It’s an unlikely story: one of the Melbourne International Jazz Festival’s biggest drawcards is Mulatu Astatke, a 67-year-old Ethiopian jazz musician whose superb compositions had sunk into obscurity after civil war and famine engulfed his homeland with the Derg’s disastrous rise to power in 1974. Ever so justly, a volume of the French-produced Ethiopiques series devoted to his classic recordings and the Jim Jarmusch film Broken Flowers paved the way for his journey to Melbourne’s shores and the long-due recognition of his status as a musician of the highest order.

Astatke’s compositions are sexy, atmospheric, smooth, melding Latin rhythms and jazz arrangements with traditional Ethiopian music. His melodies slither snake-like across sumptuous beds of sparse, hypnotic funk, and if one were ever to be sipping martinis and smoking hookahs in a steamy harem on the trail of a two-bit hustler, no doubt it would be Astatke supplying the musical backdrop.

Recent years have been busy musically for Astatke. He’s collaborated with the Heliocentrics and the Either/Orchestra as well as releasing an album of mostly original material just this year. And at the Forum tonight, he plays for the first time with Australia’s own purveyors of music from around the world, the Black Jesus Experience.

Astatke takes centre stage in traditional Ethiopian dress. Softly spoken, he unassumingly introduces each song before stepping back behind the vibraphone or some percussion and playing. Astatke allows his compositions be the primary focus, eschewing overlong solos and any trace of self-indulgence so that his melodies and harmonies, which sound so naturally distinctive to an ear raised on Western music, effortlessly beguile the audience.

Detracting from the performance, however, is a too-loud horn section. When the trumpet and two saxophones are blown in concert, the sound overpowers the rest of the delicately arranged music, bludgeoning what else is being played rather than blending with it. The Black Jesus Experience is not as tight as one would like to begin with either. As the night goes on, though, the band does grow into the music, and by the time Astatke turns to his more upbeat numbers, compositions such as Yegelie Tezeta and Sabye positively shine.

Tonight, Astatke reconfirms his place in the musical pantheon. Such heavenly music makes you think the Rastafarians might have been half-right after all: an incarnation of the divine was born in Ethiopia, even if it wasn’t Emperor Haile Selassie as they suppose.

The globe is getting warmer, the days sultrier. It’s only a matter of time before the world is one giant Louisiana swamp, and in that sweaty future, we’ll all be listening on repeat to the mad gumbo stylings of Dr. John, New Orleans’ voodoo master.

Melbourne is a long way from New Orleans, but this Wednesday night is abnormally balmy for March in the Antipodes, the unexpected heat the perfect setting for musical concoctions from the Cajun country. Dr. John will clock seventy years on this mortal coil come November, yet no matter how far removed he might be from the latest trends and his revered home town, he still exudes a timeless cool that any style-conscious youth would die for.

The guitar, bass and drums of the Lower 9-11 Band are Dr. John’s foils, and it wouldn’t be too far fetched to assume that there’s 911 years of musical experience on stage together. Everyone of them knows every nook, every cranny of the rhythms and the melodies of the swamp, and perhaps that’s what’s the problem: Dr. John and the band seem bored, on autopilot, barely even there.

The show starts with One 2am Too Many, yet it’s hard to shake the feeling that Dr. John will be in bed by midnight at the latest. Compounding the musicians’ lack of energy is the low volume — a rudimentary stereo system could blast out something louder — and the microphones on stage that are bedevilled by technical hitches which repeatedly refuse to amplify Dr. John’s delightfully gnarled knot of a voice.

All that’s not to say there aren’t highlights: Reynard Poché’s slide guitar on St. James Infirmary is ridiculously slinky and adds something new to the standard, while Dr. John remains the consummate professional, the sound of Louisiana emanating effortlessly from the keys any time his hands touch them.

Nevertheless, Dr. John and the Lower 9-11 Band showcase tonight the pitfalls of an experienced hand. They’ve been around the block perhaps too many times, and the energy of a band on the make is keenly missed. The likes of the Dap-Kings and the Bamboos still celebrate the sounds of the past with vigour, and, unfortunately, the old stagers tonight are no match for the bands they’ve inspired, no matter how much more accomplished their veteran chops might be.

