Recap Greg Ginn And The Taylor Texas Corrugators and Jambang at The Frequency

Greg Ginn is 54 years old, he has an awe-inspiring rock 'n' roll legacy, and, to this day he, runs SST Records, the label that brought us Ginn's own Black Flag, but also the Minutemen, Hüsker Dü, and Bad Brains. Theoretically, he doesn’t owe anybody a fucking thing. He's no longer a starving punk living with his band in an abandoned church, and he isn’t trying to be. It's hard to blame Ginn for wanting to travel in new directions musically, but Decider couldn’t help but be a little let down by what he brought to The Frequency on Sunday night as his two bands—The Taylor Texas Corrugators and Jambang—plodded their way through a pair of unimaginative sets.

First, Ginn came out with the Corrugators, a three-piece jam band of sorts, featuring a clumsy, half-assed bass performance from Ginn, who seemed to do little more than sloppily ride the pentatonic scale into its fiery tomb. “I guess I’d better explain myself,” Ginn told the crowd after two directionless faux-funk meanderings. “Everything we are playing tonight is completely improvised.” And that is exactly how it sounded. Drummer Steve DeLollis shifted between tired pop rhythms and sudden bursts of technicality, and the impressive strumming of mandolin player Bobby Bancalari couldn’t quite overcome the boring rhythm section. The problem here wasn't that they were jamming, but that, after so many years of unpredictable playing, Ginn failed to bring any such distinctive stamp to the set.

Ultimately, many audience members looked bewildered and unsure of what to do with themselves—that is, until the band invited Madison’s DB Pedersen (who played an opening set) to lend his schizophrenic vocals to a few numbers, with help from saxophonist Jeff Miller and clarinetist Robert Perry of the other opening act, JFAR. Perry and Miller built the Corrugators’ sinking ships into yachts with their chaotic interplay, and Pedersen twitched, chirped, coughed, barked, and howled his way over the top, reclaiming the audience's attention. Sadly, after a few numbers, the Corrugators were once again reduced to a trio, and the room began to clear out for the remainder of the evening.

After the Corrugators somewhat abruptly ended their improvised set, Ginn’s other band, Jambang, took the stage. Jambang's the same three people, only this time Ginn played guitar and added cheesy visuals via a plasma-screen TV and a lopsided projector. The main problem, though, was that the trio played with a pre-recorded bass and synth track that sometimes ended up drowning out the actual live instruments.

From mucky set-opener, “Of The Moment,” which was a repetitive seven-minute rock number that really began to wear on the audience after the fifth recycling, to the equally tedious closer, “Zen Masters Of Humboldt,” Jambang droned its way through most of its 2008 album Connecting. When the set ended abruptly again, Ginn said nothing into the mic before he began to disassemble his gear, and an awkward silence washed over the remaining audience. Finally, someone shouted, “Encore!” The remaining handful of people joined in on the request, and Jambang improvised a final tune since they'd mercifully run out of backing tracks. While both bands proved to be gravely disappointing, it should also be noted that Ginn was quiet and modest, and he displayed absolutely no sense of entitlement. Jambang and the Corrugators just came off like a group of friends who get together to play music on the weekends for the hell of it. At this point in his life, maybe Ginn just wants to relax.