We’re fas­ci­nat­ed by lists. Oth­er people’s lists. Even the ones left behind in shop­ping carts are inter­est­ing (Jarls­burg, Gruyere and Swiss? Must be mak­ing fon­due.) But it’s the lists made by famous peo­ple that are the real­ly good stuff.

It’s fun to peek into the pri­vate mus­ings of peo­ple we admire. John­ny Cash’s “To Do” list sold for $6,400 at auc­tion a cou­ple of years ago and inspired the launch of Lists of Note, an affec­tion­ate repos­i­to­ry of per­son­al reminders, com­mand­ments and advice jot­ted by celebri­ties and oth­er nota­bles.

Most of the site’s best lists are in the “memo to self” cat­e­go­ry, some with tongue in cheek and oth­ers in earnest. But a few offer advice to oth­ers. Tran­scribed by sopra­no sax play­er Steve Lacy in a spi­ral-bound note­book, Thelo­nious Monk cre­at­ed a primer of do’s and don’ts for club musi­cians. For the green­horns, Monk pre­sent­ed a syl­labus for Band Eti­quette 101 titled “1. Monk’s Advice (1960).” For the rest of us, it’s a view into one of the great­est, quirki­est minds of Amer­i­can music.

Some high­lights:

“Don’t play the piano part. I’m play­ing that. Don’t lis­ten to me. I’m sup­posed to be accom­pa­ny­ing you!”

Monk him­self was famous for his eccentricity—some say he was men­tal­ly ill and oth­ers blame bad psy­chi­atric med­ica­tions. He was known to stop play­ing piano, stand up and dance a bit while the band played on. But through his advice he reveals his fine sense of restraint.

“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.”

Monk was evi­dent­ly a stick­ler for band pro­to­col. He leads his list with “Just because you’re not a drum­mer doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time!”

What should play­ers wear to a gig? Defin­i­tive­ly cool, Monk replies “Sharp as pos­si­ble!” Read that as rings on your fin­gers, a hat, sun­glass­es and your best suit coat.

Here’s a tran­script of the text:

• Just because you’re not a drum­mer, doesn’t mean that you don’t have to keep time.
• Pat your foot and sing the melody in your head when you play.
• Stop play­ing all that bull­shit, those weird notes, play the melody!
• Make the drum­mer sound good.
• Dis­crim­i­na­tion is impor­tant.
• You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
• All reet!
• Always know
• It must be always night, oth­er­wise they wouldn’t need the lights.
• Let’s lift the band stand!!
• I want to avoid the heck­lers.
• Don’t play the piano part, I am play­ing that. Don’t lis­ten to me, I am sup­posed to be accom­pa­ny­ing you!
• The inside of the tune (the bridge) is the part that makes the out­side sound good.
• Don’t play every­thing (or every­time); let some things go by. Some music just imag­ined.
• What you don’t play can be more impor­tant than what you do play.
• A note can be small as a pin or as big as the world, it depends on your imag­i­na­tion.
• Stay in shape! Some­times a musi­cian waits for a gig & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
• When you are swing­ing, swing some more!
• (What should we wear tonight?) Sharp as pos­si­ble!
• Always leave them want­i­ng more.
• Don’t sound any­body for a gig, just be on the scene.
• Those pieces were writ­ten so as to have some­thing to play & to get cats inter­est­ed enough to come to rehearsal!
• 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).
• What­ev­er you think can’t be done, some­body will come along & do it. A genius is the one most like him­self.
• They tried to get me to hate white peo­ple, but some­one would always come along & spoil it.

Kate Rix is an Oak­land-based free­lancer. Find more of her work at .

On a swel­ter­ing sum­mer day in 1969, over 100,000 peo­ple crammed into Hyde Park in cen­tral Lon­don for a first look at what promised to be the next great thing in rock and roll: Blind Faith.

It was an amaz­ing line­up. The band was made up of two-thirds of Cream (gui­tarist Eric Clap­ton and drum­mer Gin­ger Bak­er) along with the front­man of Traf­fic (key­boardist and vocal­ist Steve Win­wood) and the bassist from the pro­gres­sive group Fam­i­ly (Ric Grech). The free con­cert on June 7, 1969 (see here) was pro­mot­ed with a great deal of fan­fare and hyper­bole. Expec­ta­tions were high, so per­haps dis­ap­point­ment was inevitable. In any case the band came off sound­ing hes­i­tant and unsteady. For a “super­group,” they seemed sur­pris­ing­ly unsure of them­selves.

“It was our first gig,” Win­wood said lat­er, “and to do that in front of 100,000 peo­ple was not the best sit­u­a­tion to be in. Nerves were show­ing and it was very daunt­ing. We could­n’t relax like you can on tour.” The band showed none of the verve or audac­i­ty of Cream.  Clap­ton stood behind the drums and seemed reluc­tant to let loose. “In rehearsals and dur­ing record­ing,” said Bak­er, “Eric had been doing amaz­ing stuff, but in Hyde Park I kept won­der­ing when he was going to start play­ing. It was­n’t a bril­liant start, obvi­ous­ly.”