You could confuse Pavement for your IT department. Despite what you’d expect from a rock and roll band, they saunter unassumingly onto stage dressed in bland T-shirts, their mothers more than likely having cut their hair. Although Stephen Malkmus is the band’s leader, he’s tucked away to the left of the bass player, Mark Ibold, who takes centre stage. And just like computer geeks, once you get past their nondescript exterior and awkward approach to the world, you begin to appreciate the amazing shit they can do that no one else can.

Sure, you might be partial to both sides of the great musical divides, but there will always be arguments over who or which is better: the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, Prince or Michael Jackson, Slanted and Enchanted or Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. At the Palace, Pavement only make things more difficult to resolve by beginning their show with the exquisite rollick of Silence Kid (AKA the misprinted Silence Kit), finishing off with a hyper-energetic Conduit for Sale! and mining deeply from their classic first two albums throughout the night.

There is, however, another musical divide that becomes apparent over the course of the show: that between the slower, more reflective songs and the rockier, punchier numbers. Tonight, Pavement are loud and raucous. Yelling the cryptic refrain “forty, million, daggers” on Two States has always been one of life’s great pleasures. Live, with the guitars crunching and the muffled lo-fi fuzz of the recorded version replaced with punky punch, yelling the same refrain is akin to a primal therapy session. Similarly, songs such as Stereo and Unfair take flight when the chorus hits like a manic sonic bomb. Such pep combined with impromptu musical jams between songs, the bizarre antics of not one but two spare-parts musicians and the seemingly random hangers-on emerging from backstage and singing at various moments make for gonzo rock at its finest.

Unfortunately, the gonzo stylings and charged guitars overwhelm what should be reflective moments in the show. The country tinge of Range Life goes begging with nary an acoustic guitar around, and Here comes across as perfunctory rather than plaintive.

Notwithstanding such bugbears, Pavement are delightfully off-kilter. No song structure has ever tied them down, no musical genre typified their music. Their grab-bag style is well converted into a night of shambolic splendour, and their fractured melodies continue to retain their sparkle, positively glowing in the midst of their more manic moments on stage.

Just as their first studio release began, so does their performance tonight at the Palace. The popping bassline and expansive drums on Up the Beach give Dave Navarro room to launch lead runs when not pummelling a power chord, while lights shine bright on Perry Farrell each time he launches his banshee wails standing majestically tall front and centre on a foldback speaker, champagne bottle in hand.

Jane’s Addiction’s heyday was over twenty years ago now, yet the band still look and feel the part of hungry rock stars on the make, Farrell and Navarro cut like men of tenderer years. And like another ageless, oft-topless frontman whose influence spans decades, Perry Farrell is overflowing with energy, limbs flailing uncontrollably, the very picture of an adult ADD sufferer. No one listens solely with their ears, and the sight of such gleeful, unhinged movement makes everything seem louder, more penetrating, as if the amps really do go all the way up to eleven.

Although they were one of the first alternative bands to make it big, the scantily-clad women gyrating provocatively on stage, the light show and the overdriven yet clean guitar tone are quintessentially LA hair metal, the sound and approach of the scene Jane’s Addiction grew out of back in the eighties. The differences, though, are sharp: whereas a band such as Mötley Crüe might write a derogatory  throwaway ditty that aims at the gonads after a particularly wonderful polyamorous sexual experience, Jane’s Addiction write Three Days, an eleven-minute psychedelic-metal epic of multiple movements that exalts the multiple women involved in the dalliance and aims to recreate the wonder of what transpired sonically. Live, dancers gyrating provocatively either side of Farrell, the drums pounding, the bass pumping, the lead wailing, one feels like one has indeed learned exactly what transpired and that eleven minutes never passed so quickly.

And that’s generally what’s most surprising about the gig: their grander epics, Three Days, Summertime Rolls, Ocean Size and Ted, Just Admit It are the most memorable, and their metallic, psychedelic, funkadelic sound spaced out into longer passages becomes almost transcendental. At such heights, Jane’s Addiction are peerless, no contemporary rock outfit ambitious enough to come close. This renders Jane Says and Been Caught Stealing — both spectacular in their own right — as mono-dimensional singalong crowd-pleasers in comparison, a curious result that speaks volumes of just how good they were.

