Medeski, Martin & Wood

Let’s be honest: The magnetic force that pulls the hygiene-challenged to an average jam band has a lot to do with the fact that a chemically addled brain can store only so much information. Like song titles. Not that Medeski, Martin & Wood have strewn record-store aisles with an unreasonable amount of product, but just try committing to memory the names of each MMW composition, then matching them back up to their live permutations. The people with that level of natural brain power are too busy studying for the MCAT to be bothered with fellas like MMW. That’s good, because we’re going to need all the doctors we can turn out to care for this generation of hep cats as their senses dull and they trudge off to the Dick’s Picks nursing home to reminisce about days of one-hitters. Me, I’ll take my chances on aluminum oxide and NutraSweet — deodorized and carbonated.

You can tell by now that I have no idea what Medeski, Martin & Wood played at Liberty Hall. Um, it was an acoustic show, and the audience was the sort of tie-dyed orgy you’d expect, the granola scaring away the corn flakes. However, there’s a lot for a corn flake to love about MMW. They’re capable of loopy highs that elude the compulsion to disintegrate into mushy jamming. They’re fine, upstanding citizens, presentable enough to get jobs sacking groceries or unloading trucks. Best of all, they stuck with a simple configuration of their given names when titling their group, resisting the impulse to call themselves, say, Phish. Yup, the sober could learn to dig guys like MMW.

Here’s the absolute last of what I know for sure: Martin plays drums, Medeski plays piano, and Wood plays bass. They’ve been working the corn rows since 1991, after deciding to eschew jazz clubs in favor of grassroots touring to secure a market share of college kids interested in the gray area between experimental pop and buttoned-down jazz. They’re talented and savvy, the basic tools for post-punk survival. MMW have honed their tools at the grindstone of indie record companies and taken their noodling to the people, turning the trail from the Midwest to the Pacific Northwest into a new Paris of too-hip underground patrons.

Tuesday night, the group doled out two sets of recent and new compositions that proved two things: The trio is probably holding back, and its audience couldn’t care less. There’s no doubt that they can play smarter, even if they may never get much better. Their dynamic was limited by a need to placate the fans, the sort of weakness that’s easier to take from rock groups devoted to the three-minute dine-and-ditch. Their songs have become more tuneful over time, but not more sophisticated. Live, they didn’t open much beyond the recorded versions, and there was little need for the group to have changed up for an acoustic showcase. It’s not that unplugged is completely passé, but it’s a little late for MMW to storm the proving grounds of real jazz; such a move won’t necessarily get them sniffed and pooh-poohed out the door of uptight venues, but it probably won’t endear them to a following that should take its culture wherever it happens to land. MMW are, right now at least, hemped-in, too hip to be fun, and not tight enough to climb up to the hot trio territory.