A sense of otherworldliness permeated Ann Arbor’s Michigan Theater during October 2^nd’s jam show, headlined by Umphrey’s McGee. It wasn’t just the drugs, either. Both Umphrey’s McGee (hereafter UMG) and openers The Macpodz (a quintet of local musicians) stand apart as unique even in their secular genres. UMG blends dissociative sounds like avant-jazz, heavy metal, and copious amounts of funk into their 70’s-throwback psychedelic jams. The Macpodz are even more focused on danceable jazz as rendered by odd instrumentation—the group has two percussionists, and no guitars. That sounds a bit artsy on paper (or computer screen as it were), but the live experience was nothing less than a great party.

The Macpodz played to a very strong crowd reaction—unsurprising, considering their status as a nationally known local band. Their jams were more rhythmic than melodic, with powerful and complex drum patterns carrying the motion of the song under melodies played by trumpet and six string bass. Almost all of their grooves were infectious and locked-in enough to cause prerequisite booty shaking. However for a band with five members, distinct instruments, and an excess of instrumental talent, the overall effect was somewhat bland. The large nature of the venue may have had some part to play—Perhaps their headlining slot at The Strutt on November 14^th will yield superior results.

Umphrey's McGee doing what they do best.

UMG burned through two sets totaling over three hours with the rare sort of band chemistry where every transition from loud to soft, slow to fast, or heavy to melodic felt completely natural. The set was composed mainly of older songs from their seminal Local Band Does OK days—they only played a single song from their 2009 album Mantis, making the show something of a special treat.

Then again, UMG is a special band—even for jam musicians, these guys are preternaturally talented, particularly bassist Ryan Stasik. They deftly and easily blended together old fashioned rock music with the odd times of jazz, the powerful groove of funk, and occasionally roaring twin-harmonized guitar leads reminiscent of Lynyrd Skynyrd or Wishbone Ash, even Iron Maiden at times. The only reason Umphrey’s McGee is not already a Guitar Hero/Rock band favorite si simply that their solos are never played the same way twice.

Of course, three hours of endless improvisation and soloing can get tiring—Umphrey’s played the old songs fairly close to the chest, often staying in the pocket or on a groove for a bit too long. Also, despite having fantastic singing abilities, the vocals were scant. Even if the main attraction at a UMG show is the improv, they’ve penned a few fantastic pop tunes that would have livened things up a bit, or provided a much needed breather.

Oh well, here’s hoping for a rendition of “Women, Wine, and Song,” on their next come-around. It will be worth attending.

STURGIS, MI–I walked into a building full of old people.  People so old you’d think you were at church.   I had barreled through the countryside of West Michigan, corn, sweet potatoes, for miles and miles and then all of a sudden there’d be a town with a speed limit of 30 mph and you’d have to slam on the breaks to avoid your wake bending the mailboxes.

Ellington in Munich in 1973. Photo: Hans Bernhard

I walked into the front entrance and was smacked with the old.  Men wearing suits like my Grandpa wore in pictures taken long before his death in the 1970s because these are the suits that were kept, and tonight was a night of formalities.  Women with sagging breasts and poofy perfumed hair strutted about in high heels they hadn’t put on in years.

There were a few young, people in their forties, wearing shirts that said “Kalamazoo Valley Blues Association.”  People gathered around dinner tables in a hall that looked like a nursing home for steaks, $14, or cod, $12.  An American flag drooped in the corner.  The color scheme of the whole place was like those drug movies from the 1980s you’d watch in elementary school when they would tell you not to do drugs.  It smelled like a hospital, or one of those bridge homes you put your grandmother in after she gets out of the hospital, and before she can get settled some place more comfortable.  Do you know why a nursing home smells like a thrift shop and a mortuary?  Human skin, rotting on the bones after all those years.

A woman complains of stairs “I’ve never seen so many stairs in all my life,” she says.

I wander back behind the kitchen where future community college students push metal carts stacked high with more steak, and cake for desert.  A sound comes up from below a ramp that leads down to the basement.  A sound I knew well, one of the most beautiful sounds in the world, saxophones warming up.  Men talking, I peer down over the railing and there’s this cat talking on his cell phone saying “Yeah, man, I’ll talk to you later,” with his slicked back hair and black suspenders.  I hear a trumpet out on stage.

For $14, I get to sit fifteen feet away from the Duke Ellington Orchestra and hear them play.  The theater sits about 750 people with a balcony, but I’d say maybe 400 or so people are here, even less.  The band dwarfs the stage, as if it better belonged in an elementary school.  Barry Lee Hall, Jr., sits on a stool to the left of the band.  He wears a black shirt instead of a white shirt like the rest of the band.  Maybe that’s the difference between Duke and the rest, that they wear tuxedos when they play.  Basie wears suits, and the guys can pick them out, but then Basie was more of the burlesque.  Lincoln Center wears the same suits, but they’re still suits. But Ellington wears tuxedos with a black stripe running down the side of the pants, because this is a formal affair, and Barry Lee Hall, Jr., the great trumpet player gets his own shirt.