Jazz fusion is a dirty word for good reason: the genre abounds in meandering, soulless “songs” that are better off described as excursions into the wilds of boredom. Once upon a time, though, fusion was exciting: Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew is fantastic, Herbie Hancock’s Headhunters a revelation. Happily, Medeski, Martin and Wood (MMW) are steeped in the still-hallowed sounds of fusion’s halcyon days and are fittingly one of the few contemporary jazz trios around who are able to draw a crowd anywhere in the world. Tonight they’re at the HiFi, and tonight they manage to three-quarters fill its sizeable surrounds.

MMW tours as part of the jam-band circuit that The Grateful Dead established and which remains a phenomenon confined to the USA. They have material spread over eight albums to choose from, but live, as all jam bands are wont to do, the songs take on a (long) life of their own.

And live, they push their material into a more avant-garde direction. On Lifeblood, for instance, the first song they play, the delicious groove breaks out into an interlude that sounds like the spinning of an inventive madman’s mind. Billy Martin, MMW’s crack drummer, is particularly creative, even sprinkling a passage reminiscent of gamelan into the section.

The night, though, belongs to John Medeski, the band’s supremely talented pianist. Medeski drives the group, switching effortlessly between organ, keyboard and grand piano while evoking the likes of Gil Evans, Bernie Worrell, Ray Charles and Chucho Valdés. The crescendos the band manages to build on the back of the inspired keys are a delight, especially when they lock into the hardest of grooves. Not only does he have the necessary touch of a jazzman, he also manages to turn his keys into an aggressive, howling beast that would not be misplaced on stage with Rage Against The Machine.

If there is criticism to be made, though, it’s the standard one made of improvisational bands: a lack of cohesion. The abrupt jumps from one style to another that the show abounds in sound as unnatural as switching between radio stations, not to mention the free jazz sections that are as difficult to penetrate at times as they are inventive.

MMW, however, are a honed live band. Their many years playing together means musical ideas are constantly bounced between each band member with ease. While this improvisatory skill can sometimes be overplayed, the band is always interesting, daring and a welcome deviation from the norm.

Emiliana Torrini has established a strong following in these antipodean shores: the sweet singer with the Italian name and Icelandic voice managed to fill the Forum on a Saturday night set aside for soothing an aching New Year’s head. Only fourteen months separate her last appearance here at the same venue, and Melbourne’s couples are out in force tonight to hear her perform her adorable songs arm in arm.

Torrini sings liberally from each of her three albums released worldwide, showing no particular preference for any one. The crowd too is just as pleased with songs from eleven years ago as they are two, and they enthusiastically support Torrini’s performance the whole night through.

Much of the electronica from Torrini’s first and third albums are arranged for instrumental accompaniment. Live, the approach pays handsome dividends as songs such as Me and Armini and Unemployed in Summertime are rendered evermore affecting. The sparse, disarming songs of her second album, Fisherman’s Woman, only gain in warmth in the Forum’s ornate, starry surroundings, and perhaps the song she’s most known for in these parts, Sunny Road, is a delight to hear in such a setting.

Torrini does venture off into less salubrious territory, though. On Jungle Drum, the upbeat rhythm and her parum-pa-pum-pumming are completely out of place (although her dancing — a cross between Bjork and Peter Garret — is exceptionally endearing), as is the turn to noisier musical accompaniment more generally the further the night progresses. Torrini is best when everything is stripped back and her voice, so charmingly accented, is left to lilt softly.

This is just as true when there is no music. Torrini’s chats with the audience between songs are a joy. Her manner speaks of a happy-go-lucky soul, winsome, effortlessly prepossessing and surprisingly comical. Upon a crowd member’s wishing her a happy new year, she responded self-mockingly with “so let’s celebrate with another song nobody can dance to” before wishing for a dance beat and proceeding to beat box one herself. Woods, birds, cocktails and breezes are repeated themes in her chats with the audience about her songs and whatever else might pop into her head, all of which is duly lapped up by an appreciative audience.

Torrini is a wonderful performer, a natural singer and a disarming character. For those who made their way to the Forum, the second of January may not have been as raucous as the events of last year’s last day, yet its restrained splendour was a soothing contrast that is much more likely to be remembered.

The HiFi is half-filled with dub fiends, half of whom confuse sex with six. The crowd is sparse, but so is the music: Salmonella Dub are launching their new album, Freak Controller, the second since their long-time frontman Tiki Taane left the band to launch a solo career.

Much like Australia’s Cruel Sea, New Zealand’s Salmonella Dub have enjoyed a long career as an instrumental band at heart for whom vocals are an added extra. Not surprisingly, then, the loss of Taane has not greatly shaken the band; live, though, there are problems.

Salmonella Dub’s drummer, David Deakins, takes on the vocal duties in the absence of the more accomplished singers who appear on their recorded work. Thankfully, Salmonella Dub’s instrumental focus means we don’t hear Deakins sing too much; nevertheless, the lack of some kind of leader, driver and all-round spruiker renders void the band’s presence on stage.

Even more problematic is the percussion. On certain tracks, shambolic percussion that sounds as ordinary as the drumming of patchouli-scented hippies that befoul the serenity of summer nights is added to proceedings. One would hope that the messy beats are a one-off problem caused by technical issues rather than a more permanent deficiency in their performance.

Despite the shortcomings, the crowd is rapturous and engaged. And on the dub tracks, there’s good reason for such exuberance: when they turn the reverb up to eleven, Salmonella Dub do indeed evoke the feeling of a spliff – as all good dub should. The reverb on the live brass instruments sound especially good, as does the bounce of the bass. For perhaps the first time, I regret the prohibition of smoking indoors; the smoke from lit weed is conspicuous in its absence.

The continued quality of the reggae numbers confirms the impression: any time Salmonella Dub draw inspiration from anywhere outside Jamaica, the music suffers. It’s as if any musical voyages beyond Jamaica land them in the distorting straits of the Bermuda triangle. Be that as it may, Salmonella Dub do leave their audience in high spirits, and any departure from the three major chords of Melbourne’s countless rock bands is a welcome addition to the city’s musical offerings. Salmonella Dub have behind them a history of brilliant shows; tonight’s performance is not one of them. Nevertheless, Salmonella Dub have enough credits in the bank and such a solid dub style that a ticket to their next show will still be worth pursuing.

Tonight belongs to the charismatic and bespectacled; tonight is a night of loving homage tinctured by tongue in cheek.

Henry from Wagons and Justin Townes Earle are gregarious performers with charmingly nerdy exteriors. Their magnetic stage presences fill the capacious Thornbury Theatre despite the tables and chairs set out for diners that makes the sold-out show seem sparsely populated. Resplendent in their coiffs, Nashville shirts and rockabilly tattoos, the crowd is appreciative of Wagons and Earle, both of whom revel in the melodrama, melancholy and mirth of the musical heritage they draw from.

Wagons warm up the chilly night admirably. As always, Henry Wagons’s sultry baritone and the band’s jauntiness are a sheer delight heard live, while the almost vaudevillian nature of their show — Henry’s comedic songs and between-song banter are that good — is happily entertaining.

Wagons’s departure brings Earle sauntering almost goofily onto the stage, spectacles thickly rimmed and large, hair neatly arranged, his build as thin as the stick figures drawn playing Pictionary. He looks like a physicist from the 1950s, yet he’s the son of the legendarily hard-livin’ Steve Earle and was named after the more subdued musical drug abuser in Townes Van Zandt.

There’s no need to second guess Earle‘s Nashvile roots. His guitar and voice effortlessly evoke the Southern way of life with his impeccable renditions of the Southern way of cataloguing its ups and downs. Earle sings mostly from his latest two albums. Midnight at the Movies is a maudlin highlight, as is the achingly good Mama’s Eyes. The honky-tonk of What Do You Do When You’re Lonesome sets people a-toe-tappin’, and a cover of Buck Owens’s Close Up the Honky-Tonks in the encore is hilariously good.

Although he plays solo, Earle manages to create a full sound from his guitar that oftentimes sound like two, so well does his dexterous finger-picking capture a rhythm and a lead. His heavy stomps of the stage add an occasional earthy accent to proceedings, while the quality of his honeyed voice, naturally Southern as it is, rings resonantly true.

Earle, however, is short-changed by a muddy vocal mix that makes his lyrics difficult to comprehend at times. And without the diverting tale-telling for amusement, the lack of musical variety in Earle‘s solo performance allows one’s attention to drift.

