Let’s pro­vide the con­text, just like host Adam Neely and guest Bri­an Krock do in this video: in 1960 Steve Lacy, a young, white sopra­no sax play­er, briefly joined Thelo­nious Monk’s band. Two years pre­vi­ous, Lacy had  been the first jazz musi­cian to release an album of Monk’s com­po­si­tions oth­er than the man him­self. Even so, Lacy was young, excit­ed, and starstruck at play­ing along­side not just Monk but John Coltrane (who shared the bill on the 16 week tour), just absorb­ing every­thing.

At some point, Monk took Lacy aside and gave his some advice which Lacy wrote down, 25 pieces of advice to be exact.

In the video below, from Neely’s always inter­est­ing chan­nel (we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten about him here), he and Krock go through the 25 points and com­ment on each one. For those who love to hear musi­cians (or any artist) talk shop, this is won­der­ful stuff.

Some of the advice is such as befits a live musician—“Pat your foot & sing the melody in your head, when you play”, “Don’t play the piano part, I’m play­ing that”, “When you’re swing­ing, swing some more!,” and “A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.”

Oth­ers are more cru­cial to the busi­ness, espe­cial­ly “Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.” That is: if you around the scene enough, and show your worth, you will get asked to play. But just cold ask­ing won’t get you any­where. Also, when asked what to wear to a gig, Monk advis­es: “Sharp as pos­si­ble!” which you could indeed say of Monk.

Oth­er advice is more mys­ti­cal: “You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?” “What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do.”

And the one that gets quot­ed the most, “A genius is the one most like him­self.” That’s true when it comes to Monk or any of the giants of jazz. To hear Monk, or Coltrane, or Miles Davis play is to hear the artist, the genius, and the per­son, not just the melody or the instru­ment. It reminds me of the great Har­ry Partch quote: “The cre­ative per­son shows him­self naked. And the more vig­or­ous his cre­ative act, the more naked he appears — some­times total­ly vul­ner­a­ble, yet always invul­ner­a­ble in the sense of his own integri­ty.”

And maybe that’s why we keep com­ing back to them, long after their phys­i­cal bod­ies have left this plane of exis­tence.

The full list is as fol­lows:

1. Just because you’re not a drum­mer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
2. Pat your foot & sing the melody in your head, when you play.
3. Stop play­ing all that bull­shit, those weird notes, play the melody!
4. Make the drum­mer sound good.
5. Dis­crim­i­na­tion is impor­tant.
6. You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
7. All reet!
8. Always know… (monk )
9. It must be always night, oth­er­wise they wouldn’t need the lights.
10. Let’s lift the band stand!!
11. I want to avoid the heck­lers.
12. Don’t play the piano part, I’m play­ing that.
13.  Don’t lis­ten to me. I’m sup­posed to be accom­pa­ny­ing you!
14. The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the out­side sound good.
15. Don’t play every­thing (or every time); let some things go by. Some music just imag­ined. What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do.
16. Always leave them want­i­ng more.
17. A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.
18. Stay in shape! Some­times a musi­cian waits for a gig, & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
19. When you’re swing­ing, swing some more!
20. (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as pos­si­ble!
21. Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.
22. These pieces were writ­ten so as to have some­thing to play, & to get cats inter­est­ed enough to come to rehearsal.
23. You’ve got it! If you don’t want to play, tell a joke or dance, but in any case, you got it! (to a drum­mer who didn’t want to solo).
24. What­ev­er you think can’t be done, some­body will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like him­self.
25. They tried to get me to hate white peo­ple, but some­one would always come along & spoil it.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk Bombs in Paris in 1954, Then Makes a Tri­umphant Return in 1969

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

A Child’s Intro­duc­tion to Jazz by Can­non­ball Adder­ley (with Louis Arm­strong & Thelo­nious Monk)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the Notes from the Shed pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, and/or watch his films here.

Pur­vey­ors of the shock­ing, pri­mal idio­cy of pure rock and roll can in many cas­es be some of the most intel­li­gent peo­ple in pop. Or at least that’s the case with the king of shock­ing, pri­mal idio­cy, Iggy Pop. He has inter­pret­ed Whit­man’s “bar­bar­ic yawp” and deliv­ered the John Peel Lec­ture for BBC Music, becom­ing “a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor from the School of Punk Rock Hard Knocks,” writes Rolling Stone and bring­ing an elder statesman’s per­spec­tive informed not only by his years in the bow­els of the music indus­try but also by his avo­ca­tion as a schol­ar of the Roman Empire….

