I went to see  a jazz  concert in Evanston a few weeks ago.  The band leader, a sax player, is a high-school friend of a colleague of mine at Kellogg.  The band did a Coltrane tribute.  All jazz players are in awe of Coltrane it seems, and none can escape his gravitational pull.  They also did a few songs of their own that were quite good.  There was little that was really original.  But I still left feeling moved because the sax player played with deep emotion with no hint of self-consciousness or cynicism.  On an extremely cold and snowy night, it left me with a feeling of melancholia that felt just right.

The Bad Plus makes “postmodern” jazz, the reverse of music played by the band in Evanston.  It can be original, very clever, self-knowing and ironic.  It is emotionally detached.  For it to work, all these sarcastic elements have to come together, otherwise you feel bored or disgusted by your own cynicism for listening to the stuff.

This CD is not successful.  Jeff is right – the recording is muddy and the singing swamps everything else.  It belongs in the same category as the Barolo I described below.

One song, a cover of Pink Floyd’s Comfortably Numb, sticks out for me, for a personal reason. I saw it performed by Dar Williams at the Steppenwolf.  I got dragged to the show but in the end I really enjoyed it.  I do like Dar’s songs but I also enjoyed the audience which seemed to be made up largely of lesbian couples.  Apparently, Dar maintained a sexual ambiguity for a few years.  This allowed her to satisfy listeners of all sexual orientations.  (It’s related in some way to paper I have on Saddam’s use of ambiguity about his weapons’ status to prevent escalation of war and also deter enemies at the same time.  The same principle is there but I can’t see the formal connection.)

I know Jeff would like to hang out with more lesbians but  as economists, we never really have the opportunity.  So the Bad Plus took me back to that night and I was happy, till the next song began.