Return to the December 1998 A&E Preview Cover

Arts & Entertainment Preview - December 1998 B Y   B O B   B L U M E N T H A L   &   C H A R L E S   M.   Y O U N G Unhappily Ever After King Missile III, the latest version of King Missile, both returns and debuts with Failure (Shimmy Disc). What returns is front man John S. Hall, a performance artist who ruminates on the oddest topics. What debuts is various backup musicians, culled from New York's "downtown" scene, playing an assortment of percussion, violins, cellos, and electronic gadgets. So this is not your typical rock band with a vocalist shrieking to be heard over the guitar wash and cymbal crashes. This is a comedian-philosopher talking over musical weirdness. You can't dance or bang your head to it. You can only listen, in which case you may well laugh. The title track, a satire on the self-help and New Age shelves at Barnes & Noble, resonates especially well in this era of scandal, hysteria, and financial collapse: "Failure wants you to be proud of your lack of accomplishments/Failure wants you to own your own incompetence." The power of negative thinking emerges as a motif ("Darkness and misery, like two little birdies/Flying and fluttering round my head/Flapping their wings like relentless anguish/Singing sweet tweety songs of despair and futility") but is far from Hall's only concern. He wishes he could chant like a Tibetan monk who can hit two notes simultaneously, "because God really sits up and takes notice when you sing chords," and he tells stories with incredibly unhappy endings, like "The Little Sandwich That Got a Guilt Complex Because He Was the Sole Survivor of a Horrible Bus Crash." In 'Gay/Not Gay" he gleefully stomps on all gender delineation, and what else do you need from an album? Some of the language is gamey, but so is the front page of The New York Times these days. --C.M.Y. Out of the Mouths of Bæbes They call themselves Mediæval Bæbes, a fine joke and maybe even a good marketing ploy for their album, Salva Nos (Virgin). The music is indeed medieval, and the twelve people singing it are indeed, well, babes. The music is not, however, a joke. It is beautiful and ancient and completely serious and possessed of a certain juice that probably derives from the fact that the twelve babes include dancers and systems analysts and former members of Miranda Sex Garden, a band that also explored the old in search of the new. Mediæval Bæbes In other words, this isn't just a dry exercise in academic musico-archaeology. The Bæbes mix the sacred and profane traditions, they mix Latin and Middle English and French, with rock-and-roll freedom and without ever straying far from the fourteenth century. Many of the songs are a capella, highlighting the unique energy that emanates from same-sex choirs. On the rest the instrumentation is simple and stark, relying mostly on percussion with highlights from the occasional recorder, dulcimer, or hurdy-gurdy, somewhat reminiscent of Carl Orff (another modern medievalist) in its drive. You can hear the Mediæval Bæbes on the soundtrack of the movie Elizabeth as well. --C.M.Y. Party Arty Art Ensemble of Chicago trumpeter Lester Bowie once remarked that he would not play "People in Sorrow," the AECs 1969 masterpiece of spontaneous form and hushed-to-hectoring collective improvisation, at a party. The new Coming Home Jamaïca (Atlantic), in contrast, should be a partygoer's delight. Bowie's point -- that music serves diverse purposes -- is borne out by this infectious, often danceable collection from a band that has spent more than three decades emphasizing its first name. Originally the Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble, featuring Mitchell on saxophone, Malachi Favors on bass, and Bowie, the group became the Art Ensemble of Chicago after an early European sojourn, when Famoudou Don Moye's drums were added. The AEC has always bent jazz structure and sonority with avant-garde zeal plus a flair for history, theatricality, and humor. Jamaïca achieves these with a more populist veneer that highlights the strengths of each member. Opening salvos of R&B and reggae are propelled by the earth-moving force of Favors's bass lines and the crisp, fluent range of percussion commanded by Moye. Bowie emerges as the music progresses, alternately buffing and smudging phrases with one of the most expressive trumpet sounds in history, moving almost surreptitiously into the abstract realm where the soprano sax of Mitchell, the band's guiding theorist, uncovers the conjunction of lyricism and angularity; then the beat returns, and the band struts out. No wonder the Art Ensemble of Chicago, ignored by record companies for most of the nineties, remains one of jazz's most celebrated units. --B.B. Bob Blumenthal is a jazz critic for The Boston Globe. Charles M. Young reviews popular music for Playboy, Musician, and other publications. Go to ... Copyright © 1998 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. All rights reserved.