Saturday, July 17, 2004

Scofield's Lethargy

I sometimes feel like John Scofield is just plain tired.  His recent straight ahead playing has seemed very sedentary a large part of the time.  A break in the chain of this musical apathy is, surprisingly enough, Uberjam.  His playing on this record has the edge and excitement that is very lacking in other recent recordings like OH! and Works For Me(a pretty inspired title right there).  The most frustrating thing about this is that he is without a doubt one, if not the, best jazz guitarist alive.  Metheny is no longer even considered competition in this field(although he has put out some promising acoustic work recently).  Frisell has reached a greater level of personal artistry, but he is so far out of the tradition of what makes a good jazz player it's hard to say he's a more accomplished guitarist.  Kurt Rosenwinkel is fantastic and i think Sco's closest match, but he is so schizophrenic it's hard to say what the hell he's doing right now without seeing him play live recently.  Adam Rogers is a great jazz guitarist but without the depth of Scofield.  I think he rises to challenges(Joe Henderson's So Near, So Far and  A Go Go with MMW) and thrives on challenges and when he's not challenged it comes out clearly in his playing.

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