“Jazz Rock was not exactly invented by Miles Davis, but it may as well have been.” - Lester Bangs.
If you wear ‘the Phish badge’, you were either one of the cool kids in high school or the tragically lame, depending on what ‘medications’ you took. Both a compliment and an insult to be part of the neo-hippy movement, and not quite fair to TAUK, Sun Ra and John Zorn are equally valid members of the group as well. TAUK draws from a sizable musical palette (rock, jazz, funk, and fusion) and like Phish , TAUK uses clever and sometimes esoteric humor as part of the mix. Along the lines of those forebears, their music can be intellectually-stimulating one moment, ponderous and blundering the next. But there’s one sure thing about these five musicians, they truly live to jam- they even go off on improvisations via be bop style trading-fours at their concerts. But outside performance settings, TAUK can flounder as easily as they can float, not capturing their live act correctly on tape yet. (I would like to see these guys dusted out of their brains in the studio next record, edging away from the mainstream four-minute track theory, and move into Herbie Hancock “Head Hunters” territory)
Love em or leave em, you have to give TAUK credit- they have quietly gathered one of the largest and most devoted followings of any band of the 21st century. Of this new scene of Blind Melon- “Why did Shannon Hoon have to die?” fanatics, the quintet made their mark, instantly engaging ‘the new born children of the Dead’, heavy on analog keyboard solos and eclecticism self-marketed via a grassroots stew of persistent touring, mailing lists, college circuit awareness, blah blah blah...
When Jerry Garcia died in 1995, everybody put their money on Phish to carry the torch in the new-Dead-lottery.
Who will roll the next torch?
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