The performance above may be my single favorite thing I’ve ever found on YouTube. It came as part of a longer video, on a day I decided to really treat myself and binge on live television performances by Franco & TP OK Jazz. Nearly two hours long, this 1982 performance by OK Jazz on Télé Zaïre burns like little else you will encounter. The drummer is insane. The whole band is tight as a drum. Franco hovers in the background of the performers, perfecting his no-nonsense death glare.
And then, about seven-eighths of the way into things, they step on the gas and out comes “Mawe,” which they had cut a lot slower in the studio. That leisurely version is certainly lovely—“Mawe” rides an effortless guitar glide there. But in front of an audience, under the hot studio lights? They light it on fire. The singers are in roaring, suave command. I love the horn players hesitating and then continuing their choreography like nothing happened. I like the drummer going nuts on the fill. I like seeing up close just how much guitar Franco is playing. He is the entire foundation of the sound; everything builds off it and everything is completely dependent on it. His playing is, as his nickname indicated, a form of sorcery; it’s also a form of conducting the band without the use of a baton.
And that’s not even my favorite Franco recording these days! That honor goes to “Monzo Pt. 1 & 2” (c. 1972), where the rhythm changes completely twice over: once the sebene kicks in around two and a half minutes and—critically and astoundingly—when Franco’s rhythm guitar literally forces the band to rearrange the song around him, and does so without failing, with only ninety seconds to go—and that final iteration of the rhythm is even richer, catches you up even harder, than the seven amazing minutes you’ve already heard. I’ve never heard anything like it in my life.
Anyway, Franco & OK Jazz was a band of wizards and they deserved to be in my book about 1984, so I made absolutely certain to write them in. And then it came time to cut the book down. Guess what? There wasn’t room for them. It just wouldn’t work—I knew it, and anyone reading would know it, too. So I set them aside, and then when I offered it to Mike McGonigal for an early issue of Maggot Brain, he went for it, hurrah! Now Maggot Brain is no more, so I want to tip my cap and give them my thanks for not just putting this in their fine publication but also making it look awesome! I’ll do the same below by inserting some of the other YouTube OK Jazz performances that I gorged on that day. May you do the same. Enjoy!
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