It's Jazz Rock Week!
 

Yo meine schöne mensch!

Starting from today, it's jazz rock week on musicbanter. So what is jazz-rock? Well, some use the term as synonymous with fusion. The then highly experimental style fusion was created by Miles Davis and his band in the late 60s when they started playing jazz with rock instrumentation. The most influential Miles Davis fusion album was Bitches Brew recorded in 1970. On this album played many highly influential jazz artists, for example Wayne Shorter and Joe Zawinul who would form Weather Report, Chick Corea who would form Return to Forever and John McLaughlin who would go on to create the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

But, I would argue that jazz rock week isn't the same as fusion week. Perhaps we could regard jazz-rock as jazz on the rockier side of things or rock on the jazzier side of things and consider it a supercategory incorporating whatever as long as the styles mix. Many prog rock bands liked to play around with jazzy sounds, for example many of those from the Canterbury scene, and there's a multitude of other bands and artists like King Crimson, Frank Zappa, Andrew Bird, Screaming Headless Torsos, Soft Machine, Tom Waits and so on that may be worth some special attention this week.

I'll kick it off with a recent favourite of mine and also a homework in our Prog & Fusion Album Club, the song Mirage by french virtuoso violinist Jean-Luc Ponty from his album Enigmatic Ocean from 1977. It has rock instrumentation, rock riff sensibility, traditional time signatures, yet it's jazz and it's excellent. Check out this excellent live version :)

I don't know much about jazz rock, but I always wanted to explore it, especially now after listening to Henry Cow's Leg End for the whole past week (for the Prog Fusion album club). I have a feeling it will appeal to me more than prog rock generally does (although there is many overlapping as I understood).

The opening track of Henry Cow's Leg End Nirvana for Mice might be a good example with saxophones improvisational interplay but with intensity and energy that we usually associate with rock. Those of you more knowledgeable in jazz-rock can tell me if this is a good example. However Teenbeat (Reprise) is maybe an even better example. The first one on the jazzier side and this one on the rockier side.

Wonderful wonderful genre! Although a lot of classic jazz-rock came out in the 70's, great stuff continues to be released even to this day. :D

Frank Zappa has done a lot of jazzy stuff .. Here's an old favourite. :)

Here is my contribution. I think they are great but probably not what you are looking for:

While I've been getting into a lot more jazz in general over this last year thyan I usually would do, jazz-rock is the area I've found slightly more difficult. Still, this song's not only one of the best for me, but also one of the songs that got me into jazzier music on the whole...

Steely Dan
 

Steely Dan is my favorite bands period, let alone one of the best of the best, every album is well done, I like about everything they've done musically.

YouTube - Steely Dan - Don't Take Me Alive (original)

YouTube - Only A Fool Would Say That - Steely Dan

YouTube - Steely Dan-Aja

YouTube - The Fez - Steely Dan

YouTube - Turn That Heartbeat Over Again - Steely Dan

Rikki's Jazz origins.

Horace Silver ~ Song For My Father


Steely Dan ~ Rikki Don't Lose That Number

I love that f*cking album man.