THE VIDEO THAT TURNED ME ON TO MILES DAVIS

Crooks and Liars managed to find the ultra-rare classic live performance of Miles Davis' song "So What" that I first saw in my jazz appreciation class at the University of Texas back in 1987. It's funny, C&L actually titled it's post that links to the video "John Coltrane" because, it seems, they like Trane better than Miles. And that's just fine because, of course, Trane is great too. It's also fairly appropriate because Miles' solo on the video isn't as good as his solo on the album version, but Trane's is, maybe, a bit better than what he does on the record. But really that doesn't matter. It's a damned cool video. Cool jazz, cool mid 50s clothes, legendary musicians doing their thing. It's no wonder at all that seeing this when I was all of nineteen years made me a Miles Davis fan in like five seconds. It also served to solidify the late 50s/early 60s visual aesthetic that has dominated my personal tastes since then. Screw postmodernism: I'm a shameless modernist at heart, so modern, in fact, that I don't even think there is such a thing as postmodernism--what we are currently living in is simply a late part of the modern era. Anyway, putting all that aside, go check out the video. It's fantastic.

Click here for "So What" live, via YouTube.



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