Giant Steps might seem tame compared to, say, The Olatunji Concert, but it's pretty out there compared to a lot of jazz from the late 50s. And if you're a newbie, Giant Steps is still a lot to wrap your brain around.

Live at the Five-Spot (1958) might do the trick, especially since it's with Coltrane when he's in full "sheets of sound" fury.

You listen to Johnny Hates Jazz just out of spite, don't you?

Love Brilliant Corners, but my gateway was his early-to-mid sixties work with Charlie Rouse — Criss Cross, Monk's Dream.  Accessible, clean-sounding, but still undoubtedly Monk.

Now I'm hungry for latkes.

A persona?  You mean the cartoon character with the paper bag on his head?

The "check's in the mayo" joke in Vineland always slayed me for some reason, even though I didn't find that one nearly as satisfying as the others of his I've read  (V, CoL49, M&D, oh and the four or five times I made it through the first third of Gravity's Rainbow).

Really not a huge fan of "Bastards"— I far, far prefer "Left of the Dial."  And the non-album track "Nowhere is My Home" if we're on that era.

If only you were lonely….

Hey, Susie, guess what?

Cold Lampin' with Alex Jones.

"Stop Draggin' my Heart Around" would seem to fit the bill.

I want to say something rude but I … just .. can't….

That seems like a pretty schizophrenic assortment of influences, I must say.

@Sini_Star:disqus , I listened to Doolittle twice a day for the better part of a summer way back when, and "Debaser" hooked me instantly the first time I heard it.  Happened to everyone I played it for, too.  I just thought "eyeopener" was a funny word-choice given, you know, the slicing up eyeballs and stuff.  Silly…

Eyeopener, huh?

That's right, Asso.  Kids imprisoned against their will = goddamm entitled whiners.

No love for Subliminal? That's my other fave.

There's an assumption of privilege here that I think misplaced.  Mike's not portraying some upper middle-class wannabe skatepunk.  He's playing a *real* skatepunk — a Venice, CA kid who makes a pretty normal request for a teenager ("Hey, Mom, could you grab me a soda?"), and then gets shoved into an "Institutional…

Never could get those fast verses down.