notes

is it my age, or are you also jolted by this reviewer’s lump­ing together of bix bei­der­becke, lester young, and miles davis under the com­mon rubric early jazz icons? more evi­dence of that strange per­cep­tual phe­nom­e­non whereby the young con­flate everything-before-i-was-born into ancient history.

vir­gin tv this christ­mas showed bill mur­ray in ‘scrooged’. there’s a scene in which he walks past some street musi­cians, quip­ping some­thing along the lines of ‘.. is that the only tune you know? you were play­ing that yes­ter­day’ the trum­peter in the band was none other than miles davis — therein the joke…

(via “3quarksdaily: ”)

DECEMBER 27, 2009
THE BIRTH AND DEATH OF THE COOL

From The Wash­ing­ton Post:

This very attrac­tive book, with a cover that sub­tly recalls a Miles Davis LP from over half a cen­tury ago, is a study of how the notion of ‘cool,’ with all its ele­gance and purity, was co-opted by wretched Amer­i­can cor­po­rate types who, in true fairy-tale fash­ion, killed the cool golden goose that they thought was going to lay them golden eggs. To put it more plainly, the author sets up his work with three short biogra­phies of early jazz icons — Bix Bei­der­becke, Lester Young and Miles Davis — and lays out what he thinks they stood for, both in their music and in the outer world.

Then, in just a few fol­low­ing chap­ters, he takes some dizzy­ing leaps to places where read­ers may have trou­ble fol­low­ing him. Gioia’s con­tention is that the man­tle of cool passed all too soon from these aloof, o”