Keith Jarrett: Standards

It took me quite a while to get into Keith Jarret. I was pretty young when I heard Köln, and it would be years before I would try tackling it again. It is still a meaty album to digest. But often when he works in small ensembles (read: trios) he produces material that is often easier to fall into, but no less substantive. I was hoping in renting this concert from the 80s, with solid bassist Gary Peacock and powerhouse drummer Jack DeJohnette would be yet another enjoyable experience for me, in my quest to get deeper into the rather dense Jarrett corpus of releases.

I hit a snag.

Jarrett is a known oddity on stage; he gets up and down on his piano bench, contorts over and dances while playing his piano. Most of all, he mutters, whoops, tweets and emits strange noises from his cakehole that are often contra to whatever melodic line he is playing with his hands. In almost every other time I have observed this in recordings, it has mostly been in short bursts and mixed down and not too intrusive. This release it is a different story, as he appears to be constantly broadcasting impish twittering that is bound to confuse dolphin radar and make dogs howl. Not only is it constant in this video, but it is loud...and is magnififed with all the closeup footage of him doing it, with a face and body language that looks more like a man constipated and wearing underpants of poison ivy, than a pianist of his caliber.

Peacock and Dejohnette ar ebarely given attention, even when they are stretching out. We are stuck with Mr. Squeeky-Bobo sucking up all the camera time, and it does this DVD a general disservice.

Do not bother with this one.