The band avoid­ed play­ing any­thing by Cream. The set list includ­ed one Traf­fic song (“Means to an End”) and anoth­er by the Rolling Stones (“Under My Thumb”), but was oth­er­wise made up entire­ly of orig­i­nal songs writ­ten for their yet-to-be-released album, Blind Faith:

1. Well All Right
2. Sea of Joy
3. Sleep­ing in the Ground
4. Under My Thumb
5. Can’t Find My Way Home
6. Do What You Like
7. Pres­ence of the Lord
8. Means to an End
9. Had to Cry Today

Lat­er that year the band toured Scan­di­navia and Amer­i­ca, and their debut album was a com­mer­cial suc­cess despite con­sid­er­able con­tro­ver­sy over its strange cov­er image of a top­less pubes­cent-look­ing girl hold­ing a toy air­plane. But it was clear from the start that Blind Faith would­n’t last. Clap­ton’s heart, in par­tic­u­lar, was­n’t into it. “I’d left The Yard­birds because of suc­cess,” he said lat­er, “and Cream end­ed as a direct result of its false suc­cess. So with Blind Faith I want­ed no more to do with suc­cess. I want­ed to be accept­ed as a musi­cian.” At the end of Blind Faith’s Amer­i­can tour Clap­ton made the unusu­al career move of quit­ting a super­group to become a side­man for its sup­port­ing act, the rel­a­tive­ly obscure Delaney & Bon­nie. In a 1996 Mojo arti­cle on Blind Faith called “Born Under a Bad Sign,” rock jour­nal­ist John­ny Black sums things up:

In ret­ro­spect, Blind Faith was cursed almost from the out­set. This was a band whose mem­bers rarely seemed to tell each oth­er any­thing. A band at log­ger­heads with its man­age­ment. A man­age­ment at log­ger­heads with itself. A hero­in addict­ed drum­mer. A gui­tarist who want­ed out almost from the word go. A sta­di­um tour that the key­board play­er did­n’t want to be on. A record cov­er scan­dal. Worst of all, though, they were mind-numb­ing­ly suc­cess­ful when they did­n’t want to be.

Relat­ed con­tent: 

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Sound

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“I had an extreme­ly slow-dawn­ing insight about cre­ation,” writes eclec­ti­cal­ly mind­ed musi­cian David Byrne in the open­ing chap­ter of his new book How Music Works. “That insight is that con­text large­ly deter­mines what is writ­ten, paint­ed, sculpt­ed, sung, or per­formed.” This comes as only the first in a series of illu­mi­nat­ing ideas Byrne lays out in the text, a far-reach­ing med­i­ta­tion on artis­tic cre­ation through the field that hap­pens to be his spe­cial­ty. Approach­ing music — you know, the stuff he made at the front of the Talk­ing Heads and con­tin­ues to make in solo albums and col­lab­o­ra­tions with the likes of Bri­an Eno and St. Vin­cent —  from as many angles as he can, he writes about its tech­nol­o­gy, the busi­ness of it, its social ele­ments, its role in his life, and what sci­ence and nature have to teach us about its mechan­ics. For more on that last bit, watch the above con­ver­sa­tion from Seed mag­a­zine, which sits Byrne down with Dan Lev­itin, neu­ro­sci­en­tist, musi­cian, and author of This is Your Brain on Music. Though it pre­cedes the pub­li­ca­tion of How Music Works by about five years, the chat cov­ers great stretch­es of high­ly rel­e­vant ground.

Watch­ing this back-and-forth, I could swear to see­ing some of the con­cepts devel­oped in How Music Works tak­ing ear­ly shape in Byrne’s head. He and Lev­itin dis­cuss the wide­spread sus­pi­cion of delib­er­ate craft in an osten­si­bly emo­tion­al form like rock and roll; the way music gen­er­ates plea­sure by tak­ing detours and dis­rupt­ing pat­terns; the rela­tion­ship between under­stand­ing songs and acquir­ing lan­guages; the sen­so­ry sim­i­lar­i­ties between lis­ten­ing to music and drink­ing wine; the nature of trance states; and the long-stand­ing yet seem­ing­ly now chang­ing social func­tion of music. Byrne admits that music actu­al­ly helped him change his own behav­ior: “I used music as a real tool to find my way into engag­ing social­ly,” he says, and this ties in with every­thing the two have spent the past hour talk­ing about. Intel­lec­tu­al though their musi­cophil­ia may seem, they nev­er for­get about the pre-ratio­nal ele­ments of the musi­cal expe­ri­ence. The guid­ing notion of their con­ver­sa­tion might have been summed up by Carl Sagan: “It is some­times said that sci­en­tists are unro­man­tic,” he wrote in anoth­er con­text, “but is it not stir­ring to under­stand how the world actu­al­ly works? It does no harm to the romance of the sun­set to know a lit­tle bit about it.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Oliv­er Sacks Talks Music with Jon Stew­art

David Byrne: How Archi­tec­ture Helped Music Evolve

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.