((Father Figures)) Band Profile and Upcoming New York City Concerts - Oh My Rockness

I love (good) jazz*. So I’m in luck. Because that’s what Father Figure play. I love when that happens. But wait. You don’t have to like jazz to like Father Figures. I mean, it probably helps a little if you do. But hey, people have overcome more with less. How about that guy who wrote a memoir simply by blinking his eye?

(*the background music you hear at cocktail parties and in hotel lobbies AIN’T jazz, yo)

Brooklyn’s Father Figures have been a band for a few years now but I was just introduced to them only recently. So maybe I’m a bit behind. But liking bands ISN’T A RACE, GUYS. It’s never too late to start in on more goodness. Hell, I just got into jazz fairly recently. That means I was behind that, like, 100 years! Remember. You don’t have to win. You just have to play. Will you remember that? Shh. Say no more. That’s a deal. Let’s move on.

2 saxophones. 1 keyboard. 1 stand-up bass. 1 drum kit. That’s what you’re going to get when you see Father Figures navigate this epic journey through the space time continuum of improvised sonic exploration (also called jazz, man). They make the kind of feverish jazz that people who don’t necessarily like jazz could still get into...if such monsters exist.

Father Figures get all nice and math-y with those weird rhythms that go all over the place. And that’s where the whole “you don’t necessarily need to be a jazz lover to love this” thing comes in. Father Figures have just as much in common with, say, the old math-punk pioneers Don Caballero than they do with old John Coltrane. But Don Caballero probably wouldn’t even have existed without Coltrane and his contemporaries doing what they were doing first, so.....

You see? It all comes back to jazz. Cocktail party background music?! Accompaniment for when you get your room key and complimentary warm chocolate cookie? The soundtrack to one of those late night too-too-sexy movies on Skinemax where the silk curtains flutter as the two lovers investigate each other’s too-too sexy bodies in the privacy of their warmly lit cabana complete with multiple-camera setup? THAT AIN’T JAZZ, YO.

(PS if you like Father Figures - consider getting into what Rafiq Bhatia’s doing too) (also consider getting into John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Dexter Gordon, Thelonious Monk, Bill Evans, Chet Baker, Lester Young, and the list just goes on and and on as the seasons they go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round)

Published May 1, 2013
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