Taste Like Chicken

Robert Henry Becker Arizona Daily Wildcat Greasy Chicken at the King Fisher

Drummer Dave Gold says, "We sometimes get requests for 'that song from the Lexus commercial . . .' " (Which is actually Dave Brubeck's horrendously popular "Take Five" Gold says.)

" . . . or some George Benson," adds guitarist Nick Luca.

" . . . and 'The Girl From Ipanema,' of course," continues bassist Ron Malleis.

Sax player Marco Rosano complains about the overabundance of 'quiet' gigs the band has been playing lately, where these standards comprise a large part of their set.

"We get tired of playing quiet all the time," he says. "It's always good when people tell you you're not loud enough."

Gold counters, "Playing softly is a really good exercise. If you can groove at a low volume, that's pretty hard to do."

And grooving at a low volume is something that their formal music training has helped them do. The band formed at the UA School of Music in 1993, when Rosano studied clarinet, Malleis studied jazz and Luca received his master's degree in music composition. Gold had studied at the Berklee School of Music in Boston.

Good Time Barbecue is Greasy Chicken's latest album. It runs the gamut of musical styles and, as clich‚ as this may sound, has something for just about everyone.

There's "Vision" and "Peppy Lou's Cafe" for the easy-listening crowd, "Holly's Hobby," a ballad-y rock song, a quiet groove on the old style "Junkyard Jamboree" and good percussion and a fusion sound on the aptly titled "Smooth and Blue."

The band does a bit of experimental stuff, such as "Jaywalk," which has a lot of fade-ins and -outs, and "Watah," which is extremely quiet, drawing a large amount of tension throughout the song as strange space-y noises play in the background. A hidden track after the last song on the album is the result of a moment of musical anarchy in the studio.

Luca says, "I said, 'We've got all these extra tracks, why don't we each do something crazy, something we don't normally do?' So Marco picked up the trombone, and I picked up a trumpet, and Ron played piano, and Dave played piano, hitting the strings with rubber mallets. We did some backwards moog and upside-down guitars, and we had 'Cadillac City' playing backwards.

"I work at this recording studio and this guy there does voice-overs, self-help tapes, and he never finished his project and we used this funny stuff lying around, all this stuff about Ben Franklin and bags of M & M's at the theater or whatever," he says.

Gold says, "There's no market for totally cerebral music. We can play those gigs, and if there are musicians in the audience, we can cater to that, bust out all the highly-practiced nonsense, but basically there's no market for music that people can't just get into, and bop their head to."

"Like Dave says, we're very aware of that commercial side too, you have to be if you want to survive . . ." Luca says.

" . . . and it's fun to play to more people anyway," says Gold.

"Like Fletch says, 'Live out your rock star fantasy, guys,' jokes Luca.

He continues, "Our music isn't jazz. We just get forced into saying that because it's jazzy. I think there's a lot of different influences in our music. Our music is probably more alternative than 'alternative' could ever be."

Malleis adds, "Jazz players listen to us and go, 'That's not jazz.' We're pretty much in the grey area, the nebulous zone. We get in there and we sort of do our own thing."

Although they say they're not a jazz band, jazz elements make up a large part of the band's work.

Gold laughs at Luca, who at a recent gig threw in a quote from a Coolio song.

"Most of the audience knows he's playing a Coolio quote," he says.

Luca answers, "He probably sampled it from somebody anyway."

The fact that the band doesn't have a vocalist is another jazz leaning the band has. This may make it a little harder for them commercially, but they feel a vocalist would be superfluous to what they are trying to do.

"I like it better because of the jazz context, and it's fun because we can improvise. We definitely come from the jazz idea of a section of tight, organized music and then from there it's solos. So, having a vocalist is boring. We've got nothing to say," said Lucas.

The band is now expanding on their already wide array of music styles.

"I think we're a lot more into funky grooves lately than anything," says Luca. "We're getting more into ambient trip-hop and hip-hop grooves. And we always end up doing a little swing."

They also plan on playing to wider audiences, although the demographics of their present audiences are already varied.

"It's funny, because our audience base is diverse enough where there's gonna be someone in the crowd going, 'Turn it up!' and there's gonna be someone going (in a shrivelled old woman's voice), 'That's just too loud, I can't take this.' "