the Bad Plus - Barbican

"We're a kind of British covers band," says Ethan Iverson, the commanding pianist of the Bad Plus, before launching into a jazz trio version of Black Sabbath's The Iron Man. Earlier, as well as their own material, they had performed a cover of the Aphex Twin tune Flim, whose nursery rhyme charm was offset by David King's agitated improv on drums and percussion - an interesting analogy to electronica's angsty soundworld. The group, completed by bassist Reid Anderson, plays together tightly with a grungy, contemporary feel - like an uglier version of EST or the Bojan Z trio. King is a constant source of fascination, similar to drummers Jim Black and Paul Clarvis in the way that he maintains a percussive "running commentary", throughout the most unlikely juxtapositions. He can rock out (as he does for Big Eater and the choruses of The Iron Man) and clamber right down to whispery, barely audible percussion at the drop of a bad hat.

Do your sums / Die like a dog / Play for home
Chevey Pianata
1972 Bronze Medallist
Flim
Iron Man 

PART 1	PART 2
PART 3	PART 4
PART 5	PART 6
PART 7
PART 8

SOURCE	TVB	SND-VIDEO QUALITY	A+	FORMAT	Xvid	BITRATE	see below	TRACKS #	7
LOCATION / VENUE		London		Barbican		DATE		11–03
NOTES:		Lineage: DVB>VHS>DVD-samsung DVD recorder– Sony vegas Xdvd. It is an half hour concert but I ripped it to the highest quality. Video:      DivX, 720x540,3600 Kbits/sec, 25 Frames/sec – Audio:      MPEG Layer 2,192 Kbits/sec, 16 bit Stereo, 48 kHz. I am usually not into video because of the size and the numerous links. This show is so great that it really worth the exeption.

the Bad Plus - Calculated eclecticism

Mixing classical music, free jazz and legendary pop songs, the Bad Plus display an irresistible impetuosity, and no hint of calculating eclecticism. The group's regular fans cheer the opening bars of familiar pieces, but they cheer its tumultuous journeys into improv outlands, too. Both kinds of acclaim were fervently expressed on the trio's single London performance at the end of a three-date trip to the UK.
With last year's Prog album, the group's original composing took a leap forward. Their current repertoire combines memorable pieces from that set - such as bassist Reid Anderson's hypnotic slow-burner Giant - with more contemporary-classical elements, such as unceremonious adaptations of pieces by Stravinsky and Ligeti. Tonight's opener was a lyrical Stravinsky miniature, given a baroque gleam by pianist Ethan Iverson's trills and grace notes, and a fitful, punky brutality by Dave King's free-percussion bursts. Jagged funk came hard on its heels in the two King pieces that followed: a tiptoeing episode of soft, high bass flutters and delicate piano trickles preceded a choppy feature in which Iverson's lengthening lines increasingly ran at odds to the beat.
Iverson's Old Money began with bursts of busy melody and turned into a mercurial stream of piano improv over King's racing pulse, while Reid Anderson's Silence Is the Question swelled from quietly rocking bass into an intense, insistently looping trance. All the trio members now seem to be producing memorable music that upstages their earlier covers repertoire. It sounds as though this resourceful group is now well into phase two.

Set List:

- Dirty Blonde
- Giant
- Metal
- And Here We Test The Powers of Observation
- Silence is the Question
- Flim - Aphex Twin cover
- Have You Met Mrs Jones
- Physical Cities

SOURCE	FM	SOUND QUALITY	A+	FORMAT	Mp3	BITRATE	256	TRACKS #	7
LOCATION / VENUE		London		Jazz cafe		DATE		29–06–08
NOTES:

The Bad Plus: Fresh conception of jazz

The Bad Plus are a jazz piano trio consisting of pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer Dave King. The three musicians first played together in 1989, but didn't come together as an established act until 2000. Perhaps to make up for lost time, they proceeded to record their first album, a self-titled effort released on Fresh Sound, after playing only three gigs together. In 2002, after playing a show at the Village Vanguard which was heard by Columbia Records representative Yves Beauvais, the band was signed to Columbia. They released their major label debut, These Are the Vistas, in 2003, and followed it up with Give in 2004 and Suspicious Activity? in 2005.

The trio's music combines elements of traditional and free jazz with rock and pop influences; These Are the Vistas includes a version of Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit", "Flim" by electronic music artist Aphex Twin, and Blondie's "Heart of Glass", and Give features covers of tunes by Ornette Coleman, Pixies, and Black Sabbath. Suspicious Activity contains a cover of the theme from "Chariots of Fire". A cover of "Karma Police" by Radiohead was contributed to the 2006 album "Exit Music".

the bad plus - live in Washington, D.C. June 22 2006