Action Figure Party

When I say “rock and jazz fusion” I will forgive you for running for the hills. The blends have over the years been occasionally brilliant, but more often been too simple to be good jazz and too slow to be good rock. Also fucking pretentious as hell. So, so pretentious. And when it isn’t pretentious, it is a jam band, which is a fate worse than death. 2001’s Action Figure Party treads seriously close to all three of those danger zones. The music is largely instrumental, which is kind of a pretentious thing to do. It makes you focus on the music, which can at time stray dangerously into the “look at me! I am going up and down with my note-makers!” territory frequented by jam band musicians.

And yet…and yet. This is a pretty fun little album. The tempo is fast, drawing more from bebop than the cool jazz that is in such cache among the boring yuppie white men that frequent the jazz clubs that are replacing good music venues in America’s city centers. So that is pretty cool. The album is also very much a dub project. Sean Lennon manned the turntables on this album and I have to say I think he did an amazing job. To a great extent it is the dub aspect of this album that keeps it out of jam territory. The final effect is as if they took the recordings from the studio and handed it off to a member of the Avalanches for the final cut.

Oh hey, did I just say Sean Lennon? Of yeah, he’s not the only celebrity guest. In fact the guest musician list is kind of a who’s who of the 2001 era L.A. Music Scene. See, Greg Kurstin, the main musician and songwriter here, is a high power studio musician who had just done substantial work on The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Californication. When he put this pet project together in the wake of his personal band’s demise, people came from miles around. The full list is too long for me to care to copy it, but I basically bought the album because Flea is in the list and I was going through a hero-worshiping phase of my bass practice. His track is pretty fucking badass. Or at least the bass part is. The rest of it kind of struggles to keep up. Ah well. You’ll find a good band one day, Flea, I’m sure of it.

The album art is a key aspect of how I feel about any album, and it has been increasingly neglected by artists. This album is pretty minimal. Due to the long list of guests, much of the booklet is taking up with listing the tracks and noting who played what when. The lyrics for the two songs so blessed are included, which is a plus, and there are some funny pictures of action figures dancing on a roof. Behind the disc tray there is a really douchey picture of Greg Kurstin in a black turtle neck sweater with a tiny keyboard and the thank-yous section. It includes a line thanking Bud “For believing in this vision” which cements the fact that I hate the word “vision” and anyone who uses it. Except for Ophthalmologists.

Anyway, I would recommend this album if you find it somewhere, but it’s probably not worth seeking it out unless you are a jazz fan or think you might be a jazz fan. If you are I would say this is a pretty exciting take on the genre. For the rest of us I would note that jazz has the emotional depth of a damp cloth, and this isn’t really any different. On the other hand I really enjoyed my first listen, and while my second pass has been more critical, the music is really happy and left me in a good mood, which is more than I can say for the blind rage jam bands leave me with.

Tune in tomorrow as I review a jam band.