I can't really see you. But I can hear you, I can feel you. Thank you. - Bill Frisell
So Bill Frisell says this at the beginning of his concert 27 January 1991, and then he, Kermit Driscoll, and Joey Baron proceed to play 71 minutes of incredible music. I'll be quoting from some reviews of the
album because, let's face it, it's easier than writing an entire review myself.
For those who don't know, Bill Frisell is a pioneering jazz guitarist.
"Bill Frisell had been working regularly with bassist Kermit Driscoll and drummer Joey Baron for five years when they recorded this concert in Spain in 1991. The familiarity shows in the spontaneity and in the intuitive grasp of every shifting musical gesture."
"Driscoll is a sharply intuitive bassist with a reggae player's feel for silence; Baron punctuates more than he undergirds. As a result, this is largely music without groove. Instead, it hovers and floats overhead like a benevolent thunderstorm, sometimes letting loose rumbling, atonal chaos like 'Crumb' and sometimes emitting bolts of pure electric light such as the utterly charming 'Rag' and the yearning sweetness of 'Throughout.'"
I especially agree with these quotes regarding my favourite moment of the album, tracks 3 and 4. The understanding of space that these men share when improvising is almost unparalleled. There's hardly a second of 'Crumb/No Moe' that contains any conflict--after about three minutes of atonal improvising, they step easily into the bop standard 'No Moe,' each drifting in and out of the melody with perfect grace. This track really showcases the ability of these three men to 'get' one another. It's a special musical relationship that allows one to establish such a free relationship and then follow it with a very structured, incredibly beautiful composition with perfect aplomb.
One of the above reviews quoted calls 'Have a Little Faith in Me' "the emotional centerpiece of the album," but to me, right now, it seems so much more than that. Knowing very little of Bill Frisell's life and career, I feel like I can confidently call it the emotional centerpiece of his life. It's more than a beautiful track: it's a point of blindingly perfect musicianship, an ineffable creation at once spontaneous and structured, a moment that, for five minutes, can change the world. When I listen to this song, I feel like it was created just for me, that everything that had to happen in order for this song to be created, on this night, in this theatre, in front of these people, with these musicians, with these soundmen recording happened so that I could hear it. Bill Frisell had to hear this John Hiatt song, 'Have a Little Faith In Me'; he had to arrange it himself; he had to find Kermit Driscoll and Joey Baron and play with them for years; Frisell had to buck against the tradition of clean jazz guitar; they each had to pick up their instruments in the first place; everyone involved had to be born, so that I could hear this song, right now, over and over again in my room. The purity and near-holiness makes me stop myself from whistling or humming it--I know I can't come close to this rendition. I don't think I could bear to hear his studio recording, or John Hiatt's. This song, to me, right now, is perfection. It cannot be equalled. "This is a very special disc," says one reviewer. These two tracks are a very special twelve minutes, and 'Have a Little Faith In Me' is one of the best, if not the best, song I've ever heard.
