"There are fewer notes in the middle of the chords."
I love this. I aspired to this back when I was still writing, and never got there. I'd spent a lot of time cramming every weird note I could into chords, but I realized that sparseness had the power to communicate a lot more, and was a lot harder to do.
Thank you for this fascinating read, Ethan. My interest in jazz was never as deep as some, but The Bad Plus has been such an important musical influence for me. It was the only contemporary “band” I’ve ever really been into (I never cared for any of the pop or rock groups that were big in the 90’s when I was growing up—my tastes in popular music were always from the 60s and 70s) and I love that you guys were not “The Ethan Iverson Trio” but a leaderless band of equal musicians. (I’ve always found it strange that so many jazz groups are named after a “leader” like that, but are so much more equitable than most rock or pop groups or artists [e.g. Buddy Holly and the Crickets, or even singers like Elvis whose backup bands are often never even mentioned]). For me, the original Bad Plus was truly a special and magical combination of musical personalities. It took me a long time to go listen to their subsequent albums after you had left, and while there’s certainly some fine stuff there, nothing really spoke to me like what the original lineup created. (Much like when The Who got a new drummer after Keith Moon passed away, it’s just not the same. I think the Beatles and Led Zeppelin deciding to end rather than carry on with different people was the right call.)
I agree with you that Reid is an outstanding composer (although I don’t know enough Jarrett tunes to make that comparison), my favorites being “You Are”, “Giant”, “Pound for Pound”, “Physical Cities”, “As This Moment Slips Away” and “People Like You” (plus I love the ambiguity of the title as either “People LIKE You” or “People Like YOU”. I first heard it live at a show in Boulder, CO and I think you announced it from the stage the first way.) I also agree that Dave has some really wonderful originals too, like “Anthem for the Earnest”, “Beauty Has It Hard”, and “My Friend Metatron”.
I’ve always loved both the band’s covers and originals, and loved that you guys could make a great album of all covers like “For All I Care” and then an equally great one of all originals like “Never Stop”. In fact, the first Bad Plus track I ever heard was “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and, not knowing the ABBA version, I had no idea it was a cover until years later. But from the first time I heard that that genius unresolving Bb-C-C# bassline (m. 5 in your score excerpt) instead of the cliched bVI-bVII-I pop progression, I was hooked! My favorite cover is probably “Velouria” (another one where I didn’t know it was a cover until later though), although I do wonder if you guys leaned too often on the “start quiet and simple and gradually get louder and more complex to a big climax” musical form too often (also in “People Like You”, “Pound for Pound”, “Silence is the Question”, etc.) even if it worked so marvelously every time.
Thank you and your bandmates for leaving such an amazing body of tunes and recordings that I think will stand the test of time!
Oh, and that German Bad Plus/"Flim" knockoff is hilarious! It reminds me of hearing this: Brazilian composer Alberto Kaplan's Piano Concerto: https://youtu.be/teOEBPzHQ7E?si=XSlUnu2o4-4x8YEq and thinking "why does this sound so familiar?" (If you don't get it, listen to Shostakovich's 2nd piano concerto). Or like the brilliant Beatles knockoffs by "The Rutles" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA4443CCEBF76938D
"I do wonder if you guys leaned too often on the 'start quiet and simple and gradually get louder and more complex to a big climax' musical form too often" is a fair criticism. What we probably needed was longer forms with development sections and different ways to bounce the ball higher. Finding this was beyond our capabilities--although I have also never really heard any jazz musicians solve this structural problem. Maybe someday there will be musicians who can figure it out!
As an April 1 prank ( on EI? on me? on Jerry?) two years ago, I hired Jerry Guo pka Lungfush to record a demo of Flim replacing Dave King‘s parts with beatboxing:
This is making me feel super nostalgic, but I need to point out one correction. Those first gigs by the “Ethan Iverson Trio” actually were in Saint Paul, not Minneapolis, at the Artists’ Quarter. (I was there, after publishing a short preview in the Star Tribune.)
