Jazz Sabbath
Queen's Hall 16/2/25
In this aqua-painted church, repurposed as a music venue (as so many are in Scotland), Jazz Sabbath appeared on a Sunday night to attempt the challenging task of translating the iconic rock music of Black Sabbath into an engaging jazz evening. Close to 300 people filled up the bottom stalls – “Pretty good for jazz,” as the MC dressed as a caricature of Ozzy Osborne announced – and the stage was set for a trio of piano, double bass, and drum kit. Claiming to be the jazz band that Black Sabbath stole their name, look, and songs from, they legitimise this musical feat of translation in a quintessentially British manner – with a self-depreciating back story, a mockumentary if you will, and a lead actor/musician giving panto vibes and using toilet humour. One could say that such a playful project in actuality gains its legitimacy from the fact that the MC Milton Keanes is the creative force behind it, and in fact is the alter ego of Adam Wakeman, keyboard and guitar player for Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath since 2004.
In-jokes and cultural/musical references meaningful to Black Sabbath fans are the thread sewing the performance together, which along with the mockumentary narrative create a coherent flow. As a cultural outsider and rock outsider, it struck me as the British answer to American musicals, fascinating in and of itself. But as a listener awaiting some captivating jazz, I was left struggling until the last two songs.
The piano, played by Wakeman, carried the melody of the original Black Sabbath songs while the bassist Jack Tustin (also of The Broken Biscuit Company), front and centre, had a number of engaging and clearly challenging solos. The physicality of the bass player was captivating as he bent over the instrument, hands and fingers exerting dynamic effort to pull out sound from the thick strings. The drummer, not mentioned in the advance publicity and whose name announced at the concert was indistinct, was notable for the lack of dynamism and restrained use of the full range of the drum kit throughout most of the performance. Only in the last two songs was he allowed to engage the entire kit – and it was brilliant! It left me wondering if this was the result of having hired in musicians to complement the MC rather than the trio being an established, creatively generative, entity of its own.
The story that connected this musical together was the premise that the MC, dressed as Ozzy Osborne, was “on a path to set the record straight” about who had originally penned the iconic Black Sabbath songs. If it is taken as a musical – rather than a jazz performance – the entire concept works, and one is more forgiving of the challenges in re-presenting rock as jazz. These specific challenges arise, not from the musicians abilities, but from the disparate nature of the two genres and of Black Sabbath's particular mode of rock.
Perhaps this is the “correct” way to take Jazz Sabbath – the audience laugh a lot and enjoy the panto-esque style that strings together the set list of this musical evening. The audience energy was low key and positive, and they seemed to love the songs and were waiting for the riffs/licks that they recognised. Sounds of satisfaction and joy gurgled from the listeners when the musicians hit these spots.
Was it a caricature, perhaps, of jazz? A rock musician pretending, rather than a deeper creative questioning of how on earth one turns riff-based rock (with repetition, stable key signatures and little harmonizing), into chord-based jazz that depends on complex key changes and melodic improvisation? By the end I was left with quite a few questions as well as the certainty that if they could pull off two fantastic, high-energy, jazz translations of Black Sabbath at the end, that surely they could have done that through out. But maybe... that just wasn't the point.
Perhaps the point, really, was to create a relaxing, funny, cortisol lowering and mood-lifting evening that people left feeling rather replete. In which case, well done!