –the restaurant I was in at the time swayed, lights, yes, but you could feel the –concrete!- building sway too. I even wondered at one point about making a dash for the exit. Of course, once he took the stage, for what was his last gig in Japan this time round, he would have been making seismic waves of his own. (So, now that I think about it, the restaurant experience was actually the second time I had swayed during the evening!)
I just found out that John didn't realize there was an earthquake. I'm not surprised!!!
A number of times, John took the mic and introduced members of the band or told us of how much he enjoyed being back at the Blue Note Tokyo. At one point, the audience became very quiet as they strained to catch his every word. 'Very quiet', he quipped. 'I like that. We're so loud, it's nice to have a bit of quiet between songs...' Between songs, or between sonic landscapes of pure wit, wonder and invention. I was in tears at times listening to what they were doing, at others, cracking up at the hilarity they were creating. Usually, however, I was, like everybody else, just boppin' away to the groove that is John Scofield and Uberjam. Just boppin' away, man.
Check John Scofield's Official Website for info on him, his band, his equipment, discography, you name it:
http://www.johnscofield.com/index.htm