Be that as it may, Earle wins the night, affably, gracefully, naturally, all the while demonstrating the richness of country music’s traditions.

The cult of the individual and the cult of the new go hand in hand – I am a unique snowflake, I have my own special gifts, the world awaits my revolutionising stamp. Unfulfilled dreams, the getting of wisdom and perhaps a certain sense of nostalgia all put paid to such desire for constant renewal, and one is free to admire excellence in craft and form.

Louis King is no whippersnapper with grandiose dreams of artistic fulfilment; Louis King is no rebel despite paying homage to a musical form that was once rebellious: Louis King is a rockabilly bluesman with a whiskey voice who knows how to please.

Louis King hits the stage at the Northcote Social Club sporting a fine suit replete with a collar larger than the state of Mississippi and a finer, well-oiled quiff the height of hilltops. He’s launching his new album with the Liars Klub, That… and a Quarter, to a reasonably-well populated audience of his peers who have resisted the siren song of leather on willow on the big screen in the public bar so as to boogie down to some blues. The rollicking instrumental Fangin’ kicks off the show, but as soon as Louis King sings in the next, The Devil Made Me Do It, there’s no doubt that the best instrument on stage is that voice.

Louis King’s voice is a resonant Holden Premier: nothing too flash, but powerful, familiar, reassuring, a classic. Louis King is steeped in his genre, and it’s his voice that makes the music more than just a museum piece.

The night shines most brightly, though, when Jake Mason’s keys and Ian Collard’s harmonica are a focus. Mason’s solos are a highlight for their ability to evoke the swamps of Louisiana, and Collard, of Collard Greens and Gravy fame, adds a rougher, more authentic edge to such songs as Elvis, Jesus and the Devil with his scorching runs on the mouth harp.

Louis King and the Liars Klub get people dancing, but it’s not in the freeform style of the latest hipshaking sounds. In the spaces on the floor, couples are repeating the steps they learnt in their swing and rock and roll classes. There are no new moves on display, no inspired invention, yet there’s an undoubted delight in watching well-worn forms executed with aplomb. Louis King and the Liars Klub ain’t post-rock nor electro-pop nor grindcore  — god bless ‘em for that and the delicious night of rockabilly blues that they serve up.

All forms of music have their golden ages. Undisputably, funk’s was in the 70s when James Brown honed in on the hips and cast melody aside while his on-the-one groove was laid out as the foundation for George Clinton’s extended space jams.

Blowing his trombone alongside the godfather of funk and his other-worldly offspring was Fred Wesley. In the countless samples that pepper the tracks of today’s musical luminaries, you can still hear Wesley and his trombone from those halcyon days preserved, albeit reshaped and repackaged to suit the times.

Melbourne has seen a revival of interest in the funky sound of the 70s, so it came as no surprise that Fred Wesley and his band hit the stage to the rapturous applause of a well-informed audience. The crowd knew what they were there for – but it wasn’t for the muzak in the guise of Chick Corea’s Spain that first greeted them. Matters improved markedly, though, when the unmistakable bassline of Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon was heard next, and the choice of song proved indicative of a show that was more jazz fusion than pure funk.

Wesley wasn’t reliving the 70s. Unlike the offerings of funk recreationists – the Dap-Kings, for instance –, that warm hum of analog equipment which so shapes the musical form and makes funksters the most zealous of vinyl hunters was absent. Instead, the clean, precise and polished sound of modern equipment filled the Hi-Fi Bar, and the material Wesley and his band played for the first part of the set was devoted to jazz and fusion, which better suits such production values.

The second half of show saw the band playing more funk from the days of yore, and the crowd lapped up hits such as Pass the Peas and Same Beat. The contrived onstage banter and his less distinguished solo work suggested that Wesley was well-served by his more famous frontmen of the past, yet the band’s tight professionalism won over the crowd despite a certain lack of funky grit.

Gary Winter on trumpet and Melbourne’s own Barney McAll, who stunningly channelled Bernie Worrell on the keys, were especially good. And Wesley, as was to be expected, again demonstrated that the trombone need not be considered a daggy or inferior wind instrument. Musicianship of the highest order was certainly in the house, yet the dirty funk that a sizeable portion of the audience were hoping for had long since hit it and quit.