Memory Serves

MATERIAL

Celluloid/Elektra Musician

Bassist producer Bill Laswell provides the thunderfunk bottom for this slab of avant-jazz-rock by his Material collective. Contributors include Fred Frith, Sonny Sharrock, Henry Threadgill, Olu Dara, Henry Kaiser, Billy Bang, Fred Maher and others. Angular, chaotic, but always grooving — and melodic in its own way (there are even a few vocals) — Memory Serves is a good entrée into the more outré side of the '80s.

This article appears in Jul 26 – Aug 1, 2006.

Eric Snider is the dean of Bay area music critics. He started in the early 1980s as one of the founding members of Music magazine, a free bi-monthly. He was the pop music critic for the then-St. Petersburg...