POP MUSIC - METAL JAZZ - Fast, difficult, improvised. At the outer limits, there's actually a common thread.
THE most famous riff in rock is the 3 1/2 -chord skull buster that stalks Deep Purple's 1972 "Smoke on the Water" -- a branding moment in the infancy of heavy metal. And as Deep Purple's set at last year's Montreux Jazz Festival (recently documented on DVD) climbed to its climax, the customers stood waiting for that coup de grace.
Then it came. Sort of. Goateed Don Airey tinkled a sprightly mutation of the "Smoke" melody on piano. Slouching barfly Ian Paice swung his drumsticks into an up-tempo shuffle. Hot-cha, y'all! Fire in the sky!
The band jammed for more than two minutes, but there were no cheers of recognition and delight; the crowd was clearly stunned. So when Steve Morse truncated a blues guitar solo and smashed into the classic dut-dut-dahhh, the thunderous relief that burst from thousands of throats came off like a Pentecostal affirmation. But Deep Purple's little gag shouldn't have been such a shock; heavy metal and jazz have been sipping quite a bit of lemonade on the veranda together lately. Bopsters used to disdain metal as kid stuff; metal dudes thought jazz was for geeks. But both forms -- and forms ain't as pure as they used to be -- tend to make huge technical demands, challenging the outer limits of fingers and mind.
And musicians love a challenge, whether it's traversing the migraine mutations of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," cracking the next level of the Quake video game or sniffing out a new audience by combining styles.
In 2005, Judith Owen, a leading light of eclectic modern balladry, essayed her own Scotch-scented lounge version of "Smoke on the Water." The previous year saw the new-generation Midwestern jazz trio the Bad Plus expanding on Black Sabbath's 1970 metal girder "Iron Man." Dave Lombardo, drummer for thrash-metal progenitors Slayer, has made records with DJ Spooky on the New York avant-jazz scene.
One night in Los Angeles, Jeff Kollman sweats out rampaging, riff-heavy improvisational guitar at Studio City's longtime fusion hangout the Baked Potato; another night he's smelting funk-metal at the Whisky with former Deep Purple bassist-singer Glenn Hughes. Chris Poland spent a good hunk of the '80s (and more recently) ripping guitar alongside Dave Mustaine in the melodic thrash-metal outfit Megadeth; he can also be found at the Baked Potato fronting his space-fusion trio, Ohm.
