Defining Moments

My love for rock and roll in the very broadest sense - from ah, Robert Johnson to Brian Eno - is what defines me. One of my objectives in this blog is to write about the defining moments of my life. And the best example of that, at least the one that's freshest in my memory, actually comes from jazz.

The first time I really got jazz, it hit me like a left hook to the belly.

I was listening to Miles Davis' rendition of "Around Midnight" a few years ago. Now, I always loved Miles, for years, since I was about twenty, even when a lot of of the nuances and moves went over my head. Now, fifteen years later, I wasn't listening with a particularly more open mind, but something managed to get inside.

You know that slow, soulful, sexy style Miles had in the fifties, it's in full force on "Around Midnight", just one man and a trumpet, all alone in the cold, dark night. If you listen to it with even casual appreciation you just know this is as deep as any musician ever gets. Forget theory, forget Miles' great intellectual presence and all the great leaps of intuition and invention he brought into all of his great records, this solo takes you back to Africa, slavery, the Civil War and then just shoves you straight out, bare naked, into the future.

Then it's over and there's a drumroll. And John Coltrane walks in and demolishes everything Miles had done.

Coltrane, great as he was, was never as great on his own solo efforts as he was with Davis and Thelonious Monk. Just my opinion but... the way I see it, the guy just begged for a foil. With Monk, he was offered those weird spaces between the piano chords that he just thrived in and accented his sort of rusty sounding playing. With Miles it was different kind of foil because Miles was a totally different personality, more urbane and restless than Monk, and always drove his musicians toward a vision only he could perceive. According to his autobiography he'd been trying for years to get "Around Midnight" right. And when he finally got it right, his protege outshone one of his greatest trumpet solo of the fifties, turned it inside out and upside down, his "sheets of sound" style picking up all of Davis' ideas and regurgirating them, all drenched in acid and snot.

For a guy who always felt he was "saved by rock and roll", the performance was a revelation.

I woke up, sweating, out of my reverie and went out and bought all the Miles Davis and John Coltrane albums I could find and from there on it was a straight line to Mingus, Monk and Parker.

Sometimes life is truly what happens when you're busy making other plans.