Thelo­nious Monk’s pop­u­lar image as the hippest of the hip in mid-cen­tu­ry bebop is well-deserved, but his career tra­jec­to­ry was not with­out its lame notes, includ­ing the loss of his cabaret license for sev­er­al years after a 1951 drug bust in New York with Bud Pow­ell. The inci­dent forced him to leave the haven of the Minton’s Play­house after-hours jam ses­sion scene and strike out for new venues and new out­lets, such as record­ing the sem­i­nal two-vol­ume Genius of Mod­ern Music in 1952, which fea­tured some of the ear­li­est, most bois­ter­ous ver­sions of Monk com­po­si­tions like soon-to-be stan­dard “Well, You Needn’t.” In 1954, Monk arrived in Paris where he per­formed at the Salle Pleyel to an audi­ence that most­ly didn’t know him. Patrick Jaren­wat­tananon at NPR describes the night:

[H]e had almost no pub­lic pro­file in France apart from the most hard­core of mod­ern jazz fans; he was ner­vous and prob­a­bly drunk; and he fol­lowed an enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar Dix­ieland band on stage. Crit­ics in atten­dance panned him, con­fused by his unique dis­so­nances and agi­tat­ed stage behav­ior. The gig was, as biog­ra­ph­er Robin Kel­ley described it, a dis­as­ter.

To make mat­ters worse, Jaren­wat­tananon writes, Monk—used to rhythm play­ers like Art Blakey and Al McKibbon—was appar­ent­ly “assigned a local rhythm sec­tion which was prob­a­bly unfa­mil­iar with his music.” You can hear Monk above from a record­ing he made dur­ing that trip, with­out said rhythm sec­tion, play­ing “Round About Mid­night” in his expres­sive­ly per­cus­sive piano style. Monk’s style, famous­ly described by Philip Larkin as a “faux-naif ele­phant dance,” was rapid­ly devel­op­ing as he came into his own as a band­leader and com­pos­er.  But although per­haps a per­son­al mile­stone (Monk met life­long friend, patron, and devo­tee Pan­non­i­ca de Koenigswarter that night), the Paris gig of 1954 was a bust that haunt­ed the inno­v­a­tive pianist.

And so it was that fif­teen years lat­er, Monk returned to the Salle Pleyel with his own quar­tet. This time, Jaren­wat­tananon tells us, he arrived as an “inter­na­tion­al star.” The con­cert was tele­vised, and, on Novem­ber 26th, it will be released as an audio record­ing and DVD sim­ply called Paris 1969 (see Monk’s quar­tet play “I Mean You” in an excerpt above). For a short time, you can pre­view and pre-order indi­vid­ual tracks from the record­ing or lis­ten to the whole con­cert straight through at NPR’s site. It’s a mel­low­er Monk than his mid-fifties incar­na­tion, with­out a doubt, not the “tap-danc­ing, elbows-on-the-piano Monk of yore,” writes Jaren­wat­tananon: “But it’s Monk doing Monk, swing­ing intense­ly through severe rhyth­mic crevass­es” and gen­er­al­ly exud­ing the con­fi­dence and panache of his hero Duke Elling­ton.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er

Andy Warhol Cre­ates Album Cov­ers for Jazz Leg­ends Thelo­nious Monk, Count Basie & Ken­ny Bur­rell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Ear­li­er today, we told you all about Bob Dylan’s con­tro­ver­sial Vic­to­ri­a’s Secret com­mer­cial shot in 2004 — the first com­mer­cial in which the musi­cian ever appeared on screen. Tonight, we leave you with this — Dylan’s new­ly-released video for his 1965 hit “Like a Rolling Stone.” As you’ll see, it’s not just a video. It’s an inter­ac­tive video that lets “view­ers flip through 16 tele­vi­sion chan­nels as a vari­ety of tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ties lip-sync the lyrics.” You can check it out above, or watch it in a larg­er for­mat here. The new video coin­cides with the release of Bob Dylan: The Com­plete Album Col­lec­tion Vol. 1, a CD box set that con­tains “35 stu­dio titles, 6 live albums, 2‑CD ‘Side Tracks,’ and a hard­cov­er book fea­tur­ing new album-by-album lin­er notes.” The log­i­cal ques­tion is what’s left for Vol. 2?

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Shoots “Screen Tests” of Nico, Bob Dylan & Sal­vador Dalí

Bob Dylan and Van Mor­ri­son Sing Togeth­er in Athens, on His­toric Hill Over­look­ing the Acrop­o­lis

Bob Dylan and The Grate­ful Dead Rehearse Togeth­er in Sum­mer 1987. Lis­ten to 74 Tracks.

