MC Junior freestyles into jazz

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In a move to take jazz music to the next generation of fans, and give jazz enthusiasts something new to ruminate on, Melbourne five-piece band Mistaken Identity has embarked on project "Axle Whitehead", named after the Melbourne-based singer who guests with the group, together with former CDB singer Gary Pinto. The final twist to the show is the presence of MC Junior.

MC Junior is working with the jazz musicians to introduce a little 'freestylin' into jazz and soul standards. And when you think about it, why not? Is 'freestylin' that much different from scat?

MC Junior with Gary Pinto and Axle Whitehead

Born in Channai, India, the 25-year-old MC Junior (real name Bruce Edmonds Jnr, after his Dad) migrated to Australia with his family when he was two. The family was not musical - his dad did enjoy listening to jazz but the genre never appealed to MC Junior. "Jazz was for old people," he says.

Aged five, he taught himself to play drums and develop an ear for beats - how to make them and how to break them down. At family gatherings, his uncles would perform, then invite MC Junior and his cousins to give a solo performance to an audience of 150 extended family members and 400 members of Melbourne's expat Indian community. This gave MC Junior both a love of working the crowd and the confidence to perform.

In 1998, MC Junior got into the Melbourne club scene as a promoter, working under the watchful eye of his two older cousins, DJ Craig G and Dinesh. Learning the ropes quickly, he went on to manage successful clubs such as Metro, Carousel, Redhead and Salt. He is currently involved with Club Evolution and Lotus Bar.

It was his involvement with the Melbourne club scene that led him to meet his idol, Fatman Scoop, who he brought out to the Metro in 2001.

"He had an amazing presence on stage and was an inspiration. He pulled me up during his show in front of a live audience and said 'yo man, freestyle," says MC Junior.

MC Junior credits Fatman Scoop with teaching him how to go into an audience and wake them up, while remaining soulful about his music. He believes that if you tune into your audience, they will tune into you.

"Fatman Scoop taught me the importance of being down to earth. No matter what, you have to remember where you came from," says MC Junior.

Meeting his mentor came in the nick of time for MC Junior, who after several years as a club promoter, was getting caught up in the seamier side of the scene.

"I was getting into bad things and I wasn't proud of it. I didn't appreciate what I had. Fatman Scoop cut me down to size. He told me I had the talent but the wrong attitude," says MC Junior.

Heeding Fatman Scoop's advice, MC Junior keeps it real by rocking the suburbs for his inspiration. He will visit Chadstone Shopping Centre or Chapel Street and listen to the music in the stores to see what people are listening to and how they react to the music.

"I don't go shopping, I listen to songs. I'll stay in one store and listen to two or three tunes. I'll go to different places to find different music," says MC Junior.

MC Junior met Mistaken Identity through saxophone player Mal Sedegreen, who is married to MC Junior's cousin.

"I had never listened to jazz and hadn't thought about combining jazz and hip hop. I wasn't very enthusiastic about working with a jazz band and didn't really see the point," says MC Junior.

The band had organised a recording session with Axle Whitehead and asked MC Junior to record some beats for them.

When he arrived at the studio, Whitehead was sitting in a chair singing and handed MC Junior the microphone. Without exchanging a word to each other, the two started to jam.

"It was entirely spontaneous. We did three tracks in three takes. The blend (of hip hop and jazz) sounded fantastic," says MC Junior.

While the project is still in its infancy, it is pleasing audiences, both the traditional jazz crowd and also bringing in new fans from the hip hop and club scenes. MC Junior admits he was a little concerned about how jazz audiences would react and had learned to adapt his style, according to the audience.

"We believe it is on the verge of taking off and everyone is excited. It's not cocky - we've worked really hard," says MC Junior.

The band has three gigs lined up in Sydney and another two in Melbourne in the next two months. While it is not enough to pay the bills just yet, MC Junior believes musicians in Melbourne can make a living from their art, provided they are surrounded by the right people. Like Clark Kent to Superman, MC Junior transforms his character from Bruce Edmonds Jnr, Customer Service Officer by day, to MC Junior, hype master at night. He believes being able to switch out of character is important and gives him the necessary down time.