One of my favorite road trip games used to be putting on my playlist of TBP covers and seeing if people could identify the tunes.
My favorite has always been “Life On Mars.” I’d guess it’s one of the most “true” covers in the repertoire, but the simple restructuring of the form completely transforms the song.
And I can speak for myself and a few friends when I say we always hoped for a heavier dose of originals than covers at shows. All three original members wrote great tunes, and the group in those days was always thrilling.
Hi all it’s Dave King the drummer and founding member of The Bad Plus. Just a small note that the band (with Ben Monder and Chris Speed and Reid) is absolutely touring all year all over the world and the special project Ethan mentioned with Craig Taborn and Chris Potter is just 2 short tours this spring as a celebration of a Keith Jarrett led band that means a lot to us and Inspired us since our youths. We put the idea together last year even before deciding to make 2026 our last year as a band and had nothing to do with the concert plans for the year which will be OUR original music and not a tribute band. Two more little corrections for fun and accuracy are Geezer Butler (the bassist of Black Sabbath and co composer of Iron Man which is a song that contains very little European harmony knowledge, voices leading etc) did not approach us at a “party in Los Angeles” he came to see one of our shows at the ill fated “Knitting Factory” that opened in L.A. in the early 2000s and lasted for a few years. It was a nice event for us that he took the time to attend our concert! Also we opened for The Pixes TWO times not once ( a proud moment for me) in Vancouver and Chicago respectively during their reunion tour as requested by them personally. In Vancouver we received a tremendous response and Chicago we were barely noticed (kind of like a buzzing gnat on a summer walk). Finally and for the record I always felt our original music connected to our beautiful and intelligent audiences and that connection led us to play less and less of other composers music which included Stravinsky and Cole Porter along side of Roger Miller, Crowded House and Ornette Coleman. Such diversity in musical texts was explored most certainly for the challenge and also the lovely programming fun! A final interesting note is our original music was requested to be played on our two big TV appearances that Ethan mentioned by the shows producers not by us. I can only assume that’s because the “heads” have always known we brought a large variety of original music from all three of us to the table during the entire run of the band and that proved to be a unique part of our artistic output and connection for better or worse. Thx for this post Ethan and thx to your kind readers!
One small correction on my own comment. It was my own trio that played Cole Porter’s “So In Love” not The Bad Plus although as Ethan stated we played standards a bit at tue beginning and an evil version of “Miss Jones” for years that I wish we would have tracked :-)
'It is rather a shame the farewell text doesn’t mention Ben Monder or Chris Speed...'
- you're right; and neither of them are part of the announcement (or in the photograph) on the Bad Plus website either. Are they actually in the band or 'guests'?!
This was a fascinating read even though I think you were a bit too hard on yourself! Saw TBP at Regattabar in Cambridge in 2004 and it was one of my all-time favorite jazz shows. You were an exceptional live band, IMO.
It's the end of an era isn't it? Suspicious Activity was my first TBP album, and Prehensile Dream was an absolute favorite of my teen years. And something about Giant perfectly captures my thoughts, feeIings, and memories of the first decade of this century. AND I also gotta throw out Cheney Pinata as the most underrated TBP tune- I can hear the slaphappy joy in every note on that one!
It's surprising to me that "Chant of the Soil" and "The Rich (And the Poor)" seem to have only been recorded by KJ (at least in consulting the Lord discography.) I could see those tunes in particular breaking out with a rock cover by Derek Trucks or someone in that zone.
I’ve loved TBP’s cover of “Velouria” since the day I first heard it, listening to it on headphones in the CD section of Borders! That moment made me a fan of the band for life.
That's so funny because that's how I discovered them, too! Borders, but it was the opening track of "Give". It was a sound like nothing I'd ever heard before.
