Take Five: You've got to dig it to dig it, you dig?
This week we revisit some advice from Monk, hear new things in reimagined songs, and explore photos of stars both celestial and terrestrial
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
1. Thelonious Monk's 25 tips
I finally got through Ethan Iverson's October post on his "Transitional Technology" Substack about Thelonious Monk's discography, stopping here and there to listen to a song (or album) or two. I was reminded of something I used to have tacked up in my old newspaper cubicle, a list of 25 "tips" (the above image only shows half; click the link to see the full list) from Monk written down by saxophonist Steve Lacy1 during a 1960 rehearsal. Apparently, Monk was holding court that day, and Lacy was wise enough to put pen to paper and capture it. Some of it sounds more like dialogue from a Dragnet episode about "the jazz scene," such as "You’ve got to dig it to dig it, you dig?" But much of it is helpful, and not just for jazz musicians. Sub in your own artistic pursuit, and you have some valuable advice:
Just because you’re not a drummer, doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep time.
Don’t play the piano part, I’m playing that.
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.
Stay in shape! Sometimes a musician waits for a gig, & when it comes, he’s out of shape & can’t make it.
2. The Led Zeppelins
Every time I lament the coarsening of society or the spread of misinformation that can be attributed to the Internet, I remind myself that without it we surely wouldn't have things like this. There is plenty of dreck out there such as when someone uses AI to suppose what an Oasis song would sound like if done by the Beatles (I’ll save you the trouble: not good). But someone has used it to reimagine classic hard rock bands as 1950s acts, and that seems like a fair tradeoff for some bloviating on Twitter. The best of the lot is "The Led Zeppelins," with the band's second album redone in the style of '50s rock. This isn't Robert Plant with a twang, but rather offers a take on things as if a competent combo was taking a stab at these songs nearly 20 years before Led Zeppelin did. Given the band’s light-fingered approach to the work of others in those early days, it’s actually a plausible scenario. This won't work its way into regular rotation, but it is an interesting exercise that reveals the simple songs that were buried under layers of guitar, bass, and drums. ““Heartbreaker,” which is linked above, is the most successful re-do, but they’re all worth at least a cursory listen. You can hear similar reworkings of Black Sabbath, Rainbow, Kiss, and Deep Purple from this creator, but the Led Zeppelin is the best.
3. Webb telescope images
The Webb space telescope continues to gather amazing images of space, and a new batch of images offer stunning views of vistas well beyond our comprehension. Interestingly, though we think of the Webb telescope as being bigger, better, and more sophisticated than its predecessor the Hubble, the resulting images aren't always more alluring. Take these two views of the Vega Circumstellar Disk, released last month. On the left is a mesmerizing swirl of blue light from the Hubble, while on the right is a warm, orange glow of the same phenomenon captured by the Webb telescope2. Each shows particles surrounding a star in a field that stretches billions of miles, but each does so in a different way. The eye-catching scenes of hundreds of galaxies stretching across the black canvas of space are almost too overwhelming to consider, but these more detailed images provide a staggering context for the universe… and will likely adorn the covers of an ambient music album in the near future.
4. Kathleen Edwards — "Sweetness Follows"
Covers albums can seem like wheel spinning by artists who have hit a block, but in some cases, it is a way to nod to influences and a way to invigorate one's own creativity. The forthcoming collection from singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, Covers, seems to be a case of the latter. Edwards doesn't bless us with a new album very often, so I was disappointed at first to learn this one would consist of the work of others, but what I have heard so far shows her interpretive gifts are strong. These are not obscure songs; rather, they are all familiar but ripe for rediscovery. The first I heard was R.E.M.'s "Sweetness Follows." As I mentioned a couple weeks back when writing about Al Green’s new cover of “Everybody Hurts” from the same album, I see that as a bit of a sagging middle to the otherwise solid Automatic for the People. Edwards takes away a bit of the atmosphere from R.E.M.'s version, leaving the focus on reminiscence rather than loss. It’s beautiful and leaves me to reassess (or at least re-appreciate) the original. All of the songs Edwards chose for this project are by men, and they are all heavyweights — Tom Petty, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, and Paul Westerberg among them. It adds a dimension to these songs as she lends her own sensibilities to the performance. The only oddball here is one of the most annoying songs ever written: "The Logical Song" by Supertramp. I'm genuinely curious to see if Edwards can find something redeeming there.
5. “Harlem 1958” in the New York Times
I’m not sure of the reason for the timing of the piece, but the New York Times put together a spectacular multimedia presentation on Art Kane’s classic photo, “Harlem 1958.” Better known today as “A Great Day in Harlem” after a 1994 documentary film of the same name about the photo session, it captures 58 jazz performers on the steps of a New York brownstone. The hook for the Times piece seems to be an interview with 94-year-old Sonny Rollins, the only musician still living who appeared in the photo. “It just seemed like we weren’t appreciated, mainly because jazz was a Black art,” he told the Times. “I think that picture humanized a lot of the myth of what people thought jazz was.” The photo was published in the January 1959 issue of Esquire magazine. It has become an iconic representation of what was certainly a creative peak of jazz, featuring giants like Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young and younger performers such as Charles Mingus and Benny Golson. The Times piece offers a fascinating interactive tour through the composition of the picture, highlighting stories of the participants. It makes me want to revisit the film, which is itself an improbable 30 years old this year.
Lacy recorded Reflections, the first album by another artist dedicated to Monk compositions, in 1958, prior to a short stint in Monk’s band.