Ich habe diverse Scheiben von Ronald Shannon Jackson. Aber immer wenn ich ihn hören möchte, ziehe ich die Barbeque Dog aus dem Regal, ich kann nicht sagen warum. Scheint so ein unterbewusstes Highlight zu sein. PS: Ronald Shannon Jackson ist nur was für fortgeschrittene Jazzhörer. Nichts für Fußwipper, geht nämlich nicht.
With artists like Ronald Shannon Jackson, sometimes the earlier albums are the most rewarding, with a kind of reckless experimentation allowing the unexpected and the manic energy to overcome any potential weaknesses. Barbeque Dog, from 1983, demonstrates the phenomenon, with the early line-up of the Decoding Society, most importantly, featuring a pre-Living Colour Vernon Reid on guitar, and while these may not be his most iconic or even coherent solos, driven by Jackson’s experimental attempts to merge funk and free jazz, along with the rest of the Decoding Society, the result is an album that is impossible to categorize within jazz, and serves as an object of fascination.
Honestly, it would have been difficult for the group to top the previous year’s Mandance, and Barbeque Dog probably does not manage the task, but to Jackson’s credit, the group also does not merely attempt to recreate the magic of that album. Instead, the 1983 follow-up tries fo move in a more challenging direction, emphasizing the Coleman roots that are always prominent in Jackson’s playing, yet the risk of doing so is that to move too far toward Ornette’s free side is to lose the funk, and even for Ornette, that balance was always hard. Barbeque Dog, then, is a wilder album, a looser album, and a more reckless album that at any moment sounds as though the group is going to come apart at the seams. That they don’t is a testament to the bandleader and their experience together, but that tension itself is part of the point. In order to appreciate the album, one must be able to appreciate the tension that comes from hearing, for example, Reid’s guitar sound as though it is just at the verge of dissolving into noise, which he can use effectively, or Zane Massey sounding as though he might just start squealing a note, loudly and repeatedly, as resolution for lack of any other way to resolve a too wild solo. That they never completely dissolve into chaos, that they never need go down that road, yet feel as though they could, is where the energy comes.
To be sure, this is not James Brown leading the JB Horns on the tightest funk track ever. It is the opposite, to the extent that it can be so, and still be funky. Be careful what you wish for when you give the drummer some. Maceo probably could have played with Jackson, but the Godfather of Soul would not have been happy with what he heard. Ornette would be proud, though.
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