Jazz Drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. Takes On An Offspring Classic

Jazz drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. brings his unique improvisational skills to The Offspring’s classic, “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” (And he’s never heard it before!)

If you’ve ever watched a jazz musician at work, you know they’re more like wizards than musicians. They’re creating music right there, on the spot—sometimes a piece they’ve never heard before! It’s not that other musicians don’t have these skills, but there’s something unique about the jazz world. Breaking rules and improvising is practically required. Jazz musicians spend years learning every rule in the book, only to flip those same rules on their head and create something entirely fresh in a performance. The best of them? They’re able to do it live with zero rehearsal. But what happens when a jazz drummer takes on The Offspring for the first time?

Enter Ulysses Owens Jr., a Juilliard professor and one of the great jazz drummers in the game right now. Owens recently did something jaw-dropping: he was asked to improvise over The Offspring’s 1998 pop–punk tune “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” And it’s a song he’d never heard before! After one quick listen (minus the drum track), he was ready to dive in, and the results were downright fantastic. He brought new life into the song, so much so that Brandon Pertzborn, the original drummer of The Offspring, might even be tempted to borrow a groove or two. (Watch Owens’s entire ensemble improvise Nirvana’s “Heart Shaped Box.“)

Owens didn’t just play along—he transformed the song with a streak of creativity that’s as captivating as it is impressive. Check out the video below to see this magic in action:

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