Two Leg­ends Togeth­er: A Young Bob Dylan Talks and Plays on The Studs Terkel Pro­gram, 1963

Tom Waits is a rare breed of per­former, hav­ing attained vast com­mer­cial suc­cess with­out hav­ing had to pan­der to a mass audi­ence. His gruff voice—the vocal equiv­a­lent of too many late nights, strong scotch, and a pack-an-hour habit—has become the hall­mark of a sort of grimy, out­sider cool favored by Jim Jar­musch and John Lurie. His career, which has spanned four decades and includes the­atre, film, and the icon­ic inter­view that inspired the char­ac­ter of The Jok­er in The Dark Knight, is the envy of most musi­cians. It was only fit­ting, con­sid­er­ing his prodi­gious out­put, that Waits would become the sub­ject of a cov­er album. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, it comes with a twist—it’s in Hebrew.

Heeb Mag­a­zine recent­ly post­ed a link to “Shir­im Meshu­mashim” (“Used Songs”), pro­duc­er Guy Hajjaj’s four-year project where Israeli musi­cians recre­ate Tom Waits’ back cat­a­log. The 22-song album draws wide­ly from Waits’ career, includ­ing songs from clas­sic albums such as Rain­dogs (1985) as well as the more recent Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bas­tards (2006) and Glit­ter and Doom Live (2009). While more zeal­ous fans will undoubt­ed­ly claim that Waits’ orig­i­nal deliv­ery can nev­er be matched, those with an open mind will like­ly find a num­ber of gems. Some of our favorites include “Clap Hands,” ide­al­ly suit­ed to Hebrew’s harsh, grav­el­ly sounds, and the lighter, yet unmis­tak­ably Waits-writ­ten, “Dirt in The Ground.”

You can stream the album above, or buy the album (down­load­able on a pay-what-you-wish basis) here.

Via Heeb Mag­a­zine

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

The Black Rid­er: A The­atri­cal Pro­duc­tion by Tom Waits, William S. Bur­roughs & Robert Wil­son (1990)

Ilia Blin­d­er­man is a Mon­tre­al-based cul­ture and sci­ence writer. Fol­low him at @iliablinderman.

The Bea­t­les’ Revolver has gar­nered some of the high­est prais­es rock crit­ics can offer. But not every­one loved the record when it came out. In a 1966 issue of Disc and Music Echo mag­a­zine, the Kinks’ Ray Davies wrote a snarky, unspar­ing review of the album, tack­ling each song in a few sen­tences. In high con­trast to the cur­rent sen­ti­ments of Rolling Stone or All­mu­sic, Davies only seems to have liked a few tracks, and those the most tra­di­tion­al­ly upbeat: He called “I’m Only Sleep­ing,” “a most beau­ti­ful song” and “the best track on the album.” He also quite liked “Good Day Sun­shine,” writ­ing “this is back to the real old Bea­t­les. I just don’t like the elec­tron­ic stuff. The Bea­t­les were sup­posed to be like the boy next door only bet­ter.” And “Here There and Every­where” Davies calls the “third best track on the album.”

That’s most­ly the end of Davies’ felic­i­ty. His review sav­ages some of the most pop­u­lar songs on the record. Of “Eleanor Rig­by” he writes. “it sounds like they’re out to please music teach­ers in pri­ma­ry schools.” The best he can bring him­self to say of the track is that “it’s very com­mer­cial.” “Yel­low Sub­ma­rine,” Davies writes, “is a load of rub­bish, real­ly.” And his take on the trip­py “Tomor­row Nev­er Knows” cuts the song’s ambi­tions down to size: “Lis­ten to all those crazy sounds! It’ll be pop­u­lar in dis­cothe­ques. I can imag­ine they had George Mar­tin tied to a totem pole when they did this.” Maybe the cranky Davies was moti­vat­ed by pro­fes­sion­al jeal­ousy; maybe he’s one of the most hon­est review­ers of the record—his take uncol­ored by starstruck­ness. Who knows? He does admit that it’s “the first Bea­t­les LP I’ve real­ly lis­tened to in its entire­ty.” Read Davies’ full review here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the Iso­lat­ed Vocal Tracks for The Bea­t­les’ Cli­mac­tic 16-Minute Med­ley on Abbey Road

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

The Bea­t­les: Unplugged Col­lects Acoustic Demos of White Album Songs (1968)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness