The J. & F. Band is the bumblebee that keeps flying on #neuguitars #blog
“The wing structure of the hornet, in relation to its weight, is not suitable for flight, but it does not know it and flies anyway.” So Albert Einstein would have said, at least according to popular wisdom. Poor Einstein, he never even remotely dreamed of thinking that. On 05 November 2016 Stefano Bartezzaghi published an article in Repubblica entitled “Il calabrone continua a volare nonostante la scienza”“. Bartezzaghi explains its origin: a French entomologist, Antoine Magnan, enunciated it in the 1930s and then redoed the calculations and discovered that they were wrong. But you know, certain witty aphorisms remain in the memory and are, from time to time, attributed to different people. In this case, I believe, its fortune is due to the fact that it opens a window on the existence of the impossibility and on the scientifically inexplicable. In some respects it recalls another famous aphorism, the one according to which “writing about music is like dancing about architecture”. Now you can not only write, but also narrate about music, and the hornet flies quietly respecting, without knowing it, the physical laws enunciated by science. There are, however, other situations that lead us to think that there are cases in which the laws of mother nature can be suspended.
Let’s take The J. & F. Band for example … how does it exist? In theory, according to the laws of the market, and therefore of the neoliberal nature, The J. & F. Band could not exist. Think about it: who would be the record company that would never dream of bringing together a band with an organic variant between 7 and 11 elements, each time proposing a different subject to be inspired by to create albums of pure musical invention?
Yet it exists and, like the hornet, it does not care about the laws of a neoliberal nature and does not even care about men and fashions. It has already reached her third album in three years, from 2018 to 2021, three jewels made of sound, talent and energy. All produced by the same record company, the Italian Long Song Records, led by Fabrizio Perissinotto. If Jaimoe and Joe Fonda are the backbones of the band, Fabrizio Perissinotto is the deus ex machina, the creator. Three albums, we said, all with a specific project behind them: “From the roots to the sky” which was inspired by the Allman Brothers and featured Raoul Melvin Björkenheim’s deadly guitar, “Cajun Blue” with a southern blues sound with David Grissom’s guitar, and the last “Me and the Devil” dedicated to Sun Ra, with the presence of three guitarists, David Grissom, Bobby Lee Rodgers and Scott Sharrard.
Three different guitarists, for a new album with a deadly shot, recorded at the Firehouse 12 Studio, on January 30th and 31st 2020, just before the pandemic hit us all. They are three fantastic records, three big band records, but where the guitar always manages to carve out its own creative and innovative space. The J. & F. Band may also have arrived out of time, will not respect the laws of the record economy, but, like the bumblebee, the problem has never even been raised. Luckily.
NeuGuitars 