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I recently wrote one of these ticket stories surmising that I had seen the instrumental-ish jazz band The Bad Plus a whole bunch of times but when I took a more scrutinous look I discovered that I had actually seen them only three times. That was quite a shocker.
Then this morning I was scrolling through my concert stats at setlist.fm when I noticed I had only seen Snarky Puppy twice. How could that be? I had just checked these numbers a week or two earlier and I knew that the right answer was in fact “three”. I checked and rechecked and scrolled and checked again and finally discovered the problem. Perhaps you noticed it straightaway?
Well, it seems that since…let me check…since 2013 – or I suppose more accurately since 2014 – I have been conflating the instrumental-ish avant-garde American jazz quartet The Bad Plus (from Minneapolis) with the instrumental-ish avant-garde American jazz collective Snarky Puppy (who are from Texas). Like, for nearly a decade now the two have existed as a single band in my mind, a band (okay, two bands) that I (clearly) half-ignored through a total of five performances at the Ottawa jazz festival (twice as Snarky Puppy and thrice as The Bad Plus).
(To be honest, as I was writing that paragraph I had to keep going back and checking which of the two bands I was referring to. It seems that the confusion runs quite deep.)
In an effort to end the problem I spent a half-hour this morning listening to the two groups online and you know what? I don’t blame me. Sure, if I was writing a paper for a fourth-year university music analysis class I would be able to highlight lots of very specific differences from one band to the other and could with a minimum of effort draw many specific contrasts between the two. But really, to a guy standing in a park under a tree enjoying a few festy beers with friends while a music festival ambiently emanates around him I can’t see a reason to draw a line between the two groups. But if I have to:
On June 27th, 2015 I went down to the good old Ottawa jazz festival and saw Snarky Puppy for the second and final time (so far). It was pretty good.
They kind of remind me of The Bad Plus, whom I rather like a lot.
Todd Man Out 