By Don Allred
Written for another vanished site in '06 (or ‘07? Album released then,
but could have been advance promo), same era as the rest of these,
though here trying to balance for jazz-curious noobs and jaded
geezers, all
of whom might benefit from a fresh fix offered in my collegetown
altweekly seize-the-day filler way (prob at editor's request, after some
Star suddenly cancelled an interview and/or show), while proselytizing
for a lot of good-to-great old music still in 0 danger of overexposure:
Drummer-composer Bobby Previte was already a Niagara Falls-raised
r&b and rock band veteran when he entered SUNY Buffalo in the 70s,
encountering the progressive likes of Lukas Foss, also conceptual chef
John Cage. All of which served him well in late-70s-to-80s New York City,
as he jumped aboard the escalating jazz train Downtown (AKA the
designated maze of arts-prone speculators and high rollers, still
distant enough from academic and other vested interests Uptown)
As technically accomplished as the hard bop revivalist Young Lions
(AKA "Jazz In Suits") and the equally confirmed fusionists,
Previte and cohorts were less or differently concerned with boundaries.
Some of them appeared on Late In The 20th Century:
An Elektra/Nonesuch New Music Sampler, which definitely convey
s a sense of hip, black-clad Late-as-News approaching a shadowy
border in time.
In this zone, Previte was a magnet for (for instance, his site cites)
New Music (no, not New Age!) composer John Adams, the equally
adventurous conductor Michael Tilson-Thomas,
punk jazz guitar exemplar Sonny Sharrock, and Tom Waits.
Twenty-odd years after the advent of the Downtown heyday,
Previte’s latest release, Coalition Of The Willing, is surprisingly fresh,
despite its now-familiar-to-collectors personnel, production elements,
and political implications.
Trumpeter Steve Bernstein, once musical director/wrangler of NYC’s hot, cool
“fake jazz” fashion plates, The Lounge Lizards (remembered by surviving
guitarist Marc Ribot as "a psychotic Boy Scout troop"), is also a key member of
aromatic trumpet-tuba-guitar power trio Spanish Fly and the calmly audacious
Sex Mob, tasty shredders of James Bond motifs, among other keepsakes.
Keeping faith with Previte's mob, Bernstein doesn’t let energy get in the way
of thought or feeling---no stretch, considering the way his dynamic
Diaspora Soul taps the improvisational and emotional resources of klezmer.
Stanton Moore, duet drummer with Previte on several tracks here,
is also a member of New Orleans jam band Galactic, who morphed
to the occasion while backing exiled Algerian rai rocker Rachid Tahid,
on his blistering, defiantly ingenious Made In Medina, along with
producer-guitarist Steve Hillage, of improv-friendly proggers Gong
and subsequent electronica ventures.
(Songlines Magazine reviewer Nigel Williamson considered Made...
to succeed where Unledded, the Jimmy Page-Robert Plant expedition
with North African musicians, ran out of gas.)
Multi-instrumentalist Skerik sticks to subtle sax on Previte's project,
but his more varied work with the sardonically moody Critters Buggin,
especially on their 1998 Bumpa, might be another key precedent to
Coalition of the Willing's approach. Toward the end of Bumpa, t
here’s a sense of looming enclosure, but it’s made to resonate
with deep, flexing, metallic tones.
On Coalition...,, this kind of rebelliously cellular soun
d(with persistently flickering treble added, so it also evokes the
interstellar wake of John McLaughlin’s detouring,
1970-unbound Devotion) sports a political context.
Along with the Iraq War-inspired album title, several tracks,
like “The Ministry Of Truth," reference 1984. Extending Orwellian
treatments just a little further, Previte also sets up "The Ministry of Love."
Still, COTW doesn’t rely on righteously retro stereo rhetoric, or any other
kind of default setting. Stu Cutler adds occasional harmonica, minus bluesy clichés.
Charlie Hunter abstains from his Blue Note albums’ eight-string guitar, and the
effects box that makes him sound like a (so-so) organist.
(Why bother, when an actual organist, the judiciously theatrical Jamie Saft,
is always lurking nearby, and with his own guitar as well.)
Here, Hunter plays a well-fingered six-string Telecaster, and a
twelve-string guitar that sounds nothing like The Byrds:
it chimes like an evil, elegant parody of Big Ben. Meanwhile,
Previte’s lean, hungry beats and bright colors
(keyed by electronic touch pads, plus bits of BP guitar)
continue to find their way through dark, shifting backdrops and corridors.
Coalition of the Willing is a body language thriller, saluting all observers.
(update: This album, and many more by or featuring Bobby Previte, can now be
monitored here:https://bobbyprevite.bandcamp.com/) Don Allred
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