It breaks my heart to read “I was under the impression that the audience patiently waited out our original music before exploding when we finally played ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Flim’”, seeing as I proudly list tB+ as one of my favorite bands, and listen almost exclusively to the originals. If it’s possible to be a superfan of Made Possible and Inevitable Western, then that would be me. Looking at the songwriting credits throughout the tB+ discography I saw the names “Anderson”, “Iverson”, and “King” over and over, and no doubt formed an image of my mind of a trio of three geniuses.
Anyway. Certainly, being raised on an unholy combination of avant-garde rock music, bebop, and Scriabin (oh, the YouTube™ generation…) shaped my response. In any case tB+’s originals are an enduring inspiration for my own compositions, and I just wanted to make sure there was at least one comment in here to this effect.
Nice to see fellow Inevitable Western enjoyer! I admin rock covers were a gateway drug (I think it was Flim I’ve heard first) but after a while original compositions have kinda grown on me.
The version of "I Love You Always Forever" that you, Dave and Reid recorded with Donna Lewis -- while I suppose not a cover, since she's the original artist! -- is an especial favourite of mine, and is actually the one I heard before the original.
and re: Reid's compositions -- that era, especially among the Fresh Sound crowd (a chapter in some future jazz textbook I hope), seemed to really foster the creation of a new standard songbook, one which fell by the wayside as careers moved in further directions. But every time I hear Kurt record a new "East Coast Love Affair," I think about how many fantastic tunes from that time could fill a new "Real Book"....
Wow this is great Ethan. Super interesting.
Weren’t you into Andrew Hill and I remember you being into that Don Pullen with Gary Peacock and Tony Blue Note record in high school too…
absolutely! Hi Jeff!
"There are fewer notes in the middle of the chords."
I love this. I aspired to this back when I was still writing, and never got there. I'd spent a lot of time cramming every weird note I could into chords, but I realized that sparseness had the power to communicate a lot more, and was a lot harder to do.
hi Rob and thanks for comment!
Thank you for this fascinating read, Ethan. My interest in jazz was never as deep as some, but The Bad Plus has been such an important musical influence for me. It was the only contemporary “band” I’ve ever really been into (I never cared for any of the pop or rock groups that were big in the 90’s when I was growing up—my tastes in popular music were always from the 60s and 70s) and I love that you guys were not “The Ethan Iverson Trio” but a leaderless band of equal musicians. (I’ve always found it strange that so many jazz groups are named after a “leader” like that, but are so much more equitable than most rock or pop groups or artists [e.g. Buddy Holly and the Crickets, or even singers like Elvis whose backup bands are often never even mentioned]). For me, the original Bad Plus was truly a special and magical combination of musical personalities. It took me a long time to go listen to their subsequent albums after you had left, and while there’s certainly some fine stuff there, nothing really spoke to me like what the original lineup created. (Much like when The Who got a new drummer after Keith Moon passed away, it’s just not the same. I think the Beatles and Led Zeppelin deciding to end rather than carry on with different people was the right call.)
I agree with you that Reid is an outstanding composer (although I don’t know enough Jarrett tunes to make that comparison), my favorites being “You Are”, “Giant”, “Pound for Pound”, “Physical Cities”, “As This Moment Slips Away” and “People Like You” (plus I love the ambiguity of the title as either “People LIKE You” or “People Like YOU”. I first heard it live at a show in Boulder, CO and I think you announced it from the stage the first way.) I also agree that Dave has some really wonderful originals too, like “Anthem for the Earnest”, “Beauty Has It Hard”, and “My Friend Metatron”.
I’ve always loved both the band’s covers and originals, and loved that you guys could make a great album of all covers like “For All I Care” and then an equally great one of all originals like “Never Stop”. In fact, the first Bad Plus track I ever heard was “Knowing Me, Knowing You” and, not knowing the ABBA version, I had no idea it was a cover until years later. But from the first time I heard that that genius unresolving Bb-C-C# bassline (m. 5 in your score excerpt) instead of the cliched bVI-bVII-I pop progression, I was hooked! My favorite cover is probably “Velouria” (another one where I didn’t know it was a cover until later though), although I do wonder if you guys leaned too often on the “start quiet and simple and gradually get louder and more complex to a big climax” musical form too often (also in “People Like You”, “Pound for Pound”, “Silence is the Question”, etc.) even if it worked so marvelously every time.
