RESONANT FREQUENCIES (mindless pleasures) A blog via jazzresin

e Pat Sajak Assassins

Everybody likes the "cool part" of a song. You know, the cool part -- the part where three people listening to a record in a room turn to each other and begin nodding their heads in unison. It's usually an instrumental break or bridge about two-thirds of the way through -- and if you can't recognize a cool part when you hear one, the guy sitting in the room who's stoned will be more than happy to point it out for you.

The Pat Sajak Assassins, this year's victors in the Noise/Experimental category, definitely like the cool part of a song -- their "experiment," as it were, seems to be to craft lengthy instrumental pop songs entirely out of "cool parts." Mixing rock & roll's phallic forward thrust to free-jazz skronk, the Assassins' music is endearingly schizophrenic and perfectly crafted for today's short attention span. Whenever something in a song seems like it's getting old, why not try something new? That part that sounds a bit like a sax-only rendition of Frank Zappa's "Peaches in Regalia" maneuvers easily into straight-ahead cock rock and ends up in found-sound sampled noise. Cool parts abound.