To be honest, I wanted to be proven wrong, so I resolved to suspend that particular bias for the duration of the concert. I figured, if anyone could concoct an energetic and unique stage performance while retaining the intellectual oomph of good jazz, it would be grandmaster Scofield. Two hours, several yawns and a kindly sleep-thwarting slap from my girlfriend later, I sadly realized he could not.
Don't get me wrong: The music was varied and innovative, full of familiar melodies along with finger-busting solos and genre-bending original compositions. If I actually had been sitting all snuggled up in a comfy chair with a novel at some cafe, I would have been delighted. Unfortunately, I was stuck in an auditorium seat being force-fed ridiculous head bobbing and fish-like facial expressions that vaguely resembled good stage presence.
Basically, Scofield tried much too hard to show that he felt the music. He continually hunched over his guitar, making strange and repeated kissing gestures that did nothing to enhance his performance.
When I closed my eyes and could finally stop concentrating on holding back the laughter, I discovered why he's considered a guitar genius. His skillful control of the instrument's many electronic modifications, the way he combined a variety of sounds into a cohesive package, his use of silence and sudden staccato bursts to give his music immediacy -- all these things proved the critics right. Yet, here was this strange man physically making a fool of himself in front of me. Clearly, Scofield is more suited to a recording studio than a live performance.
The rest of the group didn't help matters. Drummer Bill Stewart looked like he was playing whack-a-mole on cocaine -- sporadically entertaining but, like Scofield, far from convincing. In a strange break from the norm, bassist Larry Grenadier held the group together with the best stage presence of all. He playfully swayed and bopped to the music, enjoying its energy without trivializing it. Everyone else was just plain boring to watch: The three "ScoHorns" actually made it look like lifting their instruments when they were required to play was an inconvenience.
Jazz enthusiasts may wonder why I'm placing so much emphasis on stage presence. It is, after all, the musical complexity and originality that make the genre great. Normally I would agree, but I have a very hard time taking music seriously while having to choke back laughter at the onstage antics.
That said, this band excels at making music. As instrumentalists, they clearly have the skill to handle challenging and fast-paced songs -- especially Grenadier and Scofield. But their real strength lies in the genre-shattering variability of their music. Far from being just another jazz band, Scofield and friends incorporate country, folk, chamber jazz, classic rock, funk and electronica into a convincing soundscape, often within the same song.
"I'm not copying any one person, I'm copying everybody," Scofield said of his diverse repertoire after the show.
I believe it. There were simply too many themes and musical traditions mixed together in Scofield's performance to cite a particular one as the inspiration behind it all. That tangled mess of patterns made for a mind-bending experience. The music forces you to think; it tears out old conceptions of genre boundaries and replaces them with this fuzzy vision of what raw music can be.
The highlight of the show was a melody-heavy segment in which a country western tune was jazzed up with blues, then twisted into an amazing country/electro-funk hybrid before settling back into twangy blues. Unlike most jazz, it generated very precise imagery: a peaceful autumn walk through swaying wheat fields, then a trip to a sad, sleepy saloon into which a gun-toting posse of underdressed go-go dancers suddenly burst. Yes, that was honestly my stream of consciousness. Make of it what you will.
The John Scofield Trio and the ScoHorns were terrible performers and amazing musicians. Despite their sometimes sleepy, sometimes creepy stage presence, the tremendous musical intelligence and versatility of the group ultimately won out.
