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Arts & Entertainment Preview - May 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 Groovin' Down at Sco's A Go Go The guitarist John Scofield's jazz combines populism and iconoclasm. A member of the 1970s generation, weaned on fusion before bebop, he fills his music with hooks and raunchy blues echoes that always turn unexpected corners. Such diversity was perfect for the Miles Davis band, which featured Scofield in the early 1980s, and has been refined in a series of his own albums that tacks from dance-friendly rhythms on the New Orleans paean Flat Out (Gramavision) and funk summitry with the saxophone innovator Eddie Harris on Hand Jive (Blue Note) to a combustible early-nineties quartet with Joe Lovano and the chamber-music mystique of last year's all-acoustic Quiet (Verve). A Go Go (Verve) brings Scofield back to his basic rhythms and surrounds his maverick guitar lines with the edgy alternative grooves of Medeski Martin and Wood. Because MMW recently signed a contract with Blue Note, the trio's presence isn't made apparent on the album cover, but it deserves co-billing on a program that Scofield clearly fashioned with his collaborators in mind. A slew of deliberate pop echoes are here, such as the "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" quote that gets tipped on its side during "Boozer," and a dash of Twilight Zone atmospherics on "Kubrick." Primarily, though, A Go Go delivers head-shaking adventures, like "Hottentot," that sound determined to take jazz back to its dance-hall roots. --B.B. Blues and Roots Just as new writers are advised to hook the reader on the first page, new bands pretty much have to put the best song near the beginning. Older bands have the luxury of ordering their songs according to a governing aesthetic. Veterans of Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant can record anything they want in any order they want and expect a full and careful listening. Even so, it's odd to hear an album that delivers its five least interesting songs first and then catches fire on the sixth song and sustains the burn through the twelfth and final cut. On Walking Into Clarksdale (Atlantic), Page & Plant, as they are billed, do exactly that and then get possessed by the spirit of Robert Johnson, who came from Clarksdale, and do some of their most inspired work since the seventies. Influenced by Middle Eastern music and the blues, Page & Plant play a unique and eerie hybrid. They used to call their sound "tight but loose" in Led Zeppelin. "Hot but chilling" might be more accurate now. No one in rock-and-roll has ever moaned and wailed like Plant, and he has been most inspired when Page has given him great riffs to moan and wail around. They need each other, and for seven songs here they actually find each other. By today's industry standard, their batting average would put them in contention for a title. The rhythm section of Charlie Jones on bass and Michael Lee on drums hits hard enough to ... well, nobody's going to forget John Paul Jones and John Bonham in their prime. Let's just say the new boys hold their own, and that's enough. --C.M.Y. Love in the Time of Decadence From the underground, Kramer Bassist for the late and much lamented Shockabilly and Bongwater, producer of a zillion semi-underground phenomena, ranging from Galaxie 500 to Butthole Surfers to Penn Jillette (of Penn & Teller), Kramer has one of the coolest résumés a musician could hope for. On his third solo album, Songs From the Pink Death (Knitting Factory Records), he brings his considerable production skills to bear on making his own weirdness -- as opposed to somebody else's -- listenable. And it's very listenable. The tone is mournful but somehow transcendentally surreal. The guitars and drums establish a hypnotic, dirgelike drone, while the euphoniously chanted lyrics search for just the right image of creeping horror to accompany the quest for love in decadent times. "It never stops being absurd," goes the chorus in "It Never Stops Being Absurd," and indeed, it never does. But however overpowering the absurdity, however tempting the sin of self-pity, Kramer doesn't give up, which keeps the album dancing on the edge of nihilism and despair but not falling in, thus creating an aura of existential heroism. On the final cut he declares the secret of life: "It's alright if she don't love you right." For anyone stuck in a dark hole with an unruly attachment to a bad love affair, Kramer is throwing a rope back to life. --C.M.Y. 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.