#0030: Bill Evans - Sunday at the Village Vanguard [*]

The later you go with jazz, the more esoteric and self-involved it becomes.  This is a bit of a specialist offering featuring the double bass on the opening track.  If that doesn't tell you enough, maybe I should point out this band is piano, bass and drums only.  The pianist is Bill Evans, the man responsible for the keys on the 58 Sessions and Kind of Blue but that only paves the way for disappointment.

He never really takes the lead and plays an actual solo.  They never seem to play a head and get you used to a tune so you can appreciate the gymnastics they do with the progression during the breaks.  And the bass is just too loud in the mix.  All the time.  

I was really looking forward to this one as well.  What a let down.

It's kind of a petulant album, now that I think about it.  It's defiantly discordant and arrogantly arrhythmic.  The listening elite will nod and grimace in that pretentious way but what if Bill and the boys are punishing them too?  Maybe it's anti-jazz or maybe it's genuinely so far up its own arse it's in danger of causing a paradox.  Either way, it's no fun to listen to.

There's a reason they make jokes about the bass solo and this could well be where all that started.