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#1 2011-09-23 12:08:06
- Republican Party Reptile
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Monk
Now that GG has gotten over the Elvis thread... I would just like to mention the absolute king of cool... GG, my old Dad never could get on with Bill Evans, but this guy... Way beyond hip... everything...
#4 2011-09-23 12:43:36
- Gibson Gardens
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Re: Monk
Hallelujah. The ultimate hipster. Monk in Jazz on a Summer's Day.... Those 50s album sleeves. What's the one where he's in a little red kid's truck? It's in The Ivy Look...
GG
#5 2011-09-23 12:45:48
- Republican Party Reptile
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Re: Monk
I thought - think - like Mingus - he was just beautiful.
#7 2011-09-23 14:03:36
- SubtleCool
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Re: Monk
http://www.awakeinmydreams.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/thelonius-monk.jpg
Too cool even for the cool school...
Me? Conspicuous? Lady, I'm the invisible man.
#8 2011-09-23 15:31:23
- Harpo
- The Best In The West
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Re: Monk
I love Thelonius Monk. I've just learnt Blue Monk on the tenor - how can such simplicity sound so clever?
Randy lower-class trifler
#10 2011-09-23 17:44:56
- chatsworth osborne jr.
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Re: Monk
Oh, i thought this thread would be about Adrian Monk.
#12 2011-09-24 04:56:01
- fxh
- Big Down Under.
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Re: Monk
Monk is just so fucking cool. I love that bamboo chineses hat he wears in some photo. The humor and playfulness in the music is uplifting and I'm sure he's as technically gifted as Glen Gould in his own way.
#13 2011-09-24 05:01:02
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Re: Monk
My father waxes lyrical about him. At the age of seventy seven, and after listening to jazz for some fifty five or more years, not a lot of people get the absolute thumbs-up: Louis, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, Anita O'Day, The Duke - Monk, almost alone, it sometimes seems to me, amongst modern jazz players. The times I would ring him up and say I'd bought Sonny Rollins on such-and-such a label and he'd say, 'Oh dear'. One of the reasons 'Jazz On A Summer's Day' annoys him so much is the intrusion into Monk's playing.
#14 2011-09-24 05:09:50
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Re: Monk
An afterthought. I think the reason he was so cool - music aside - was that he wrote his own book of rules. Now that takes some doing but it's great - because you can tear it up and start all over again.
#16 2011-09-24 05:30:24
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Re: Monk
He also - perhaps more than most - had an awful lot to put up with. And I think he was extraordinarily sensitive and felt things deeply.
#17 2011-09-24 11:50:22
- 4F Hepcat
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Re: Monk
That Contemporary album cover where he's just raided the Nazi bunker and liberated the piano, you know that this was a guy who could actually do that in reality. He was a man's man, whereas Miles, well, the verdict is still out on that one.
Vibe-Rations in Spectra-Sonic-Sound
#18 2011-09-26 09:28:14
- Russell...Street
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Re: Monk
42R | 16.5/34 | 34/30 | US 10D/UK 9.5E
"Horses, horses... horseshit!"
“As honest as you can expect a man to be in a world where its going out of style.” - Raymond Chandler
#19 2022-01-05 03:51:35
- A Fine Sadness
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Re: Monk
In the year I was born, 1959, he was denied a hotel room, in Boston, not once but twice, because of the colour of his skin. The second hotel that refused his patronage had had no difficulty with Fidel Castro.
Draw your own conclusions.
#20 2022-01-05 03:56:31
- A Fine Sadness
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Re: Monk
There's a reference above to Monk's 'Chinese' hat. Apparently the hat originated in Ghana and was a gift to him from Guy Warren. Monk and Warren had gelled during their meetings and Warren sent the hat to him from West Africa. Monk's daughter said he was thrilled to bits.
The cover image of 'Monk's Music' defines a good deal for me. I couldn't quite track down a plaid driving cap so settled for a Madras newsboy.
#21 2022-01-05 04:33:56
- Tworussellstreet
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Re: Monk
The glasses with the bamboo arms were pretty special too. And yes the madras cap - is that the album where he's sitting in a kid's truck on the cover? And there's meant to be a snap of him in Weejuns but I've never actually seen it. He was a truly magnificent individual on many levels.
#22 2022-01-05 04:46:59
- A Fine Sadness
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Re: Monk
Yeah, cap and kid's truck - belonged to one of his own kids, I think - and it happened almost by accident. Kind of defined the 'eccentric' side of Monk and jazz by, say, 1958 (?); reminds me of poetry by chaps like William Carlos Williams and e.e. cummings ('Anyone lived in a pretty how town, with up so floating many bells down...). Poor Monk, though, had bipolar disorder: highly unpleasant.
Oh, those glasses with the bamboo arms - spectacular! (no pun intended).
#23 2022-01-05 05:02:36
- A Fine Sadness
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Re: Monk
Oh, and of course Abstract Expressionism was there in the background: that East Village loft/dive scene. Sounds like it was more cats, rats and roaches, though, than naked models with open arms and a welcoming tumbler of Chivas Regal.
#24 2022-01-06 07:13:41
- A Fine Sadness
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Re: Monk
Monk, playing at the 'Five Spot', goes walkabout. Someone is sent to find him, discovers him streets away, gazing at the night sky.
'Are you lost?'
'No', says Monk, 'I'm right here. It's the 'Five Spot' that's lost'.