#FRESH BEAT BAND FREE#
(SOUNDBITE OF FREE FORM FUNKY FREQS' "PERSEUS ARM") Those old string-bender licks sound more stressed than usual. With the blues, you want to put some feeling and meaning into it. A blues reins him in, for a minute anyway. Vernon Reid plays plenty of big arena guitar here. WHITEHEAD: Jamaaladeen Tacuma's bass bops and Grant Calvin Weston's clean big-beat drumming do their own push-pull dance behind the guitarist. (SOUNDBITE OF FREE FORM FUNKY FREQS' "NORMA ARM") Their tune "Norma Arm" grabs a catchy guitar lick from the New Orleans funk classic "Cissy Strut" by the Meters. As the name implies, they're heedless of category, blending jazz, funk, R&B, rock and a little space music. WHITEHEAD: The trio Free Form Funky Freqs - that's Freqs with a Q like in frequencies. (SOUNDBITE OF FREE FORM FUNKY FREQS' "ORION SPUR")
Reid also founded New York's premier Black rock band Living Colour, and he still brings that in-your-face lead guitar energy. Vernon Reid played guitar in Ronald Shannon Jackson's great '80s unit Decoding Society. Drummer Grant Calvin Weston backed spiky guitarist James Blood Ulmer. Bass guitarist Jamaaladeen Tacuma played in Ornette Coleman's jittery electric band Prime Time. WHITEHEAD: These three players helped shape the free funk style. (SOUNDBITE OF FREE FORM FUNKY FREQS' "EARTH") That said, the Funky Freqs came out playing the post-Corea jazz rock style known as free funk - music with fewer complicated melodies and a little more earthy grooving.
KEVIN WHITEHEAD, BYLINE: The new album by the trio Free Form Funky Freqs is called "Hymn Of The 3rd Galaxy." The title shouts out to Chick Corea and Return to Forever's jazz rock classic "Hymn Of The Seventh Galaxy" from 1973. (SOUNDBITE OF FREE FORM FUNKY FREQS' "OUTER ARM") Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead likes their attitude. Vernon Reid, Jamaaladeen Tacuma and Grant Calvin Weston call themselves Free Form Funky Freqs. Three notable vets of free funk bands periodically team up to get reacquainted. In the 1970s, influential musicians such as Ornette Coleman began combining free jazz and electric funk.
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