Thank you and your bandmates for leaving such an amazing body of tunes and recordings that I think will stand the test of time!
Oh, and that German Bad Plus/"Flim" knockoff is hilarious! It reminds me of hearing this: Brazilian composer Alberto Kaplan's Piano Concerto: https://youtu.be/teOEBPzHQ7E?si=XSlUnu2o4-4x8YEq and thinking "why does this sound so familiar?" (If you don't get it, listen to Shostakovich's 2nd piano concerto). Or like the brilliant Beatles knockoffs by "The Rutles" https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA4443CCEBF76938D
"I do wonder if you guys leaned too often on the 'start quiet and simple and gradually get louder and more complex to a big climax' musical form too often" is a fair criticism. What we probably needed was longer forms with development sections and different ways to bounce the ball higher. Finding this was beyond our capabilities--although I have also never really heard any jazz musicians solve this structural problem. Maybe someday there will be musicians who can figure it out!
As an April 1 prank ( on EI? on me? on Jerry?) two years ago, I hired Jerry Guo pka Lungfush to record a demo of Flim replacing Dave King‘s parts with beatboxing:
https://markweiss86.com/2026/01/19/41679/
You were in the bad plus ?!
For me “Never Stops” was the big one. Still is.
Yeah I know, it’s hard to remember sometimes! Maybe plenty of people don’t even know. Thanks Dekel!
This is making me feel super nostalgic, but I need to point out one correction. Those first gigs by the “Ethan Iverson Trio” actually were in Saint Paul, not Minneapolis, at the Artists’ Quarter. (I was there, after publishing a short preview in the Star Tribune.)
my mistake! Thanks Tim! And thanks for the preview in the Star Trib 27 years ago (or whenever it was!!!)
One of my favorite road trip games used to be putting on my playlist of TBP covers and seeing if people could identify the tunes.
My favorite has always been “Life On Mars.” I’d guess it’s one of the most “true” covers in the repertoire, but the simple restructuring of the form completely transforms the song.
And I can speak for myself and a few friends when I say we always hoped for a heavier dose of originals than covers at shows. All three original members wrote great tunes, and the group in those days was always thrilling.
As I recall we got a very good take on "Life on Mars" in the studio, I should relisten. Thanks for comment
Hi all it’s Dave King the drummer and founding member of The Bad Plus. Just a small note that the band (with Ben Monder and Chris Speed and Reid) is absolutely touring all year all over the world and the special project Ethan mentioned with Craig Taborn and Chris Potter is just 2 short tours this spring as a celebration of a Keith Jarrett led band that means a lot to us and Inspired us since our youths. We put the idea together last year even before deciding to make 2026 our last year as a band and had nothing to do with the concert plans for the year which will be OUR original music and not a tribute band. Two more little corrections for fun and accuracy are Geezer Butler (the bassist of Black Sabbath and co composer of Iron Man which is a song that contains very little European harmony knowledge, voices leading etc) did not approach us at a “party in Los Angeles” he came to see one of our shows at the ill fated “Knitting Factory” that opened in L.A. in the early 2000s and lasted for a few years. It was a nice event for us that he took the time to attend our concert! Also we opened for The Pixes TWO times not once ( a proud moment for me) in Vancouver and Chicago respectively during their reunion tour as requested by them personally. In Vancouver we received a tremendous response and Chicago we were barely noticed (kind of like a buzzing gnat on a summer walk). Finally and for the record I always felt our original music connected to our beautiful and intelligent audiences and that connection led us to play less and less of other composers music which included Stravinsky and Cole Porter along side of Roger Miller, Crowded House and Ornette Coleman. Such diversity in musical texts was explored most certainly for the challenge and also the lovely programming fun! A final interesting note is our original music was requested to be played on our two big TV appearances that Ethan mentioned by the shows producers not by us. I can only assume that’s because the “heads” have always known we brought a large variety of original music from all three of us to the table during the entire run of the band and that proved to be a unique part of our artistic output and connection for better or worse. Thx for this post Ethan and thx to your kind readers!
