Thelonious Monk is one crazy dude

So for my first jazz song for this blog, I chose Thelonious Monk. Even though I don't listen to jazz, I've heard his name a couple times around before, so I thought, why not? Anyway, this song is called Blue Monk, and overall for my first jazz experience, I kind of dig it (I'm kind of a terrible reviewer of just about anything, so prepare for very shallow commenting throughout the course of my blogging career).

So, the song starts off with a very simple, almost sing-song-y kind of melody, and then begins to head into the soloing. The saxophone player was up first; his was a good solo, full of interesting rhythmic and melodic concepts.

Then came Mr. Thelonious Monk himself, and I was really... surprised. He's very unique. In the sense that he plays piano like no one in their right mind plays it. And according to Wikipedia, there's plenty of evidence that he isn't. But it works. He plays with a very distinctive style.

When watching the video you notice that the way he lays his hands, and just from listening that's he obviously got a bunch of experience around a piano. But yet he chooses to jab and poke at it, with his elbows out; it looks very silly, but in this style he gets a very loud percussive sound. He also chooses to solo almost entirely with dissonances in this piece, but even though they should sound awful something about the way he arranges or plays them make them seem captivating. Like I said, extremely unique.

The rest of the song, besides Sir Monk playing behind the band, really didn't grab me. The drummer and bassist are solid, but there solos are kind of boring, at least for my uneducated peasant brain. The bassist also literally looks like a praying mantis 'preying' (so darn punny) on his bass, which freaked me out more than a little bit.

Also, after every solo, he stands up and stares off into the distance, perfectly rigid, sometimes tapping his foot or swaying his arm along to the beat. He also has a really great hat. I highly recommend this video if only for his stage antics.

So that was my first real experience with jazz; feel free, the four of you who have visited my blog to comment and post about whatever you're feeling about this piece or life in general, that's cool too.