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"  Can one album single-handedly make jazz relevant again? Should you care? One listen to The Bad Plus&amp;#039;s These Are the Vistas will damn sure make you care.  AS JAZZ APPRECIATION Month approaches, I&amp;#039;m planning to honor it the same way I do the Great American Smokeout: by ignoring it. It&amp;#039;s not that I&amp;#039;m in denial--I&amp;#039;ve always appreciated that jazz exists--but I have a problem keeping myself tuned in to a genre of MUSIC that inevitably leaves me with the nagging feeling that I have a lot to learn. It&amp;#039;s like they left the decoder ring out of my jewel case. And yet the same people I&amp;#039;d ask for help are the pseudo-intellectuals and hipsters I actively avoid. Imagine if there was a jazz record for the rest of us to get excited about, one you wouldn&amp;#039;t have to renounce your love of Physical Graffiti for. A self-described &amp;quot;power piano trio&amp;quot; known as the Bad Plus has delivered just that album.  These Are the Vistas introduces the Bad Plus as seriously talented MUSICians who don&amp;#039;t take themselves too seriously. They&amp;#039;ve earned their stripes with jazz purists by packing some of the most famous jazz clubs in New York. Yet paired with Grammy-winning producer Tchad Blake--a man best known for bringing sonic sparkle to Pearl Jam, Sheryl Crow, and Los Lobos--they&amp;#039;ve debuted with a record ballsy enough to tackle tricked-out versions of pop songs by Blondie and Nirvana, with the occasional fuzz of walkie-talkies and mini megaphones. They&amp;#039;re jazz&amp;#039;s version of the Foo Fighters--loud and menacing, but with a penchant for the playful. From the opening drumroll, bassist Reid Anderson, pianist Ethan Iverson, and drummer David King are having fun. When was the last time anyone said that about a jazz record?  Jazz traditionalists will point to the Bad Plus&amp;#039;s cover of Nirvana&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Smells Like Teen Spirit&amp;quot; as a transparent ploy to lure in non--jazz believers. And maybe it is. But that the Bad Plus might be suggesting that Cobain is as valid a MUSICal influence as Coltrane is refreshing. Hearing a familiar song turned on its head and into something only vaguely recognizable better captures jazz&amp;#039;s appeal than wading through nineteen hours of Ken Burns&amp;#039;s Jazz. Even better, the Bad Plus turns the tables on dance MUSIC and disco: The original DJ-driven ambience of Aphex Twin&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Flim&amp;quot; is reworked into a hypnotizing classical piece, and the core groove of Blondie&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;Heart of Glass&amp;quot; is transformed into a hectic series of freak-outs that sound like Frank Zappa bumping into Quincy Jones at Studio 54. The Bad Plus&amp;#039;s originals are no less frisky and engaging than the hits we already know. You&amp;#039;ll see exactly why they call themselves the loudest piano trio ever on the album-opening &amp;quot;Big Eater&amp;quot;; it rocks like the soundtrack to a SportsCenter highlight reel. And while the raw nervous energy of &amp;quot;Boo-Wah&amp;quot; will have you subconsciously reaching for the volume knob, the Bad Plus is adept at subtlety: &amp;quot;Everywhere You Turn&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Silence Is the Question&amp;quot; follow the great heavy-metal tradition of the power ballad, starting softly and finishing big. The latter is a lot like my first car: Both go from zero to sixty in eight minutes while you hold on for dear life. It&amp;#039;s as perfectly suited to Sunday-morning coffee as it is to a romping striptease the night before. And that&amp;#039;s the beauty of These Are the Vistas. Strip away the booming drums and Cobain&amp;#039;s name and what you&amp;#039;re left with is a spectacular collection of songs that doesn&amp;#039;t require a user&amp;#039;s manual to captivate you. Isn&amp;#039;t that what MUSIC is about anyway? Isn&amp;#039;t that what made six million bluegrass novices gobble up the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack? Composer John Philip Sousa once predicted, &amp;quot;Jazz will endure just as long as people hear it through their feet instead of their brains.&amp;quot; That These Are the Vistas so effortlessly moves both is quite a promising victory.  Five More Records Worth Your Lunch Money Hall &amp;amp;amp; Oates, Do It for Love (U-Watch). Let&amp;#039;s face it, we&amp;#039;ve all taken a little guilty pleasure in &amp;quot;secretary rock&amp;quot; progenitors Hall &amp;amp;amp; Oates. They&amp;#039;re back with their first new album in five years--a set of instantly hummable songs offering new reason to tape on a fake mustache and support a record store three towns away. February 11.  Jesse Malin, The Fine Art of Self Destruction (Artemis). Ryan Adams&amp;#039;s production credit may earn your attention, but Jesse Malin&amp;#039;s songs ought to keep it. They&amp;#039;re wonderfully gritty and bitter, allowing this former punk rocker to bravely wear his heart on his sleeve. In stores now.  Morphine The Best of Morphine: 1992--1995 (Rykodisc). Four years ago, the innovative and guitar-free Morphine was on its way to breaking out of mere cult status when an onstage heart attack claimed frontman Mark Sandman. For both diehards and newbies, this new collection of Morphine favorites and rarities will beautifully underscore what was and what could have been. February 18.  The MUSIC, The MUSIC (Capitol). On its majestically psychedelic debut, the MUSIC offers Led Zeppelin fans a reason to reunite and rejoice. These Brits are smart enough to mine the blues for modern hard-rock inspiration and fun enough to fully test your stereo&amp;#039;s mettle. February 25.  John Hammond, Ready for Love (Back Porch). Roots MUSIC&amp;#039;s master ambassador returns with a collection of bluesy covers of Tom Waits, George Jones, Billie Holliday, and the Larks, among others. After forty years, Hammond only seems to get better. February 11.  Digital MUSIC Goes Legit By Chris Kaye THIS USED TO BE SO EASY: You&amp;#039;d just log on to Napster and download the entire history of recorded MUSIC, sidestepping little details like cost and ethics. Good times ensued. But ever since the major labels shut down Shawn Fanning&amp;#039;s brainchild and began hunting peer-to-peer Robin Hoods (targeting you as well as the services themselves), grand theft audio has become a bit riskier. Thinking globally and acting glacially, the MUSIC industry has finally begun to roll out its own (totally legal) online services. Some allow secure-format files to be saved to your machine--then made portable for an iPod or burned to a CD--while others are streaming-only services. (You must be connected to the Internet in order to fully rock out.) To see if crime really pays, we compared the straight-and-narrow options with the controversial Kazaa Lite, a klepto-enabling service that remains at large. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/music/a1517/esq0303-mar-music/>