Another huge talent with personal demons

Run time: 04:28 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGBPSx1Zxlo   Posted on YouTube: August 06, 2006 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 26, 2009 By DU Member: jgraz Views on DU: 544

 
Miles plays one of my favorite Michael Jackson songs. You don't have to like them personally, but you can't deny their genius.

Not that I am implying anything about MJ.
This is about Miles, who changed everything I know about music.

In a small house in Boulder, Colorado in about 1993 I was partying with some friends.
Two o'clock in the morning, a little (ok a whole lot of) wine and some weed and some mescaline.
Someone came out of a bedroom and dropped "Kind of Blue" on the turntable.

Changed my fucking life.

No other music sounded so pure, so sweet, so life affirming.
When John Coltrane took the first solo, I knew I would never be the same.

Miles Davis has been with me, in my soul ever since.

I spent one high school summer transcribing that entire album. I still have the notebooks stored away somewhere.

I've been playing jazz for about 30 years, and I've never played a note that wasn't influenced by Miles in some way.

You and I, we're aces with each other.
Listening to Miles that night led me to...

Coltrane
Monk
Dexter Gordon
Sonny Rollins
Bird

I dug deeper...

The Duke
The Count
Satchmo and the Hot Fives

However, I was still a rock and roll baby at heart, yearning for some electric stuff...
And then I heard Pat Metheny Group, and I lost my mind.

When Miles released Tutu, I had come full circle.

I love music.
I was driving home tonight listening to the original Pretenders recorded Live at the Palladium in NYC on their first tour.
James Honeyman Scott and his guitar was peeling the paint of the walls.

Goddamn, corporate radio killed everything I once loved about music.

Clear Channel, they name is whore.

Rant over.