Ice Magazine
October, 2003 Issue
Bird is the word

Based around his landmark 1944-48’ recordings for Savoy and Dial, Bird Up, The Charlie Parker Remix project, coming October 21 on Savoy Jazz, relies so much on newly recorded instruments and voices that it actually comes across more like a tribute album.

“It wasn’t just that people went back to the masters or acetates and changed the levels,” producer Matthew Backer tells ICE. “You couldn’t do that anyway – most of these things were recorded to glass so there wasn’t any separation of instruments. Many artists used very small bits of the original piece and just took the ball and ran with it.”

The complete tune stack, with the artist’s revised titles in parentheses; “Now’s the Time (No Time Like Now)” by Red Hawk and Deke Damascus; “Relaxin’ at Camarillo (August 29)” by Me’shell Ndegeocello; “Salt Peanuts (The Mr. Peanut Chronicles)” by Hal Willner’s Whoops I’m an Indian featuring The Kronos Quartet, Dr. John and Mocean Worker, “Bird of Paradise (Gone)” by Serj Tankian of System of a Down; “Congo Blues (Silencer)” by Donk featuring Ravi Coltrane, Hubert Laws and Kodo; “Bebop (Live at the Rooftop)” by Choco and The RZA; “Steeplechase (Sittin’ on 22’s)” by Dan The Automator; “Cheers (X-ecutioners Style)” by The X-ecutioners; “A Night in Tunisia (Downpour)” by Donk with Coconut Tree and Kodo; “All the Shadows of Nuff” by Willner with Mocean Worker and Garth Hudson of The Band; “Perhaps (Someday the Roof Will Get Fixed)” by Dan The Automator; “Barbados (Where Fish Fly)” by Matthew Backer featuring Laws and Redback; and “Constellation (Heavenly Bodies)” by EL-P.

The diversity of the results is staggering, from the X-ecutioners scratching along with Parker’s solos and creating a 21st century bop duet to Ndegeocello’s funky instrumental jam.

Willner’s mesmerizing patchwork of “All the Things You Are,” “Dark Shadows,” “Out of Nowhere” and “Shaw Nuff” juxtaposes original horn parts with Hudson’s solos. “That piece is really atmospheric and deep,” says Backer. “Garth came in and soloed with some of his synthesizers and on a grand piano, and they basically took the solos and chopped them up, reconfigured them and put them in interesting, weird places.”

Backer says he’s braced for a backlash from traditionalists, but maintains that Bird Up stays true to the renegade spirit that allowed Parker to spearhead the bebop movement. “Jazz at that point in time was in need of an awakening – it was good-time music that people liked to get down to and let loose.” He says. “Bird took that ethic of having a great time and incorporated this whole transcendent, completely free (approach) that was free in terms of being artistically involved. That’s what these cats are all about. They’re about shaking their asses but shaking them with a purpose, having an agenda that’s deeper as far as the thought process that goes into it”