'Plugged in'

Listening to Live at the Plugged Nickel over the weekend, I found myself inescapably curious about how an audience might react to such a performance today. (For the historically curious, see this 2016 entry from Adam Melville regarding the whereabouts of the long-since-shuttered Plugged Nickel nightclub in Chicago. Spoiler: It was in Old Town and is now a garden center!). Would they shower it with accolades, as many contemporary and near-contemporary writers did; a reaction amply justified, to be sure? How many would be drawn in to the rich layers of jazz history being gleefully, exhuberantly deconstructed and reconstructed in real time by what were already becoming recognized as leading voices in an emerging ensemble of young artists from the Davis roster that would go on to redefine the boundaries of not only jazz but popular music as well? Would they be along for the ride? 

Or might they be inclined to dismiss it, rejecting its strident unorthodoxy or, so much the worse, merely tolerate it while failing to appreciate its finer virtues?

"too experimental... sort of unfocused... Really good, but some of the solos went on a bit too long..."

Some, perhaps entirely unfamiliar with the contours of mid-century modernism, may suspect that it was the work of borderline amateurs, borderline personalities... possibly even both.

That it is a challenging listen is difficult to deny, if only for the volatile nature of the on-location recording. Glasses clink, cash registers "ching" in the background as club patrons buy drinks and chatter; even the odd wiseguy comment from one of those lucky enough to be in attendance variously interrupt these historic proceedings. And yet, on the stage, genuine magic is unfolding before them. Like a glittering Pandora's Box of panchromatic gloss, the Quintet seemingly spontaneously rearrange the familiar and beloved themes of 20th century standards into the stretched and stylized geometric abstractions of high modernism. A language born of busy urban spaces, catapulting and eccentric mechanical rhythms against a backdrop of tower blocks with antennas and power lines floating, barely anchored, through the shuddering air above the streets, like the razor-thin buttresses of some imaginary cathedral made of electricity and wire. A true 'high wire' act from start to finish.

Maybe Wayne Shorter (RIP) was riffing on the configuration of birds that happened to settle momentarily, like dots on a page, on those high wires strung along the 'El'evated tracks near Sedgewick, or maybe he and the others were channeling the infinite permutations of set theory in material form: a feat usually reserved for  Douglas Adams novels and (presumably) early episodes of Star Trek. Whatever the case, the band cooks every bit as hard as Davis' bop era groups, with a similarly inventive yet substantively distinct improvisational regimen, one based firmly on an abstract expressionist ethos that isn't afraid to throw a bit of paint around in the service of style.

It's such a storied success that it's easy to forget, in this gentrified era, the intense interest radically new and exciting musical developments such as these generated in audiences at the time. When, by now, many similar avenues and new possibilities have been explored, it becomes incumbent to reimagine a radical musical program of similar ambition in the context of our own era. What might that sound like? Once again, would audiences be up for it? I tend to think they would, considering the relentlessly "packaged" cool blaring from every corner of corporate real estate nowadays. Or have today's youth been so bamboozled and propagandized by mainstream media that they just wouldn't tolerate anyone actually improvising on an instrument at them anymore? I certainly hope there is yet room for the practice somewhere in the world, and not only in the service of tradition.