Hello, two-CD set of Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew. It’s been a while, and we need to talk. Remember when we first met? Like any clueless budding suburban jazzbo I had already gone to Sam Goody and started with the Best Of albums, clearly the pinnacle of these musical careers, objectively curated and having nothing to do with the availability and cheapness of the rights for the songs chosen. I had even purchased Kind of Blue, because I believe in the deep cuts of nearly 65-year old music that can be heard in most dentists’ waiting rooms. But then you came into my life, like a beacon, like an albatross, Bitches Brew.
Your nearly 90-minute double album has been described as “one of the most remarkable creative statements of the last half-century, in any artistic form.” You’re also nearly unlistenable to anyone over the age of 15 without massive loads of drugs, and even then you’ve gotta be kidding me. But that dual-CD jewel case of yours would open like a Bible on my bedroom floor, forcing me to switch discs on my combination tape deck boom box, affording a brief moment to feel smugly satisfied at how artistic and cultured I was before placing the second disc in and closing the clamshell CD player top.
Thank you, two-CD set of Bitches Brew. You taught me to reject the conventional limits of what art can be, and made me realize that beauty is all around; that it’s a quiet sign of the resilience of life. The prevailing of the meek against the braggarts in due time, the unspoken connection between all things great and small. All of this can be seen in the geometric unfolding of a flower or the jaunty bounce of a squirrel up a tree. Improvisation! Yes, and!
But seriously, your title track is almost 27 minutes long. Couldn’t lose even one note of “bleebloorfruuuh”? I thought jazz was supposed to be about the space between the notes, but you didn’t leave any. “Ya Mo Be There” is a good song and is only four and a half minutes, and even it could get the fade down and lose that last minute and Michael McDonald wouldn’t trash a hotel room over it like you might at the suggestion, Miles.
R.I.P., by the way.
Most of your song titles are meaningless in relation to the music. “John McLaughlin” is a song on your album. When you first came into my life, the Internet barely existed. I assumed it was an ode to the political talk show host. Pretty cool name for a song. I liked Dana Carvey’s impression as much as you obviously did, Satchmo. I didn’t know that wasn’t your nickname because, again, no Internet. Not my fault.
You blew my mind like that time my uncle told me that “Brown Eyed Girl” was about how much Van Morrison liked getting busy with a black girl, but you also blew my mind like that time my uncle got drunk and brought home a live rattlesnake he found on the highway and showed it to me and all my young cousins. Sometimes ideas are good, and sometimes they are bad, just like you, Bitches Brew.
The only constant in your songs is the ticking beat. In life the only thing constant is the march of time. A keyboard noodles away for a moment and then fades. My friends have kids and move to Arkansas and I only hear from them via pictures on Facebook, and every successive obligatory “Like” feels less genuine. A crash of cymbals and horn explodes and dissipates. I watch my aunts and uncles lose their minds and bodies and disappear with that same force and velocity. Structure is illusion in music, and careers are meaningless. All that remains is change.
But you know what else is great? Words. Not every song needs them, but sometimes they’re really helpful. No one ever complains about the version of “Summertime” with Sarah Vaughn singing on it. Heck, they don’t even need to be good lyrics, just a little ditty like “pour some sugar on me” or “we’re up all night to get lucky”. Or “oh, what a feeling! We’re dancing on the ceiling.” Really helps people remember the song. At least, better than saying “you know, the one that goes ‘dododoDOO doDOdoDOO dodoDOOdoo’?”
I can forgive solely because of your cover art. Those two hands, black and white, intertwined and melding; racial harmony surely can be achieved through this music. Also, is that a lady with her butt hanging out on the cover? She’s not even the slightest bit embarrassed while she embraces her topless friend on the beach. That foldout gave me a lot to think about during your nearly 95-minute play length.
But we grew apart. Maybe you didn’t change, but I sure did. For example, I realized that jazz music almost always sucks. Though that time I went to a jazz club and discovered that some cokehead left a rolled up $20 on the toilet, I definitely appreciated the free drinks I got to buy for my friends after I washed my hands furiously. I think it’s time for you to go into a bag and off to Housing Works donation bin, where some other moronic teenager can enjoy you and be warped by your awful music.
Thank you, Bitches Brew. Also, fuck you, Bitches Brew. Or, to put it in terms you can understand…
“Fruhfroberderpberderpberderpshweeeeeedo.”
—David