Yes, that’s right, Iggy Pop is not only an adroit styl­ist of some of the most bril­liant­ly stu­pid garage rock ever made, but he’s also a seri­ous read­er and thinker who once pub­lished a brief reflec­tion on his rela­tion­ship with Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the aca­d­e­m­ic jour­nal Ire­land Clas­sics.

“Iggy Pop, like Bob Dylan,” writes E.J. Hutchin­son, “has an avid inter­est in Roman antiq­ui­ty and its genet­ic con­nec­tion to con­tem­po­rary life.” He may also be the sharpest, wil­i­est embod­i­ment of post-indus­tri­al Amer­i­can decline—his entire musi­cal per­son­al­i­ty a punch in the col­lec­tive face of the nation’s delu­sions.

In 1982, hor­ri­fied by the mean­ness, tedi­um and deprav­i­ty of my exis­tence as I toured the Amer­i­can South play­ing rock and roll music and going crazy in pub­lic, I pur­chased an abridged copy of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (Dero Saun­ders, Pen­guin). 

The grandeur of the sub­ject appealed to me, as did the cameo illus­tra­tion of Edward Gib­bon, the author, on the front cov­er. He looked like a heavy dude.

Hutchin­son gives us a fine­ly wrought analy­sis of Pop’s “tour de force of clas­si­cal Gib­bon­ian Eng­lish prose, a scrap of Ciceron­ian peri­od­ic­i­ty.” (Gib­bon did, indeed, look like a heavy dude.) Pop’s read­ing of Gib­bon, “with plea­sure around 4 am, with my drugs and whisky in cheap motels,” absorbed him in its “clash of beliefs, per­son­al­i­ties and val­ues,” he writes, “played out on antiquity’s stage by crowds of the vul­gar, led by huge arche­typ­al char­ac­ters.” All of this appealed to him, he writes, giv­en his own role in “a polit­i­cal busi­ness… the music busi­ness, which is not about music at all, but is a kind of reli­gion-rental.”

Gibbon’s mas­sive saga, a mon­u­men­tal exam­ple of sweep­ing Enlight­en­ment his­to­ri­og­ra­phy, so cap­ti­vat­ed Pop that a decade lat­er, it inspired “an extem­po­ra­ne­ous solil­o­quy” he called “Cae­sar,” the clos­ing track on 1993’s “over­looked mas­ter­piece” Amer­i­can Cae­sar. The spo­ken word piece “made me laugh my ass off,” he writes, “because it was so true. Amer­i­ca is Rome. Of course, why shouldn’t it be? All of West­ern life and insti­tu­tions today are trace­able to the Romans and their world. We are all Roman chil­dren for bet­ter or worse.”

But there was much more to Pop’s read­ing of Gibbon—which he even­tu­al­ly enjoyed in a “beau­ti­ful edi­tion in three vol­umes of the mag­nif­i­cent orig­i­nal unabridged”—than a pos­si­bly facile com­par­i­son between one fail­ing empire and anoth­er. Much more, indeed. Read­ing Gib­bon, he writes (sound­ing very much like anoth­er pro­po­nent of the clas­sics, Ita­lo Calvi­no), taught him how to think about the present, and how to think, humbly, about him­self. He ends his essay with a num­bered list of “just some of the ways I ben­e­fit”:

1. I feel a great com­fort and relief know­ing that there were oth­ers who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyr­an­nized by the present day.
2. I learn much about the way our soci­ety real­ly works, because the sys­tem-ori­gins — mil­i­tary, reli­gious, polit­i­cal, colo­nial, agri­cul­tur­al, finan­cial — are all there to be scru­ti­nized in their infan­cy. I have gained per­spec­tive.
3. The lan­guage in which the book is writ­ten is rich and com­plete, as the lan­guage of today is not.
4. I find out how lit­tle I know.
5. I am inspired by the will and eru­di­tion which enabled Gib­bon to com­plete a work of twen­ty-odd years. The guy stuck with things. I urge any­one who wants life on earth to real­ly come alive for them to enjoy the beau­ti­ful ances­tral ancient world.

Read Pop’s full 1995 Ire­land Clas­sics essay on Jstor or Medi­um.

via Han­nah Rose Woods

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

The Splen­did Book Design of the 1946 Edi­tion of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Iggy Pop Reads Walt Whit­man in Col­lab­o­ra­tions With Elec­tron­ic Artists Alva Noto and Tar­wa­ter

Iggy Pop Reads Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Hor­ror Sto­ry, “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Stream Iggy Pop’s Two-Hour Radio Trib­ute to David Bowie

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