Keith Jarrett “Mysteries”

When I was in my teens (1970s), I was open to a lot of music and just trying to find more stuff that I liked. One LP a week, that was the rule for a while (well, after I got a job). I must have read about Keith Jarrett in Rolling Stone magazine, and I bought the record The Survivors’ Suite when that came out in 1977. I remember liking it, but not totally connecting to it, so I didn’t buy more Keith Jarrett at that time. I wondered if I had written something about it, so I looked back through the blog (DJ Farraginous—it’s searchable!) and I did! Almost on this day (late July) of 2007—which is back when I still had a lot of my teenage-years records. What I wrote is kind of dumb, so don’t bother, and it uses coarse language—but it’s nice to think about still being at it—writing about records, that is (as well as still being dumb). This kind of musing lets me avoid trying to write about this music specifically, which I’m struggling with, because I don’t know enough about jazz to say whether this LP is good or bad, accomplished or how it fails. I know that it can just be opinion, and I know that I do like it, so that’s as far as I get. I like it a lot—and after having listened to (or re-listened to) this record (which mysteriously found its way into my collection only recently, though it came out in 1976), I was enthused—and told myself to maybe go out and buy more Keith Jarrett records—buy one anytime I saw one! (The not too, too expensive ones, that is.)

“Mysteries” is a good title—I like it—I would say because he’s a mysterious guy—but he’s probably not—just mysterious to me. It’s always mysterious why my document will suddenly increase font size to double what it was—right while I’m typing! There is nothing here in this office where I’m working (apartment) in evidence so much as mysteries (books). I could speculate that Keith Jarrett very well may have been inspired by Knut Hamsun’s novel, Mysteries (1892), which is one I’m kind of obsessed with and going to re-read soon! The album cover image, a snapshot-size photo of some tress, encouraged me to think that. It’s a very cool photo—credited to Keith Jarrett. Four compositions, all by K.J., and all very different from each other. Quite a combo here, credited: Dewey Redman, Charlie Haden, Paul Motian, Guilhermo Franco (the one I’m not familiar with, on percussion). Keith Jarrett plays “Pakistani flute,” as well as piano. He sometimes weirdly hums along with his piano playing—which I find charming—and arguably (a condition, a byproduct, an unintentional enhancement?) adds to the music. I’m not going to play the game of relating how each song makes me feel while listening to it—I’ll spare the lesser world of that nonsense. Instead, I’m going to listen to it as a whole—and I’m going to put this record on from time to time. And when I find another Keith Jarrett record, sometime, I’ll compare them.

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