Perhaps this is overvaluing both rock and Mr. What rock offers is the reinsertion of set patterns into this flux that are worked out-“composed”-in a searching way. The absence of any but the most hackneyed forms amounts to a dissolution of inspiration into cliche.
But for the past couple of years his jazz‐rock albums have sounded like a bunch of sophisticated musicians cranking out facile improvisation in the most bored manner imaginable. I have no special insight into what Herbie Hancock thinks he's doing. The problem seems to be that too many talented but commercially ambitious jazz musicians approach the jazzrock idiom with a withering self‐loathing condescension. Beck's record is interesting is that it seems, for us rock fans, to point toward a way that the essence of rock can channel the vague meanderings of jazz‐rock as it is generally encountered. Forms are more basic (and more easily mastered by the untutored musician) and improvisation is limited to short solos that are usually planned pretty carefully in advance. Rock, although it has evolved its own characteristic sound, has stuck closer to its roots. Even at its outwardly most stale-the “dogged format of theme, solos and theme-jazz allows its players the chance to demonstrate their individual virtuosity. Long ago jazz emancipated itself from simple song‐forms and turned into an improvisatory art. Yet speaking more theoretically-ignoring the admitted differences of training and virtuosity that often do separate the jazz musician from his less refined rock brethren-the real difference between the two styles has to do with set forms versus improvisation.īoth rock and jazz have their roots in the black music of the 19th century: church hymns, brass bands, spirituals and blues. Rock is generally disparaged by jazz buffs as a brutally simplistic form. Beck has come to fame as a rock guitarist, and his work here is anchored in the gritty colors and the formal clarity of the best rock. Especially since the jazz‐rock wave had seemed to be ebbing of late, with much of the vitality in long, extended instrumentals taken over by rock bands (the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead) and even, in a far more formalized way, by disco ensembles.īut what makes the record good also leads one to speculate on the relationship between rock and jazz, and on their fusion in general. This is, at its best, as convincing a jazz‐rock record as has come along in quite some time. JEFF BECK'S new record, “Wired,” is good in itself -so good, that its excellence alone might be worthy of comment.