Joe Baiza is my new Channel 7 Everyday Hero. Christ, the guy didn't even start playing guitar until he was 27. Yet from his humble beginnings doing guitar skronk weirdness in Saccharine Trust, he has managed to transmogrify himself into a formidable jazzbo. He seems to have absorbed all the cool shit about playing jazz without getting mired in that overly doctrinaire shit that seems to plague a lot of players. Joe Baiza is not what you would call a prodigy by any means, and indeed, a lot of the stuff he plays in Universal Congress Of would get him pretty much laughed out of most "real" jazz clubs. But he has managed to find his own voice, a kind of precocious but very happening rope-a-dope style that suits this band well. Universal Congress Of is a band Joe Baiza started in the late 80s after Saccharine Trust fell apart. Their early stuff is more on the improvisational side and, truth be told, doesn't make for terribly compelling records. But they soon started taking a new direction and playing stuff more in line with old Meters, hints of Tar Babies, maybe with a little dash of the ghetto/street stylings of WAR. Then came their final phase, which is more in line with the Ornette Coleman thing. On this record, Joe's role is essentially that of bandleader; he really doesn't play much at all, deferring the spotlight to his shit-hot band (Steve Moss on sax, Steve Gaeta on bass, AP Gonzalez on drums) and stepping up to take the occasional solo. In fact this leads me to believe that, much like Ozzy Osbourne, Joe Baiza's real talent is to surround himself with great players and inspire them to great heights.