Evolution

The album we all need to be paying more attention to is Evolution by Grachan Moncur III. I won’t pretend to know how to pronounce the man’s name, but I sure as hell will tell you what I think about when I hear this record.

The Soviet Union. The 1940s. Siberia. Rocky IV. Snow. Bombs. East Germany.

America.

The Opening Ceremony of the Communist Eastern Bloc Winter Demon Games of 1947.

This music is the sound of not being impressed by fascists and authoritarians. It sounds like confusion and disbelief just before they curdle into rage. Or maybe just after they stop being rage and start being the norm.

It sounds like art in the face of oppression. Art in the face of oppression because some believe that art is the only answer to oppression.

Kick drums that sound like floor toms that sound like bombs going off in a warehouse.

Why does Jackie McLean yell like that between phrases when he solos? You all hear that, right? Wouldn’t his time be better spent, I don’t know, catching his breath?

Brief digression: if I remember Miles’s autobiography correctly, he hired Jackie McLean only once. Why? Cuz Jackie showed up so high that he (Jackie) was afraid he (Jackie) wouldn’t be able to play. All of which makes me really want to know how that conversation went down. Hey Miles, my name is Jack McLean, and, ugh, gotta be honest with you right now, I’m so high that I’m terrified. Of what, you ask? Why, of not being able to play the horn you paid me to come here and play. Wait, you find that terrifying? Weird.  

Anyway, he pissed off Miles. So Miles embarrassed him and sent him packing and never hired him again.

Track A2, title track, “Evolution” is Thelonious Monk watching Thelonious Monk mourn the death of Thelonious Monk at a New Orleans death funeral march. Meta death? Turned inside out and run through a blender and sprinkled with chicory. Or, if you’d rather: crouching in the mountains, watching the enemies as they assemble their armies and consult with their high priests. You aren’t afraid as much as anticipating as you rub your stubble, grin, and take another glance through the binoculars. You look like Steve McQueen, the air looks like film grain. Kinda creepy, kinda dope.

This track is a study in…static-ness? Glaciers? It goes absolutely nowhere. It just sits there, filled with dread, crouching in those mountains or marching glacially through those New Orleans streets at dusk. Somber but far from sober. Dancing in slow motion. Too dehydrated to cry or mourn but fully able to grieve.

The trombone is partly to blame. Grachan Moncur III is one of very very few jazz trombonists of note, let alone jazz trombonists to headline Blue Note albums during the mid-60s prime of Blue Note.

We can talk about “modal” all day, but this is something else entirely. It is modal on ice. It’s funny that the cover of this record, one of Blue Note’s most iconic, is largely hot pink. Cuz this record is icy, icy, icy. Blue/white/desaturated/decaying like a salmon in the fall, its rich nutrients penetrating the soil and providing a catalyst to the cycle of life.

Is it all some sardonic, ironic joke? Is it telling me that the only evolution is the evolution we all undergo on our way to the grave? Devolution? That we are at our most alive (hot pink) when facing our mortality (white/grey/etc)?   

“The Coaster” comes at you with some relatively foot tapping and accessible mid-fast swing shit, and, dudemanbro (as my 4-year-old now says), it grooves! But that little chorus thing comes at you and guess what? It’s got a Spanish/Iberian/conquistador flavor to it? What type of crap is that? (Yo how’s about a smack?) How does that fit in? Is this the heat that the record cover suggests? This is the penultimate track; will the finale answer all my questions? Restore balance to the galaxy? Funny how this song falls prey to its own chorus. The chorus (can I call it that?) has a gravitational pull; the rest of the song just sort of collapses into that chorus. Oh and by the way, we’ve got Lee Morgan here. The brightest, brassiest of all the trumpet masters. He can conquistador like a motherfucker.

I’ve got thoughts about Jackie McLean (other than the one about how he shouldn’t have gotten all baked before a gig with Miles). His tone blows my mind. He somehow makes a sax (even though, yes, it’s an alto) sound like a sine wave. Clear, even, clean, piercing, but still weirdly smooth? I don’t know much about Jackie, but I’d say that when it comes to sheer tone and attitude, he was a first teamer. I’m guessing there are other attributes to the man that keep him out of the fanciest part of the Hall of Fame.

This is music that references something other than music itself, and usually when I say that I mean it as the highest compliment. This (despite that awesome cliffhanger setup) is no exception. The record, to me, is a bold experiment in form and atmosphere. Or atmosphere as form? Forgive me, I can no longer track my own thoughts. Which is usually a good time to stop writing.

But I’ve got other plans for tonight. If this conquistador gravity jam ever stops (WILL IT EVER STOP?), I look forward to hearing the final track on the record and seeing where it goes, what it says, what it stands for, who it vouches for.

OH YEAH! I’VE HEARD THIS! IT’S MONK HIGH ON HELIUM AND FLOATING IN A HOUSE LIKE THAT ONE MOVIE WITH THE OLD DUDE FLOATING IN A HOUSE WITH THAT ANNOYING BOY SCOUT. Sorry for the Donald Trump ALL CAPS, though if Donald Trump ever tweeted anything like that, I’d have a lot more hope for civilization than I do. That is to say, of course, that the record ends on a more explicit MONK thing even than tracks 1 and 2.

Separate but related: in a future post I’m gonna tell you about all the records that have a Monk jam. It’s often at A2 on the record, like on Inner Urge (“Isotope” being perhaps the ultimate Monkjam). All those songs, by the way (those Monk jams), are about turning the blues into a sick joke, finding the humor in the dark, even mocking the dark, even mocking your own sadness. In fact, that’s the whole Monk aesthetic, the Monk M.O. I’m glad to have figured this out tonight. Jazz scholars and music intelligentsia, you can thank me later, preferably in the form of some sick new speakers or a way to play my records through headphones so I don’t have to listen to the greatest sounds ever recorded via digital blue laser signals being sent to these tiny weird alien plastic earbuds. I deserve better. Send me gifts. I’ll show you the way, or at least write you some smart and/or insane and/or inscrutable shit about jazz and/or coffee and/or denim and/or mountain bikes, etc.