Every half decade or so, I make a systematic attempt to discover whether or not I like jazz yet. I had high hopes this time around, as there's nothing I like better than finding some new area of human creativity to be excited about, but no such luck. I will say, though, that I make something of an exception for our boy Thelonious Monk here. His sense of experimentation bordered on the reckless, with sometimes disastrous, but always tension-filled results. Take a look at this 1966 clip of him performing Blue Monk - zoom ahead to about 3:10. He sits down at the piano and it's like he's never seen one of these things before - he starts poking and prodding it - you can almost see "I wonder what this'll sound like?" running through his head as he hovers and hesitates over the keys. That's Dangerous playing, and I respect it a lot - there is a willingness there to engage with the nuts and bolts and Stuff of music, come what may.

Granted, this is a later performance, when some of his medical issues were reaching for him. But even as a younger man, his reputation was that of an "elephant" at the keys. Louis Armstrong HATED him. But for me, that very elephantishness is the thing which makes him the most fascinating figure from the Charlie Parker era to watch and listen to.

- Count Dolby von Luckner