Miles Davis
Bitches Brew

- See you on Wednesday with the report on Jazz, Marco, don't forget!
- Yes, don't worry. Goodbye.

It started like this, to paraphrase the greatest writer that ever existed.
No, my name is not Marco, but my favorite animal is the heron, an anagram of heroin.
In the morning. Maybe reading a book, Death on Credit would be perfect. There's nothing better. Or maybe yes. Yes. There must be something better - Grandpa Miles knew all too well that there was something better. Because it's all a matter of style. How you do it.
What you do doesn't matter much, as long as you do it with style.
And you'll be the Eternal Winner.

To define means to limit (quote)

I've always wondered what the hell Psychedelia is. The Pink Floyd of '67?
The acidic guitars of the 13th Floor Elevators? The Blues Magoos? Sgt. Pepper, my father used to say.
I tell you, it's a nice album, but Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds is only psychedelic in that it managed to deceive half the world's critics with that childish chorus. Or maybe I just didn't get it. Like a too complex joke. I'm not made for these things, for heaven's sake. Definitely not. I'm sitting here at this table, drinking a beer, I don't need anything! I'm enough for myself. I'm too much. We small human beings are complex, a bit too much, and our minds are at sea. And who ever taught us to swim? You learn alone, self-taught, or you drown. Unlike the Minstrel, many will not know their song before starting to sing it. And when do we need to sing it? Before falling!

»When we are on the edge of the precipice, we shouldn't play smart, but we shouldn't forget either, we should tell everything without changing a word, about the most disgusting we've seen in humans and then kick the bucket and then sink. 
As a job, it's enough for a lifetime.«

Apart from predicting a rather long rant; and I call it a rant because I'm not worthy of writing something similar to a review, not on certain albums at least. On this one, definitely not. We humans are quite strange: we never accept the fact that we are not competent enough to complete some task, and so we try anyway through a modality that with the theme at hand doesn't fit at all.
And then, mine isn't even a task! If it were, I'd stop writing and go have a joint listening to the elephantine fury of Spanish Key. That groove that all the basses in the world can only dream of. I will try to beat that elephant and take away its tusks, said Mr. Techno. He failed miserably. Spanish Key makes more noise than twenty machine guns firing without pause for an indefinite time. Time X. The X factor exits the scene. Silence, everyone, as said a little pretentious guy with the funniest glasses I've ever seen.

Back to the music teacher who had assigned me the report.
Well, you, my dear, don't understand a thing about music. You know, she's one of those who divides this fantastic world into Classical and Light. Never trust these people.
They define, define, limit, limit. They listen, they don’t live. These people cling to one genre and then, from the castle, spit on other musical currents.
Mozart is a genius. And Jimi? Hendrix was just noise!


She says that Jazz, for the most part, is cultured music. Now, I ask:
What the heck is cultured music? Why cultured? Is jazz cultured music? Why isn't Lou Reed a cultured musical character? Wyatt isn't cultured? For heaven's sake, even Roger Waters could be cultured! Then, the stage collapses. Cultured music doesn't exist. A miserable term. I don't trust these sub-genres so dear to those who listen to music to become damn encyclopedias. What feeling do you get reading an encyclopedia? It slams the cards on the table, but they remain only dead information. What does the Garzanti encyclopedia care about explaining quantum physics with passion? Nothing! ... so, what the heck.

Anyway. Charlie Parker is god. I would have kissed Mingus’s ass, too.
As for Miles Davis, I would have made him spend all 120 extremely
deserved vacation days in Sodom. Yes, I'm one to exaggerate, like Ariosto. But Miles knows I love him so much. 

Bitches' brew. Now, imagine Columbia, releasing a record from a famous artist with »Bitches« on the cover. It must have caused a scandal, right? Well - what a drag this Oblivion in jazz, everything stagnates here and nothing moves. So, Miles takes two thousand hits like this and starts blowing. What comes out? The psychedelic maze of Pharaoh's Dance with its continuous overlaps, a rhythmic section that would get all of Wall Street moving their asses with Coney Island included at zero interest. These musicians aren't serious, they joke. Violently. They look at you (Corea beyond those evil glasses of his) and say: take that, jerk! Then you find yourself slapped in the face with the cover, with that directions in music by Miles Davis. New stuff, fresh fresh, bitches' brew for only 17 and a half dollars.

And then, Wednesday came, I presented my report.
I swear, I tried, to take away from Jazz that image of a calm and (!!!) cultured genre for old people and oldies (not Roberto) that everyone has damn well absorbed into their minds. Couldn't do it, and no wonder, my dear Mrs. Professor.

- 1969 arrives, Hendrix's timeless set at Woodstock ends, and the next day Miles Davis enters the studio, the Revolution begins recording, also known as Bitches Brew.

I put on Miles Runs The Voodoo Down (Chick, what solos!), but I am immediately stopped.

- No, no, this is not Jazz as I understand it. Do you have some Louis Armstrong record to play?

Well, musicians with guts and quadruple guts aren't good enough. What a Wonderful World is, though. Because the street piss smell of Bitches isn't cultured, right!

In a Cubist world, Bitches Brew would have been the title of a masterpiece by Picasso.
Unfortunately for Pablo, Miles got there first, without a brush, but with a trumpet that would later play with Zawinul's piano, Lenny White's drums and much more. Coming soon.

...but what have I written?