Dave King
I was at that Knitting Factory LA show! Awww LA trrrried to have a Knitting Factory, but…
What a weird venue…. That awkward minimall still doesn’t know what it is- it’s a gym and a CVS now with a Subway sandwich shop on top.
Anyway- all interesting context!
One small correction on my own comment. It was my own trio that played Cole Porter’s “So In Love” not The Bad Plus although as Ethan stated we played standards a bit at tue beginning and an evil version of “Miss Jones” for years that I wish we would have tracked :-)
Dave K
'It is rather a shame the farewell text doesn’t mention Ben Monder or Chris Speed...'
- you're right; and neither of them are part of the announcement (or in the photograph) on the Bad Plus website either. Are they actually in the band or 'guests'?!
I wonder if they’re the equivalent of Darryl Jones and Steve Jordan — who play with the Rolling Stones, but are not officially “Rolling Stones.”
This was a fascinating read even though I think you were a bit too hard on yourself! Saw TBP at Regattabar in Cambridge in 2004 and it was one of my all-time favorite jazz shows. You were an exceptional live band, IMO.
Thanks so much!
It's the end of an era isn't it? Suspicious Activity was my first TBP album, and Prehensile Dream was an absolute favorite of my teen years. And something about Giant perfectly captures my thoughts, feeIings, and memories of the first decade of this century. AND I also gotta throw out Cheney Pinata as the most underrated TBP tune- I can hear the slaphappy joy in every note on that one!
“Prehensile Dream” is one of my favorites! That was a good take on SUSPICIOUS as well
It's surprising to me that "Chant of the Soil" and "The Rich (And the Poor)" seem to have only been recorded by KJ (at least in consulting the Lord discography.) I could see those tunes in particular breaking out with a rock cover by Derek Trucks or someone in that zone.
That is an intriguing idea
I’ve loved TBP’s cover of “Velouria” since the day I first heard it, listening to it on headphones in the CD section of Borders! That moment made me a fan of the band for life.
That's so funny because that's how I discovered them, too! Borders, but it was the opening track of "Give". It was a sound like nothing I'd ever heard before.
It breaks my heart to read “I was under the impression that the audience patiently waited out our original music before exploding when we finally played ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Flim’”, seeing as I proudly list tB+ as one of my favorite bands, and listen almost exclusively to the originals. If it’s possible to be a superfan of Made Possible and Inevitable Western, then that would be me. Looking at the songwriting credits throughout the tB+ discography I saw the names “Anderson”, “Iverson”, and “King” over and over, and no doubt formed an image of my mind of a trio of three geniuses.
Anyway. Certainly, being raised on an unholy combination of avant-garde rock music, bebop, and Scriabin (oh, the YouTube™ generation…) shaped my response. In any case tB+’s originals are an enduring inspiration for my own compositions, and I just wanted to make sure there was at least one comment in here to this effect.
Nice to see fellow Inevitable Western enjoyer! I admin rock covers were a gateway drug (I think it was Flim I’ve heard first) but after a while original compositions have kinda grown on me.
thanks very much!
The version of "I Love You Always Forever" that you, Dave and Reid recorded with Donna Lewis -- while I suppose not a cover, since she's the original artist! -- is an especial favourite of mine, and is actually the one I heard before the original.
and re: Reid's compositions -- that era, especially among the Fresh Sound crowd (a chapter in some future jazz textbook I hope), seemed to really foster the creation of a new standard songbook, one which fell by the wayside as careers moved in further directions. But every time I hear Kurt record a new "East Coast Love Affair," I think about how many fantastic tunes from that time could fill a new "Real Book"....
I really like the cover of TV On The Radio’s 𝘚𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘯.