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”