cool

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”