Rewind & Play (2022)

Two things I can say about this eccentric, arguably found-footage documentary: 1) I don’t know what the intent of director Alain Gomis is, and 2) it comes alive every time Thelonious Monk starts playing the piano, which is not often enough. Rewind & Play is composed of footage shot for a French TV show in 1969 while Monk was touring and playing a date in Paris. I have no idea how much of what was shot that afternoon was left out of this picture. It feels like we’re seeing all of it the way it unspooled when they found it, raw and bloopy, with botched shots and technical problems, multiple takes, an interviewer who is not sure how to approach Monk, and a subject who is having a hard time even understanding some of these questions, let alone why they are being asked. Some on the internet think Gomis is out to show Monk being treated demeaningly. Maybe so, but it looked more like a language barrier than racism to me. It’s true a lot of the questions the interviewer asks are inane and/or awkward—“why did you put your piano in the kitchen?” “do you think you are too avant-garde for Paris?” so forth. This poor guy, last seen stranded at a fondue party in the early ‘70s, is smug, pious, and shallow. But that’s true of most TV celebrities and hosts of talk shows. The guy wants to pretend he’s hip to Monk. Maybe he was. Meanwhile, the picture is at least as instructive on the frustrations of shooting a documentary as it is on Monk. But when they let the piano player rip, which adds up to maybe a third? maybe a half? of the movie, it’s truly a great Thelonious Monk time. No one played the piano like him. It feels childlike but sophisticated, like he’s just picking out random notes up and down the keyboard, but backing it with compelling rhythmic chording as he chops up and purees his melodies. It makes a kind of intuitive mathematical sense and it’s a kick for the duration of his jams. I hope Gomis didn’t leave any of the playing out of this already very short movie, because if he did that’s a shame. It’s the only thing that’s really enjoyable about Rewind & Play.

Monks, "I Hate You" (1966)

(listen)

Wikipedia has the Monks down as "avant-garde garage" so I guess that settles that. The five American soldier nobodies who were stationed in Germany in the mid-'60s and who make up this band didn't just happen on to the way they sound, but put it together carefully. They poured everything into one album, Black Monk Time, and then waited 33 years and more for the rest of the world to even begin catching up. I think we're just about there now. The project does indeed fit the post-Beatles DIY "garage" aesthetic that inspired suburban youth across America in 1966 (in a post-Stones vein, more in line with the Chocolate Watchband and Standells). It often sounds like blueprint and instruction manual for the Velvet Underground and Stooges, not just ahead of its time but nearly out of it entirely, hovering above and gazing beatifically far, far into the future. They were probably using the term "shoegaze" even then, and laughing at the comparative feebleness. Few bands clobber one over the head quite so artfully as the Monks, with a bottom that feels like the extra Gs of a massive planet, flattening the features of the face into a mask and threatening to collapse bones into jelly. Yet for all that, it moves ("lumbers" obscures the precision) with energy, menace, and sardonic charm. It means you no harm but it means you no good either, just a small part of the moth/flame draw. I picked this for the title, which typically for the Monks clarifies everything and nothing ("Well you know my hate's everlastin', baby, yeah yeah! / But call me"). You can't go wrong with anything on the album at large.

Black Monk Time (1966)

"Boys Are Boys and Girls Are Choice" If I didn't know better, I would swear time travel must be involved with the Monks. I understand they were five U.S. servicemen just off their hitches, that this was recorded in Berlin, and that it's basically their only album. I come to it nearly 40 years late, so call this an early flush of enthusiasm if you like. Here we have raw, amazing, original, powerful stuff, so far ahead of its time that I doubt the parents of any of them have even met yet. Absolutely ranks with 13th Floor Elevators or Lollipop Shoppe/Dead Moon, and miles ahead of Chocolate Watchband or Seeds or Mysterians. It's hard not to be excited.

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