Although she has no pretentions to being a music critic (being neither sufficiently thick-skinned nor nerdy enough), wifey occasionally hits the nail on the head. We were at a scrupulously polite jazz morning at The Stables in Buckinghamshire a few weeks back and after being treated to two hours of reverential noodling (needless to say of stupendously high technical standard), she turned to me and said, “It’s the sort of music you would rather hear as the background music in a cafe, rather than actively listen to.” And I thought, “Lumme, I wish she could hear The Original Rabbit Foot Spasm Band after this.”
Because the connection between those amiable old gophers and the elemental, attention-seeking, cheerily provocative Rabbits is almost non-existent, despite jazz being the label attached to the music of each. The latter, unlike so much of the competition in this genre, are Dionysian, hedonistic, anti-intellectual – in a phrase, rock’n’roll. You’re more likely to hear them playing with young punks like Dead Jerichos in the Cellar at its sweatiest than providing a nostalgic backdrop to Wallingford Steam Fayre or the like. As a live act they revel in the primordial sexiness of traditional jazz, (the music of New Orleans bordellos, they say) which has for so long been edited out by intellectuals, musos and egotists of all kinds, all of whom have only succeeded in making jazz as impenetrable (and therefore irrelevant) as Stockhausen or Birtwhistle. The price the Rabbits pay for the recovery of this visceral, thrilling quality is that they set jazz back nearly 80 years, but when the experience is this revelatory, who’s complaining?
One of the best examples from their debut album is ‘I’m The Taxidermy Man’, which opens and closes with deliciously slinky chromatic runs by the saxes and trumpet between which Stuart McBeth tells a strange, allegorical and no doubt filthy tale in a knowing Fats Waller rasp, punctuated by the sort of lecherous male chorus you’ll remember from Cab Calloway’s ‘Minnie the Moocher’. The music, uncharacteristically downtempo, sounds spooky and decadent, recalling one of those sexually troubling Betty Boop cartoons from the Thirties, fittingly enough. If they ever bring them back (God forbid), this song will be on the soundtrack, and it will be sung by a wolf.
Elsewhere, the mood is less complex, but no less exuberant. Opener ‘Cornish Riviera Express’ sets the tone beautifully – it is a Dixieland classic born out of due time, singing the praises of a West Country steam train and joyfully refusing to acknowledge the contradictions implicit in this description. Macbeth’s singing, the proud trumpet melody of Bunny Eros and the jumbled but oh-so-right mini-improvisations of sax players Mugsy West and Red Wilkins (yes, they all have names like that), all anchored by a rhythm section of total assuredness, are separate pleasures comprising a perfect whole.
The record’s not completely perfect. For example, ‘PIRATES’, with its rather too self-consciously wacky Irish-reel-on-jazz-instruments coda is a weak link, but in the main ‘Year of the Rabbit’ is bursting with none-too-gentle bonhomie and a commitment to unvarnished authenticity. If ever you want to host an Ecstasy-fuelled happening in a disused aircraft hangar, but you want top drawer trad jazz rather than the usual soporific electronic bollocks, then I think I know the very men for you.