Dark is the best time for dangerous dancing, Moon Dogs! This is what a journalist from a black-and-white film tells you, stubble, gallons of coffee and smoke add weight to his words. Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare” orchestra is playing in the background. Dark is the time to talk about jazz. About his rock and roll versions. It’s no secret that Elvis, Gene, Chuck, Eddie, and other Great Ancients repeatedly recorded their interpretations of jazz standards, so you can’t open a new path to India here. But to have a whole album…
Moscow Beatballs (which can be translated as “Metropolitan Rhythm Meatballs”) is a trio of experienced musicians, almost archetypal for rockabilly, not counting the bass balalaika instead of the double bass (“we turned Hawaiian guitars into a balala …”) and drummer Sergei Arnautov on the main vocals. Bass balalaiker Timur Popovkin and guitar player Yuri Krivoshein, among others, are regular members of the Russian concert line-up of Red Elvises. The debut album, recorded live at Makarevich’s club (the one that “Smack” led), is called Jazz Deformation, gently hinting to the listener that something is wrong with jazz here. On the shiny body of the CD, a merciless laser cut eleven tracks, all covers of great songs of the past. Let’s listen carefully!
All Of Me, dearly loved by my cat for playing Billie Holliday, is a bouncy rockabilly swing with a somewhat heavy bass line, excellent guitar and a vocal parody of jazz phrasing. A good start! Duke Ellington dances in his coffin, hearing a powerful fateful reading of his It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing). Then the guitar breaks into a theme from the Polish military TV series “The Stake is larger than life”, as if threatening a fascist: well, wait, a fascist! The fascist is trembling, there is joy on the dance floor.
You need to travel along the legendary highway 66 to the song Route 66, with 777 port wine and other numerology in your arms. A soft swing, close to Nat Cole’s original. I should have put a sixth. Unlike the old “walking” arrangement by Ellochka Fitzgerald, the Beatballs Lullaby Of Birdland is almost bossa nova, filled with romantic meows. It’s an amazing song!
Besame Mucho is another March Latina, now with surf intonations. Sway, hija de puta, sway! One of the first versions of the Blue Moon text talked about the blue moon awakening evil tendencies in every man. No, this is not the song you might think of, this one has been known in the USSR since the mid-1930s thanks to Varlamov’s jazz orchestra. The performance of the Bit Meatballs is akin to the original.
Sunny, originally the magical soul of Bobby Hebb, is here a swashbuckling racehorse disco closer to Boney M. RUDN University students are jubilant. Coming Home Baby, Mel Torme’s infernal shake, turned into blues with soul sauce. One of the best things about the album. Even a lazy, one-armed music teacher from Lower Gershwins performed Summertime at at least all funerals and weddings. M. Beatballs equipped this “netlenka” with a moronic riff. It’s fresh. High art.
Another southern soul is Spooky Dusty Springfield, a relaxed story about a scary girl. The guitar bluesily sobs, the drum rumbles. Coltrane’s instrumental hard-bop Giant Steps, in the deft hands of our heroes, turned into a “love-girls-simple-romantics” figurative song, even the guys dribbled the lyrics! In addition, the bass and drums alternately compete in skill here, and the guitarist fervently “pours”. The concert moves with giant steps to the bar.
The result: excellent musicians, unpredictable selection and, often, witty reading of the material. Good solo sound. I would like to hear their own compositions recorded in the studio. Good night and good luck, Moon Dawgs!
P.S. I would have already banned the performance of “Summertime”…
P.P.S. At the legislative level.
BC: https://moscowbeatballs.bandcamp.com/
VK: https://vk.com/moscowbeatballs
