Break the music mold

Pop lovers of the world, unite! We have nothing to lose but our chain stores. Waiting for the revolution we feel we deserve, we’ve endured a lot of hyphenated references to the past -- neo-soul, post-punk, nu-metal -- when a movement was fomenting right under our noses. It’s time to face the music: the only way to halt the commodification of pop culture is to get free.

Not free, as in it doesn’t cost anything. Why deny the artist his or her due? No, “free” as in free jazz: improvisation, music that is never played the same way twice. We have to change the idea of the “song.”

One of the places this idea has taken root is in L.A.

Musicians have acknowledged this problem for years. Recordings, concerts, radio -- they’re all a trap of endless repetition. The trouble with pop songs is not, as many critics charge, that the market is ruled by the tyranny of bad taste. If Celine Dion is your bag, go on and live your life. It’s not your fault that this act tends to feed corporate control. It’s the song’s.

From the very first time a song is heard in public, it becomes one of the most jealously guarded works of art. Unlike painting or sculpture, however, every copy is an original. Its value is measured not by rarity, but by ubiquity. Still, our reverence verges on fundamentalism. Despite tens of millions of copies, the song must remain the same. And the more popular or important the song, the less likely it is to change. Like “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Or the Song of Solomon. But, honestly, how many times can you “Get the Led Out”? Can’t we agree the Led was pretty well out by 1978? Now, it’s only making mega-media corporations rich, new artists discouraged and consumers unmotivated to hear what’s next.

Maybe we should start challenging the sanctity of the song. Jazz has been out in front on this since Ornette Coleman blew the (Western) world apart with his 1958 recordings “Something Else” and “Tomorrow Is the Question.” Sidestepping the efforts of John Coltrane and Charles Mingus to play outside harmonic chord progressions, Coleman opened the door to improvisation based on melodic and rhythmic lines. It was a door that opened infinitely more doors.

One writer described the sound as “a non-European folk survival -- direct and moving.” Free jazz was born. Coleman is still popular today without playing “hits,” in fact, never playing much of the same composition twice.

What if all music was like this? Some L.A. bands have been asking this question for years. Like Crater. Consisting of local virtuoso drummer Scott Amendola, bassist Scott Sickafoos, guitar reinventor Nels Cline and a mysterious Bay Area music software engineer named JHNO, Crater plays rock- and electronica-based improv compositions that are only lightly dipped in structure, and sometimes not even that.

And yet it is sublime music. Some of it sounds like rock, some like ‘70s Miles Davis, and all of it sounds like Crater. Similarly, Mike Watt’s L.A. punk improv space-jam ensemble, Banyan, sounds like none other. So, it is with any number of free jazz groups that appear at the new Rocco’s or the experimental electronica heard at the Knitting Factory.

Songs, it turns out, are not the key to identity. Imagine a radio where everything was remixed automatically. Led Zeppelin would still sound like Led Zeppelin, complete with lyrics about Middle Earth and whatnot. But we’d finally strip away this idea that the song we know is the only way it can be. It was never that way for the artist who wrote it. We could then stop storing things like museum pieces and start living music again.

Dance music is already deep into this idea. Live experience now needs to inform the rest of the industry. Even a touch of improv might signal the end of formats, playlists and the endless repackaging that turns good songs bad. Full-blown free music empowers musicians and weakens record companies. Under this regime, recordings would exist just to drive people to live shows, where every night would be a happening because a new version of every song would debut. All of pop culture would be affected: The CDs, DVDs and videogames that now keep us home-boundwould give way to night life. Are you ready to break your addiction to the song and get free? Crater is waiting.

Crater played the Temple Bar on Wednesday night as part of a tour that moves on to Petaluma tonight, then San Francisco and Santa Cruz. The band will be back in the area soon.