The joke here is that Jon Benjamin can't play the piano. What makes it strangely worth hearing is that it's not a joke. Everybody takes the initial premise as given, sure. Jon on piano. And after that, nobody is trying to make this any more of a wank than it has to be.
Benjamin's got some legit players around him, and listening to them do their darndest to work with an . . unconventional player is a little thrill. If there was an Iron Chef for music, this'd be the giraffe balls battle.
And in spite of his doomed premise, Benjamin tries! He has some basic sense of melody, finds little fragments that work and goes back to them, hits the keys with spirit and restraint - he's not just fucking things up. He's dubbed himself a Jazz Daredevil, and its true: he's not just driving this thing off a cliff, he's trying to make it to the other side of that gorge, janky two-stroke be damned.
The big questions:
Is this taking the piss out of jazz? Sure, but it's not *just* taking the piss out of jazz. There's something fascinating about watching punk rock fuckit crash into a well-established system. In a way, it's a testament to jazz - what other style could be so fluid, so able to absorb this level of chaos and still emerge sounding just damn near almost kinda like its maybe sorta supposed to?
Is it enjoyable to listen to? It's better than you might think! At 30 minutes (including throwaway sketches and a joke song at the end) it doesn't beat the idea to death, and it's done with you around the time you're done with it. Benjamin's unconventional approach to comedic timing; a patience that knows juuuuuust how far to trust the audience; works with music too, as it turns out. It's absolutely worth hearing once, and I am terribly glad it exists. But Jon Benjamin is not very good at playing the piano 3.5/5
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment