The new album by Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, a side project of the much ballyhooed trumpeter, may seem trendy. Downtown art-jazz performers have recently doubled their efforts appropriating square pop and exotica tunes to "play" for years now. It reached its apex last year when Steven Bernstein’s Sex Mob released an album with "Goldfinger" and "Live and Let Die" on it, both, Bernstein was known to have said, by his favorite composer, James Bond. However, Bowie, whose full time gig is as cornerstone of the legendary avant-garde quartet The Art Ensemble of Chicago, eschews the expected post-modern quotations and mines the pop charts not for a gag, but to open ears to melodies around us everyday. And he’s been doing it with Brass Fantasy for over ten years.

Thus, when "The Odyssey of Funk & Popular Music Vol 1" bursts into interpretations of The Notorius B.I.G., Marylin Manson & The Spice Girls, it is not just to piss off 14-year-old fans who’d get into lunchroom brawls over having their idols on the same album, but it is so that kids, if, perchance, ever wound up anywhere near this album, they might begin to understand that the records they buy are little bit more than widgets with covers. Fat chance, I know, but Bowie is a Christian and something of an idealist. In his press release, though, he also reminds us "jazz purists" that everyone from Charlie Parker to Miles Davis got his start interpreting whatever was on the Billboard Top 40, so covers of "Notorious Thugs", "Beautiful People", and "Two Become One" are just an extension of a long, wonderful tradition.

These aren’t just jazzy reinterpretations, these are complete re-imaginings by one of music’s true innovators. The Art Ensemble of Chicago has, since the late ‘60s, been a mainstay on genre-blurring scene, using traditional, tribal and "made up" instruments, the most notorious of which is the use of firearms as percussion. When arranging for Brass Fantasy, Bowie and arranging partner Earl McIntyre have the luxury of working within more traditional barriers, but also for one of the smokin’est combos (11 members! Tuba in lieu of bass!) this side of New Orleans. Bowie, as leader, maintains his trademark whirring voice.

Other covers include Andrew Lloyd Webber ("Don’t Cry For Me Argetina", the only remotely Latin version I’ve ever heard), Cole Porter ("In The Still Of The Night", as a Viennese waltz via 1950s Bronx doo-wop), Teddy Pendergrass ("If You Don’t Know Me By Now", the only track on here one could mistake for early Chicago), and Puccini (the "Nessun Dorma", which is treated respectfully.) There’s also a fun New Orleans blues and an original, "Next", a fun James Brownsian rap, if you can stomach the fundamentalist lyrics.

This is a classic album, and, if they ever tour, surely a dynamite tour. An interesting observation: The only time I saw The Art Ensemble of Chicago they were preceded by Spanish Fly, another project of Steven Bernstein. Spanish Fly, unlike Sex Mob, does not do wacky covers, but instead wanders the edges of acceptable tonal music with a beat. And, like Bowie, his signature is a whirring, voice-like trumpet. The thing to note is that Bernstein has modeled himself a one-of-a-kind slide trumpet. Bowie just plays his. I like (heck, love!) Bernstein and his school, but, when I think about Bowie, I can't help but quote a surely-soon-to-be-covered song by Hammer: "Too Legit To Quit."