Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats (33 1/3) by Drew Daniel Read Free Book Online Page B

was your relationship to funk and jazz as genres? Because I could see people saying that live you were—a bit—related to jazz ideas about form, and that there were elements of funk in your approach to both programming rhythms, and to the meaning of “funk” as something nasty.
    Cosey: But “being funky” at that time had turned into
Shaft
kind of stuff, that kitschy funky stuff going
wah wah wah
. [imitates chickenscratch guitar riff]
    Drew: But listen to that bassline on “Tanith.” I mean, that
is
wah bass.
    Chris: With the whole “20 Jazz Funk Greats” song, me and Sleazy had a lot of influence on how that track came about. With the synth that sounds like a guitar, that’s Sleazy and I both playing parts on that thing.
    Drew: Are you both on the same synth and adjusting different parameters?
    Chris: No, actually it’s two different synths and he’s doing one and I’m doing another.
    Drew: The same one that is playing the bassline on “20 Jazz Funk Greats”?
    Chris: Yeah, the modular system.
    Drew: How do you do the fast little fill, the “dooda-dooda-dooda-dooda” part?
    Chris: Adjusting the speed of the sequencer; you could also adjust the step, shortening or lengthening the step by feeding the CV out back into the CV in. It had two channels running down, and you could use one for pitch and one for gate time.
    Drew: Cosey, you’re playing cornet; what is Gen up to?
    Chris: That’s just the three of us on that one.
    Drew: You don’t see any link between jazz and your playing there? Or are you deliberately trying to be somewhat “jazzy”?
    Chris: Sleazy and I both . . . don’t mind jazz. There’s some jazz I quite like, but Cosey hates all jazz.
    Cosey: No, I hate free-form jazz; all it is is a battle for one person to be the star. But I like jazz that’s melodic, where you’re playing together, not against one another, getting a cool thing, getting a mood.
    Drew: What’s your history with the cornet?
    Cosey: Nothing. My history is Sleazy not being able toblow it and get a note. Him saying, “Would you do it? All I get is a fart. I dare not blow into it because I’ll look silly.” So I said I’ll try and I got a note straight away. I quite liked it. I still love playing it now; I love it.
    Chris: You got really good over the years.
    Cosey: I get a bit pissed off because when we go onstage Gen’s got his lipstick on and I can’t wear it because it’ll get smeared all over from the cornet. I end up with stinging numb lips.
    Chris: Gen’s got this habit, as soon as he sees you pick up your cornet he goes to the microphone.
    Both anachronistic and forward-looking, the numbed, askew jazz funk Throbbing Gristle delivered to their fans in 1979 was untimely in several senses. Jazz funk as a commercially credible genre had arguably peaked financially and artistically six years earlier with Herbie Hancock’s 1973
Head Hunters
LP, the withering ARP Odyssey synthesizer solos of which were oft imitated in the wake of the album’s astonishing status as the greatest selling jazz LP of all time. But by the close of the seventies, Hancock’s potent combination of extended solos, synth freakouts, funk rhythms and pop hooks had ossified into a new cliché as this mutant strain of crossbred genres was decisively watered down and smoothed out by an army of studio hack clones. With the quasi-academic fussiness of jazz fusion degenerating into an arms race mentality of chops-heavy technical playing, and Chuck Mangione’s “Feels So Good” waiting in the wings to provide a suitably Jacuzzi-ready soundtrack to usher out the Me Decade, jazz funk was still ringing the cash register, but wasn’t actually such a funky proposition anymore. As funk scholar Ricky Vincent puts it,“By 1977 the jazz-funk field had thinned out, as a new flavor of over-the-top pop jazz was going strong, led by the likes of George Benson and Chuck Mangione” (Vincent, p. 146). What began with the anarchistic and interstellar