SOUNDTRACK: JON BENJAMIN JAZZ DAREDEVIL–Well, I Should Have…* *Learned How To Play Piano (2015).
In 2015, H. Jon Benjamin released a jazz album on which he played piano. He did this despite not knowing how to play piano.
This album should be a trainwreck. However, he has employed the talents of Scott Kreitzer (saxophone), David Finck (bass), and Jonathan Peretz (drums) to assist him. And they are really good.
It’s hard to believe that Benjamin has never played at all before, because while he’s not good by any definition, he certainly knows how to press the keys on the piano in a reasonable way. Meaning, when he plays a solo he is at least trying to sound like he’s playing a solo. It’s not like cats on a piano playing utterly random crap. He’s certainly bad, but he’s bad within the ballpark, which makes this amusing to listen to and not intolerable.
Obviously, part of the joke is that Benjamin hates jazz and this pretty much mocks improv piano. And yes, his playing sometimes sounds like an improv pianist deliberately plying wrong notes until the right ones come back into focus (although Benjamin’s never do come back in to focus).
The disc is quite short. It’s under 30 minutes. It includes a skit at the front called “Deal with the Devil.” It is a really funny introduction in which H. Jon tries to sell his soul to the devil. Kristen Schaal as the secretary get a very funny joke or two, but the devil (Aziz Ansari) explains that usually selling your soul is a last resort, not a first step. There’s a vulgar joke (which I found really funny), but which makes the track unplayable for family gatherings (if you were to do such a thing).
There are four main pieces on the disc “I Can’t Play Piano” Parts 1-4.
“I Can’t Play Piano Part 1” (3:39) starts off with a rollicking sax solo and some bouncing jazz and then Jon’s tinkling at the high end of the piano. The band even pauses a few times to give him a proper solo or four. All of the solos are horribly inept and pretty funny. Midway through the song, bassist David Finck takes a cool upright bass solo and you can hear Jon shout “play it Joe” or something like it.
Part 2 (3:09) has a riff that Jon tries to follow and fails to play spectacularly. There’s less “soloing” in this one and more “playing with the band.” At times you almost don’t quite realize that he’s playing with everyone else–something just seems slightly off. There’s also some nice drum soloing from Jonathan Peretz.
There’s a hilarious skit [not on this record] by Paul F. Tompkins in which he talks about jazz as “a genre of music that is defying you to like it.” He talks about going to a jazz show (by accident or because you lost a bet) and just at the point when you’re almost asleep, you think the bass player is going to play [blanhr] but instead he plays [blownhr]. And next.. this is the worst thing that jazz guys do. The other guys on stage start laughing like it was the funniest thing they ever did see. And you’re sitting in the audience thinking “I don’t get the jazz joke Why is that note so hilarious? You’ve played many notes this evening, none of them particularly side splitting.”
This album is pretty much a musical rendition of that joke.
“It Had to Be You,” is a pretty conventional cover of the song (at least for the saxophone). Jon clearly knows how the song goes, he just doesn’t know how to play it or which notes should even be in the song. The middle of the song is a saxophone solo (no piano) and once again, you are kind of lulled into thinking the song is pretty straightforward, and then Jon comes back for a solo. It’s a slow solo so at first it doesn’t seem so bad, but once he starts going, you realize how bad he really is.
“Soft Jazzercise” is a skit. Jon talks over a slow piano piece (presumably not by Jon as it is actually melodic). Jon says that his soft jazzercise is very very very very very very very low impact. You have to do it slow. Like a turtle slow, like an opiated panda slow.
Back to the improv with “I Can’t Play Piano, Pt. 3” (4:57). The song starts as a kind of call and response between the saxophone and the piano (hilariously bad every time). Jon also gets a solo in the beginning. He even slides his hand up and down the keys a few times–almost convincingly. In the middle of the song you can hear Jon really getting into it shouting almost audible encouragement and saying “here we go!” and “dig this!” then the saxophone starts playing a response to what Jon is playing–can he even play that badly? Jon even says “you can do better” at one point. The sax almost plays “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” twice before the riffing ends.
The final improv piece “I Can’t Play Piano, Pt. 4 – (Trill Baby Trill)” (5:25) starts with Jon’s piano and the rest of the band apparently trying to follow or keep up. Once again it’s not as horrible as you might expect. It’s not good, but it almost seems like it could be a serious improv. There’s a lengthy bass solo (no funny notes that I can hear). Then, after the drum solo when the sax takes the lead again, you kind of forget that Jon is even playing.
The final track is a funky/rap about anal sex.
The five instrumentals would be hilarious to mix into any dinner party to see what people thought or if they even notices. The other three tracks are definitely NSFW.
[READ: June 1, 2018] Failure is an Option
I love H. Jon Benjamin. Or, more specifically I love his voice. He has voiced some of my favorite characters over the years including Archer and Bob Belcher.
But I have found that when I watch things that he has created, I don’t enjoy them quite as much.
So, which way would this ode to failure go?
It’s a mixed bag but overall it’s quite funny.
It has an introduction with this appropriate line:
I am writing this at the dawn of the Trump presidency, particularly apropos of failure being an option. A very horrible and dangerous option in the case of a entire country’s future.
The opening talks, as many of these memoirs do, about how exhausting it is to write a memoir (“when I was saddled with the task of writing a book”). (more…)
I Just Read About That... 