Hmmmm ... how to describe Escalator Over the Hill ... Let's see, how about odd? Or pretentious? Maybe insane or indulgent? Bizarre, lame, oblivious, self-conscious, happy, sad? Yes, all of these adjectives do apply at one point or another, along the long, long way that is Carla Bley's 1971 extended jazz composition. When it first hit the scene, originally as a three-LP release (and now available on a double CD), it earned plaudits from some, bitter rebukes from others, and left everyone else scratching their heads. But of course, that really doesn't help you much, does it? Indeed, classifying this album as jazz would be like describing your finest, most tasty Thanksgiving dinner as simply food. We're not doing it justice.
One of the few great jazz composers of the last 40 years, Bley is a freak. Or at least it is fair to say that her music is freakish. This creation seems like the wild invention of a mad scientist. She had a lot of tools at her disposal and eagerly wore them all out, bringing each to its limits and going beyond. Each song is jam packed, overflowing with musical styles, tonal curlicues, lyrical farts, and rhythmic fits. It's so damned weird, you've got to love it. You've got to laugh.
The work unabashedly reeks of avant-garde pretension. These folks truly didn't give a damn and that somehow seems liberating. With passing glances/tributes/parodies at/to/of everything from German cabaret music to Broadway musicals to classical dirges to disco funk to Native American chants to beat poetry to pulp fiction to big bands to early electronic experimental funk. Escalator Over the Hill is something one experiences by giving in. To try and grasp it fully would be foolhardy. To try and take away some greater meaning would be looking for something that doesn't exist.
Just listen. Cherish the musical flights of fancy and wonder at the all-star cast of artists that populate this adventure produced by Bley's second husband Michael Mantler. Guitarist John McLaughlin, clarinetist Perry Robinson, and the young saxophonist Gato Barbieri were among many who lent their talents to the work. Even Linda Ronstadt offered her voice to a few tracks.
With insanity of this sort, produced from this era, it is easy to blow it off as grade-A bullshit. A bunch of hippies got together, toked up a few too many times, and made a record, right? Not exactly. There is method to this seemingly interminable madness. Each song has been delicately composed and elaborately arranged, the musicianship is stellar, and unrelenting passion is evident in their dedicated work. Each trumpet flair or reverberating drum loop rings true with the heart of artists who love what they do and will carry on just because they can. No work has ever seemed so free and so complex at the same time.
The libretto by Paul Haines is simply indecipherable. The words themselves are quite understandable, but it's the order in which these words are placed that makes no sense. Consider a bit from "Doctor Why": "Nurses dyeing their hair don't care/if the horse is locked in the house, they're there." If the listener is not prepared, he'll be knocked on his fanny trying to place the experience in some kind of reasonable framework. If the meaningless words don't do it to you, the recurring spats of carefully placed deliciously deafening cacophony will.
This is not be-bop, or free jazz. This music has no name and that's probably best for all involved. Some have called it a jazz opera but that's just not right. Bley and Haines themselves subtitled the work "A Chronotransduction" but that only confuses us even more. Of course, isn't that the point? Or wait... maybe the point is that there is no point? No... but... wait... I... She... hold on, this makes no sense. I guess we should just throw the disc in the stereo and let the Escalator Over The Hill take us where it may. At least we know it will be different.
