“When musicians play together, each goes his own way but they meet from time to time.”
– An ancient Cambodian saying
My friend Cavale hated jazz. She told me that repeatedly on our way downtown to catch this jazz show, part of the San Francisco Jazz Festival. The annual festival was unlike any other city event. It ran numerous concerts – big band, swing, be bop, blues, West Coast jazz, etc. – in several different venues throughout the city, spread out in the course of eight months. You had to travel far and wide to get to the next show, but then again you had all the time in the world.
“Did I tell you that I hate jazz?” my friend ribbed me, as we were taking a cab to the venue. Like a broken record, she was.
You see, when it came to jazz, all she thought of were folks like Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, The Andrew Sisters, etc. – her grandfather’s music from the 1940s, the cornball stuff they would play at dances to keep people’s minds off of the war. But Cavale decided to come with me to this show, for the same reason I decided to go: although we have never heard of the band before, we liked its name – The Splatter Trio.
The venue – a conference room near the top of some ritzy hotel – was packed. There were probably 100 hotel chairs on the floor and all were taken. The audience consisted of upper-class couples, dressed to the hilt, drinking white wine and waiting to get their feet a-tappin’, and Cavale and me, a couple of broke bohemians trying to eke out a living in this city.
The Splatter Trio walked onto one side of the room (there was no stage, just a carpeted floor), picked up their instruments, and began performing …
Holy shit! The music equated itself with the traffic from the street below, and each musician played his own specific role in this wonderfully mind-blowing trip. Saxophonist Dave Barrett was the Rahsaan Roland Kirk impersonator, blowing two or three horns at once, even shoving a flute inside the bell of one horn. Guitarist Myles Boisen was the surgeon from Thomas Eakins’ painting “The Gross Clinic,” gutting his double-neck instrument until it squirmed, squealed and screamed for mercy. Drummer Gino Robair was a modern-day Great Wizard of the North, keeping time with random objects he drew out of a bottomless cardboard box next to him; among the objects – a dog’s squeaky toy.
Only guest pianist Myra Melford played the professional, running through jazz and blues chord progressions, struggling to keep the music from completely going off the rails.
By the end of the hour-long show, the crowd dwindled down to seven people. All of us rubberneckers who stayed were glued to our chairs, witnessing this chaos with our eyes, mouths and ears wide open. Cavale was nearly speechless, only muttering over and over, “This is incredible. Oh my god, this is incredible.” Like a broken record, she was.
I myself was hypnotized, wondering where this bumpy ride was going to lead me. Every so often, I was snapped back to reality by the herds of people slamming the exit doors. What, are you kidding me? You guys don’t know what you are missing! I mean, the man is playing a squeaky toy, fer Christ’s sake!
Now that’s what I call jazz! At least the way it should be – a dangerous, breathtaking knife-throwing act in which part of the thrill was that sick thought that someone might get killed.
After that show, I followed plenty of jazz bands throughout San Francisco, seeing what new creations were coming out of their laboratories. This was back in the late 1990s, and my search led me to:
- Mingus Amungus at the top of Coit Tower. The 12-piece ensemble of musicians, singers and dancers blended the music of Charles Mingus and hip-hop into one big bouncing beach ball.
- The nerdy supergroup James T. Kirk at the Up and Down Club. The band, consisting of three guitarists and one drummer, morphed the songs of James Brown (the “James”), Thelonious Monk (the “T”), and Rahsaan Roland Kirk (the “Kirk”). Unfortunately, in order not to get sued by “Star Trek” creator Gene Roddenberry, the band later renamed itself to the less-memorable T.J. Kirk.
- The Broun Fellinis at a house party near Pacific Heights. The three members pounded their music in that small living room so ferociously, they looked like they were going to burn the place down after the party.
Those bands and many other jazz groups were unforgettable, but for me, nothing beat The Splatter Trio. It was true to its name. As one of its members called the music: half-Pollock, half-Peckinpah. Damn right.
The members of The Splatter Trio decided to call it quits in 1997 after playing together for nine years. I guess they were sick of watching people leave during the middle of their set. For their final performance, the trio played to a packed house at the quaint Hotel Utah. This time no one walked out. The audience stuck around until the last note was played, and not only gave the band a standing ovation, but screamed out, “Encore!”
The Splatter Trio’s Myspace page: www.myspace.com/splattertrio
Copyright © 2010 Mark Nishimura
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