Ornette Coleman & Pat Metheny, Song X

    

     Song X is a collaborative album made by Ornette Coleman and Pat Metheny. The album was made in 3 days in 1985, but released by Geffen Records in 1986. The album also features Jack Dejohnette on drums, Denardo Coleman on percussion, and Charlie Haden on bass. All of these guys are jazz legends except Denardo, who is Coleman's son. I've actually got my step dad this album for Christmas once. Also, I've listened to a few tracks on YouTube but I've never actually heard the whole album until now. I got this album from my local record store, CD Trader, for only $7.99! Great price. Not only that, but there was another bands sticker on the CD (Faith No More) and I asked them to take it off with that sticky adhesive, and they gave me another CD part and just put the booklet in the new one. Talk about customer service! When the album came out, it got strong and favorable reviews. Downbeat gave this album five stars!
     It opens with 'Song X', the same name of the album. It has a kind of head and then things get interesting. The guitar sound is very electronic(processed), most definitely the guitar synthesizer Metheny favored heavily back in the 1980s. Jack's drumming is very characteristic of him. Once you've heard him, you can hear that its him on drums without question. Ornette's saxophone playing is super fast and kind of lacks harmony and rhythm, but somehow the music stays together because Metheny's guitar has a lot of melodic content keeping things in place. I know all about Metheny's work and I have a bunch of his albums. This doesn't sound like he's playing 'free-jazz'. It sounds like he's playing like himself, just with Ornette Coleman. You can still hear his characteristic phrasing, and melodic motifs he likes to make. The tune ends with the same head from the beginning.
     The next tune, 'Mob Job' starts off a lot more mellow, with a grooving bass-line, more akin to straight-ahead than the avant-garde. There's even a melody and nice flowing drum parts! The guitar synthesizer is more apparent in this, because I think Metheny used a saxophone synthesizer sound, and it sounds sick. There's some great violin playing here by Ornette Coleman too. His violin playing sounds exactly the same as his saxophone playing, except with the tone of a violin. That's the mark of a great musician, sounding the same no matter what they're playing. This tune reminds me of a mellow kind of thing the Art Ensemble of Chicago would do. A more bop influenced thing.
     The third tune, 'Endangered Species', is the longest cut, lasting some 13 minutes. It starts off as the most free tune as well. By most free, I mean to say that they're really pushing the limits of the term free-jazz, perhaps going beyond that and into the terms of the avant-garde. Jack's drumming here is more intense and focused because everyone is really playing their hearts out, sounding like a pack of wild animals rather than a jazz band. I don't really know what else I can say about this tune except that it is really pushing the limits of free-jazz. On one hand, I find it to be great. But on the other, other people might not be into this because it is so crazy sounding and 'out there'. It reminds me of the Art Ensemble of Chicago except with a guitar synthesizer going crazy with effects. You can tell they had a blast playing this one. At the end there's like these outer space kind of sounds made with the synthesizer guitar.
     The next tune is titled 'Videogames', and boy does it sound like a videogame. The guitar synthesizer takes over this piece, giving the sound an 8bit kind of tones. The guitar synthesizer is running rampant on this piece until there's a big break, and they go into a more straight-ahead feel with a saxophone solo by the one and only Ornette Coleman. There are moments after that solo where everyone comes in and things get crazy, but then it goes back to that sax solo with the straight-ahead feel.
     The next tune is 'Kathlein Gray', which sounds more like a ballad, the first on the album so far. There's a kind of romantic melody played by the sax and guitar. This tune, like others, has some straight-ahead elements, especially the bass line and the drumming. The bassline is very melodic and kind of holds everything together, like Paul McCartney in the Beatles. On this song Metheny uses a clean guitar tone(although still processed sounding with a lot of chorus) but you can hear more of the distinctive Pat Metheny guitar playing here. It's very Pat-like, probably because this song and the last three other songs were composed by both Pat and Ornette together. Whereas the other tunes were just Coleman numbers. This is probably why the tune has a more traditional jazz approach and sound.
     Next is a tune called 'Trigonometry', which again has a more traditional approach. It has a head and then the sax goes off, while Charlie Haden lays down a walking bass line(the first in the album so far), and Jack plays some nice traditional jazz drumming, laying down phat rhythmic pulse on the cymbals and snare. After the sax solo there's a guitar solo with a synthesizer tone, but sounding like its mimicking a saxophone. The guitar lines played by Metheny here are all trademark Metheny licks, sounding very hip and melodic despite this being 1985.
     Next up, 'Song X duo'. This song is just a duo of just Ornette and Pat playing. Because its just saxophone and guitar its easy to get lost in it all. However, today in free-jazz duos and trios are the best format to get the music out, and sometimes they don't have drums, sometimes its a horn and guitar, or a horn and two basses.
     Finally, the last tune is 'Long Time No See', which has a kind of drum machine opening but it departs as a head is played and real drums are playing some straight-ahead style while the sax and guitar goes off on a wild adventure together exploring harmonic content. I thought the opening of this tune was really strange, like why did they do that? Anyways, the song ends with a kind of boppish head from the beginning of the tune and that's the end of the album. 
     This album is cool because it features great musicians that were already well established in jazz, and here they came together to make like a super group super free-jazz album. It should be known that this is Pat Metheny's first and last recording in a free-jazz context. He's just too melodic to play freely. And I don't mean that in a bad way, I just mean that he can't play like Ornette Coleman does. He's too studied. His melodic lines are fantastic and his phrasing is out of this world and he has chops but he just doesn't really fit in a free-jazz context. However, that does not mean that his playing on this album wasn't stellar. Metheny being on this recording date gave the group more structure, especially harmonically, than it wouldn't have had otherwise. Ornette Coleman is still going strong playing music to this day. Charlie Haden is no longer with us but he was a long time Coleman collaborator and a great bassist that will never be forgotten. Jack Dejohnette is playing music, he recently released an album called Made in Chicago. Pat Metheny is making more structured music but after this album he won a lot of Grammy's and stuff, he's actually extremely popular for a jazz musician. His music, I would say is lightweight. By that I mean its not really cutting edge music anymore. He's comfortable playing the same thing over and over. Which isn't bad. It's a great way to sell records if your fan base wants that. Anyways, this is a great album, and although it is late Ornette Coleman I would say it is required Ornette Coleman listening.