"I used to have the character on all the time but I started to believe my own bullshit," says MC Junior.

For now, MC Junior will keep his ego intact and his underpants firmly on the inside.

Catch Mistaken Identity featuring Axle Whitehead, Gary Pinto and MC Junior at the following venues on these dates:

Sydney:
The Basement - 28 August, 29 September
Darling Harbour 29 August

Melbourne:
Lotus Bar 18 September
Club Odeon 21 September

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Gore and metal in the desert

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These were mild words at a time when stronger ones would probably have served a better purpose. "Springsteen calls Bush 'war pig'" would have made a far stronger headline, but Bruce has long since lost the interesting spark that once had him moving millions with songs about knife-fights on the streets of New Jersey.

Maybe it's American culture. But there's a heavy reluctance to obviously and openly criticise a living American President -- or even a dead one -- which sadly befalls the most "rebellious" Americans during critical national periods.

We must be out of that critical period because Americans are much happier now to be blunt in publicly airing their strong beliefs that the Iraq war has been a disastrous stuff-up. During Bush's pre-New Orleans summer holiday at the big ranch at Crawford, Texas, the mother of a dead Iraq veteran has been demanding to see the same reasoning that Bruce couldn't see either.

Cindy Sheehan

Cindy Sheehan's protest at the war that cost the life of her son became one of the top stories of the American summer.
And like any major news story, it was accompanied by serious efforts to exercise "control." On the pro-war side, top Right-wing media spin doctor Mark Steyn led the charge against the protesting war mother with an internationally-published piece that pleaded with readers not to accord sympathy to this mother of a dead veteran.

I'm not sure how many bullets Steyn has dodged in defense of his country, but he made two points in particular in the course of this mother-bashing tirade. One is that other parents of dead Iraq veterans were not protesting at Crawford, and therefore we shouldn't sympathise with this one.
The other is that the men and women who signed up to fight in Iraq are not children, despite emotive anti-war rhetoric that stresses the urgency of "saving our boys" or "saving our kids" by bringing them home immediately.

It doesn't take an enormous intellect to see the holes in Steyn's argument. But it makes Bruce's words back at the start of the war look a little more on the mark.
US soldiers killed on active duty in Iraq are not "kids," exactly. They're adults, and free to choose.

But theirs are certainly "young American lives." And their lives have been laid on the line by those in authority in the US Government - the leaders who still can't explain whatever it was that they thought they were doing when they ordered the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.

A young American grunt interviewed on George Gittoes' unique documentary Soundtrack to War puts this in perspective when he reflects on his experience of pulling bodies from the wreckage of bombed vehicles in Iraq.

"I wrote some lyrics the other day, and I said I sold my soul to thee/And hell has started for me," the young soldier told Gittoes. "And what I meant by that was that joining the army, I felt like I sold my soul to the army, basically I'm under their .... they're in charge of me until I get out.
"And hell has started for me was the day we got out here, to Iraq."
Gittoes' movie is the most powerful piece of anti-war propaganda yet created out of the disaster in Iraq. It's powerful for a lot of reasons: above all, because it actually documents the views of serving US soldiers in Baghdad.
This cuts right through the arguments of arm-char rock stars, politicians and columnists back home. A soldier who has actually mopped up the human remains of a hardware barrage inevitably has a different and distinctive point of view. But it's a point of view we seldom hear: especially not while a war's still being fought.
Significantly, it was only through music that the words of some US soldiers serving in the current war has reached us. Gittoes, an Australian film-maker and artist, received express permission to interview soldiers like the one quoted above, to talk to them about the music that they used while in the war-zone to say sane, get through the mission and cope with all the stuff flying around their ears.
The young American who wrote the lyrics quoted above was a "gore metal" fan. As he passed on these words from the front line, he sat with Baghdad flies buzzing around his tattooed arms, a Johnson electric guitar straddled across his lap.
Army fatigues. Lyrics: I sold my soul to thee/And hell has started for me. War supporters say we should respect what the soldiers say.

So we should respect this.

Soundtrack to War by George Gittoes is available through ABC Shops.

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