At the time of the Palo Alto concert, his most recent album was Underground, which the label had tried to sell to the hippie crowd with a cover photo that portrayed Monk as a French liberation fighter hiding out in a Paris attic, where he could bang away at his keyboard and kick some Nazi ass in private. He needed every dollar he could earn, and Columbia’s lack of faith in his artistic vision wasn’t helping. A seizure in May of 1968 put him in a coma that caused him to miss several recording dates his label, Columbia, charged him for the studio time. His wife, Nellie, took ill, then Monk did, too. This is exuberant, abundant music, made by and performed for people whose lives often felt anything but. But just as Monk’s music was characterized by the power of its empty spaces-he’s the person who said, “It’s not the notes you play, it’s those you leave out,” a chestnut as well-worn as any of his songs- Palo Alto’s thrills are made poignant by what was happening in his life unbeknownst to the audience, and what was happening in their life unbeknownst to Monk. The live album Palo Alto is a grainy snapshot of Monk and his classic quartet taking a break from their two-week stand at San Francisco’s Jazz Workshop to cut loose and get paid. A legend who couldn’t afford to miss a $500 payday at a high school. Still, he was Thelonious Sphere Monk: If he was no longer weird, and no longer a superstar, he was still a legend. 6 on DownBeat’s International Critics Poll ranking jazz’s best pianists, and writers routinely dismissed his playing as stale and uninspired. Less than half a decade later, he’d slipped to No. After decades of toiling in New York’s clubs to little outside recognition, Monk had briefly tasted superstardom, culminating in a 1964 Time magazine cover.
Then it ceases to be weird.” By the time Monk and his quartet strode into the auditorium at Palo Alto High School on October 27, 1968, people hadn’t just gotten around to his oblong, minimalist take on jazz-they’d left it behind. It’s weird until people get around to it. Thelonious Monk once said: “Weird means something you never heard before.
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