Never-Never Land

The Wall Street Journal ^ | Tuesday, December 2, 2003 | GERALD EARLY

[pogo101]

On average, the eight people in those photos have had 5.675 unnecessary and destructive cosmetic surgeries and 0.125 impeachments.

[Finny]

Brilliant analysis? ... maybe. This guy lost me when he started talking about Miles Davis. While Miles' contemporaries, like Dizzy Gillespie, played the same style and stuff, year after year, decade after decade, Miles was pushing the envelope of electric jazz fusion with some of the gnarliest jazz musicians around.

Miles was not only a continual innovator, he was a mentor and an inspiration to MANY young jazz musicians, white and black -- I SAW this, on stage, at the several Miles' performances I was lucky enough to see live. Meanwhile, Diz and others who managed to survive the heroin and hard drugs that led so many hard-core bebop and straight-ahead players to early deaths, were still playing hard bop, Night in Tunisia, Green Dolphin Street, year after year after year, and writing new tunes that sounded a lot like the old ones, doing the same ol' same ol'.

Not that Diz wasn't GREAT, he was. But for all his jazziness, Diz played it safe. Miles never did. Miles innovated with new styles, new musicians who employed new technologies, etc. I didn't like all of Miles' music, but Miles was a real adventurer. That this author chalks if off to some cynical move on Miles' part to stay popular with the mainstream, shows a certain shallowness on his part. Which sort of ruins his credibility in my eyes when he talks about the tragic figure of Michael Jackson.

--Jazz Rant off!

[Revolting cat!]

"Jazz trumpeter Miles Davis did this in the '70s and '80s, when he realized that his only hope for continued commercial success was to appeal to people far younger than those who had been his committed fans throughout his career. "

I see nothing in the above reference to Miles Davis that contradicts what you think about Miles Davis. The focus is simply elsewhere. It's like that objection to the Peter Pan reference, because 'I used to call my husband "Peter Pan"'.