And then the downbeat hits and out comes the booze and people be stoppin like they ain’t got no soles to their feet.  You always want to start out with a number with a big shout chorus to grab people by the shirt collar, and people start moving in their seats, rockin back n forth, their butts doing the dancing for them and we’re in a big bright n shiny dance hall in New York or Detroit.  A thousand people are swinging and drinking martinis under a bright yellow chandelier six of them, people’s shoes polished gleaming like the floor and the ceiling.  The guys put their arms around the girls and the girls in their red dresses gossip with the ladies and soon we’re all on the subway riding back in shiny new Lincolns with hats on our heads and fur draped around our necks, pied coats with big buttons keeping us warm to the sound of the radio.

And there’s Big Mama on the bass, and Slanky on the piano, doing it up with crowd, playing a beautiful melody introduction joking while the rest of the band finds their music, not that they need the music, but because they haven’t played it in fifteen years, perhaps not at all.

Lights turn purple and Barry Lee Hall, Jr. sits on his stool and Stafford Hunter the trombonist comes over to him and a sax player gets out his clarinet and joins them for Mood Indigo, like telling stories you care about and love to hear around a fire.

Our generation has been slapped with a label of apathy.  From this apathy, the definition of “cool” has become radically different from what it once was.  You couldn’t be cool in the 60s if you were apathetic, just like it’s difficult to be cool and proactive now.  But sometimes, very rarely, something remains cool over the decades.

It’s been 40 years, to the month, since The Beatles recorded Abbey Road, their last effort as a cohesive unit (although Let it Be was released later).  40 years later, this album can get just as personal as it ever could, more so than any other rock and roll album from that era.  Come on, do you have the same magical experience when you listen to Cosmo’s Factory by Creedence Clearwater Revival?  To us, everything that has filtered through the four interim decades is great music, but let’s be honest, nothing is better than Abbey Road.

One of the most fantastic things about this album is that everybody knows it’s great.  Going back to what I said earlier, a very significant minority of people have a) never heard Abbey Road or, even rarer, b) don’t like it.  It’s just cool, and it’s been cool for 40 years.

I highly doubt that any of The Beatles could have foreseen how consequential their careers together would be.  John Lennon is no god, yet we obeyed his command to come together, a song of lyrical augury which opens this timeless album.  The relationship between the songs on the album mirrors the adhesion that the album itself created on its listeners.  We must come together, we must take example.  Abbey Road is not a mere rock and roll album, it is rather a philosophical doctrine of love, loss, pain, and observation.  On The Beatles (The White Album), the lyrics continually stress that the band is not trying to change the world.  They failed miserably.

One of my favorite aspects of Abbey Road is the fact that it is an album, much like a novel is a representation of like events which culminate in a climactic fashion.  This may sound redundant, but think of most albums you listen to.  Are they cohesive bodies of work, or are they merely collections of songs that are similar because they’re played by the same five musicians?  Rarely is an album an actual album, and this is the best of them.  I urge modern listeners, such as myself, to find an old vinyl copy of Abbey Road (maybe your parents have one).  The album we love so much today is actually two albums, connected only by nomenclature and separated derisively between “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” and “Here Comes the Sun”.  For the sake of continuity, we don’t get that on the CD version.  We also forfeit the tone of Abbey Road partially: side one begins and ends with dark, mellow songs, interspersed by brightly painted singles such as “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Octopus’ Garden”.  Side two is totally different.  It begins and ends with messages of hope, this time interspersed with tracks that stress The Beatles’ ability to entrench philosophical subjects into mundanity (“Carry That Weight”, specifically).

Amongst dissemination that characterized the last half of their career, The Beatles recorded Abbey Road to end on a good note.  In fact, most of the second half of the album is accidental, contrived by McCartney and George Martin in late night sessions without the presence of the full band.  It is not a magnum opus; it’s The Beatles doing what they did best.  They aren’t deified, Apollonian muses; they’re just four guys with exceptional songwriting ability who were in the right place at the right time.  Abbey Road represents the culmination of their career together.

The greatest testament to The Beatles is the career of each individual musician post-1970.  Apart from John Lennon’s “Imagine”, can you think of one song from George, Paul, Ringo, or John himself that is more memorable than any Beatles track?  If you can, than you’ve had a maligned musical upbringing (Wings?).  The Beatles will exist long after its compositional materials are dead, and Abbey Road will remain its crown jewel and a the crown jewel of the rock and roll world itself.