CD/LP/Track Review
The Jinx Motive: Live Bait (2002)
C. Michael Bailey
...wants to know if Gene Harris is playing "Summertime" in Heaven...
Move over, little dog, the big bad dog is movin’ in...
Jinx Motive is a merry band of Berklee graduates who came together to carry jazz into the frontier where Medeski, Martin, & Wood, Phish, Widespread Panic, The String Cheese Incident leave off. Their music is decidedly funky with Jellyroll’s "Spanish Tinge" thrown in with Dan Salyers’ telepathic percussion. Add to this smart, post-nuclear lyrics delivered with the competent vocals of guitarist/vocalist John Howland. Live Bait is the first release by this Boston-based group, recorded live at Club 608 in Somerville, MA. The label, Live Discs , specialize in promoting new music in a concert forum.
This is pungently humid music that grooves, not in any self-indulgent noodling way as Jam Bands often can, but in songs of intelligent lengths that cause no listener fatigue. The band’s elocution is sure and precise, reminiscent of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. The Jinx Motive is the real thing and as conservatory-trained individuals are about as far from the Wynton Marsalis-Julliard crowd as one can get. Shake your groove thang...
For more information, vist www.thejinxmotive.com or http://www.sonancerecords.com/TJM.html .
Track Listing: Rumple; Thought Police; Butterfly Moon; What Would You Do; San Leandro; Revelation; Sunglasses On; Bound; Penuche
Personnel: John Howland
Record Label: Sonance Records | Style: Jam Band
