Dr Tree by Dr Tree
When jazz and rock interbred in the 1970s, experienced local jazz musicians were still young enough to be excited by the new style’s possibilities.
Auckland drummer Frank Gibson Jnr and keyboard player Murray McNabb – who met at Mt Albert Grammar School in the early 1960s – enthusiastically embraced the jazz-rock fusion.
In 1976, their band Dr Tree – with guitarist Martin Winch, trumpeter Kim Paterson, electric bassist Bob Jackson and percussionist John Banks – recorded a self-titled album that is hard to find today.
Fortunately, Dr Tree returns as a handsome double vinyl – restored and remastered at Abbey Road – with alternate takes and unreleased recordings.
The original album remains tripped-out fusion thanks to McNabb’s synth and Fender Rhodes piano, Winch’s wah-wah pedal, studio effects and rapid-fire melodic passages with quick time changes.
In the 2007 CD reissue’s liner notes I wrote, “Today, we hear more jazz than rock in this music,” and that opinion is reinforced by the excellent unreleased material, including Gibson’s Mood Waltz and McNabb’s Fourth World, the latter bringing in senior saxophonist Jimmy Sloggett, guitarist Tuhi Timoti and acoustic bassist Andy Brown.
Heard almost 50 years on, Dr Tree remains a singular, fascinating discovery, especially for Paterson’s pure tone, McNabb’s exploratory synthed-up space-rock, and the refined, energetic momentum of Gibson, Winch and Jackson. Dr Tree won three music awards: best group, breakthrough artist and best rock album.
Shortly before his 2013 death, McNabb recalled that award ceremony: “I was sitting at the table, my hair down to here, and there’s all these people coming round I didn’t know and saying, ‘We’ll be in touch.’ And I never heard anything from anybody.”
Dr Tree didn’t make another album.
Revulva by Revulva
More local jazz, but quite different. Led by bassist/singer/composer Phoebe Johnson, this young, eight-piece, jazz-schooled band brings a female-forward perspective to socially conscious songs, which take on an uncommitted lover, road rage, landlords, sexual desire and more.
But these lyrics – stinging, wry or ironic – come with smooth, slinky arrangements for horns, Wurlitzer electric piano, a guitar and a rhythm section that nudges Revulva closer to Steely Dan, Studio 54 disco-soul, LA street funk and sensual R’n’B strutting.
Johnson delivers her lyrics with a coquettish purr or a knowing seduction, which run cleverly contrary to their bite.
It’s not often you hear polished, sophisticated jazz with a woman mimicking an orgasm (the lusty Bush Bash opening with “I’m feeling itchy”), shaving pubic hair, the chugging 1970s sound of Heroin Chic about exploitive capitalism (“roll up my sleeves, get exactly what I need”) and the claustrophobia of relationships in a small failing town (This Town). Or a metaphor of a solitary male gannet on Mana Island (“no mates, no mates”).
In its own way, jazz as different as Dr Tree’s was in its day.
In very different times, of course.
Revulva album release tour:
- Space Academy, Christchurch, October 31
- Yours, Dunedin, November 1
- Secret garden gig, Hāwea Flat, Wānaka, November 2
- The Yard, Raglan, November 7
- Neck of the Woods, Auckland, November 9
- Porridge Watson, Whanganui, November 16
- San Fran, Wellington, November 23
