I met a guy recently who had never heard of Miles Davis. He is a classically-trained violin player in his early 30s, and we were talking about music and I said something about Miles Davis. The name didn't register with him at all. I was surprised, but looking for videos of my favorite Miles Davis tracks to post in this article, I saw a comment by some guy saying he was 43, and had just discovered Miles a few months ago.
Apparently, it's a thing.
Well, that's alright. Nothing is worse than the music snob who looks down his nose at you for not knowing all the lyrics to the song on the limited-edition Japanese B-side of the esoteric punk-rock record the band who recorded it isn't even aware of. "We recorded this?" says the drummer to the smug know-it-all patronizing him in a strange dialect of pidgin hipster for not knowing the words to his own song, while kissing the bottom of his shoes for having come up with it.
"You're so stupid," says the hipster. "How could you not know the lyrics to your own song, which only I have ever heard? What an amazing piece of work it is, you godlike genius I worship you even though you are an idiot," and then his hair implodes, and a constellation known as The Smug Moustache is formed from the flatulent astral bodies released into the sky from the hipster's self-important, all-encompassing knowledge vacuum paradox.
"Whoah," says the drummer from the super-rare Japanese B-side.
"That was trippy."
I bought Birth of the Cool because it's a famous Miles Davis record, I wanted to know what it was, and it has a great title. But I didn't appreciate it at the time. Birth of the Cool doesn't touch albums like In a Silent Way, Sketches of Spain, or Bitches Brew. What's the big deal about this record? I didn't see what was so cool about it. And I bought the CD new, so I was extra-disappointed. I didn't know that the album was groundbreaking because it.... actually, I forget. Looking it up now, I realize I misremember whatever it was I thought I knew about it. But with song titles like "Godchild," "Deception," and "Israel," it's safe to impose senseless modern sensibilities on Birth of the Cool, and presume that Miles Davis was a gay Palestinian pimp synthesizer who worked as a double-synth agent for both Mossad and British jazz intelligence with the Military Intelligence Sextet to undermine the mediocrity and stagnation of the arts while under contract with a Jewish record label in New York.
Who is being deceived, Miles Davis? The pimp? The white man? The rhythm section at MI6?
Palestinian synth players? Black men and cats alike?
Israel?
The lack of lyrics seems to indicate that we can make up our own minds, as well as the minds of those around us. Listen to the master, as he tells us what to think:
The Miles Davis crash course is really more of a 7-course crash, like slamming into a golden wall in slow-motion, with coffee and dessert. It's not a trumpet, or an intersection, or a kiss.
There's no way to just blow through it.
You lost your Spanish key, so what. Look for it on the corner.
But once the crash is over, and you have to round up the procession to march you over to the foot of the balcony, where you proceed to rip your heart out like a public declaration of your feelings for your lover,
Or maybe you're in the balcony, and the Spanish fools have gathered at your feet, and you are singing to them like a lonely maiden through the ancient, cobbled streets
As the workers mop the wine up from the wreckage,
And the feathers go on a rampage,
And the sun has a vintage.
Is it 1945 today?
Or 1594?
What is the Spanish fashion?
Has the trumpet been shot out of the sky?
Will we eat the song for dinner?
Is the music bleeding
Out on our shoes,
Leaving us dying to
Refuse
To listen to our arts,
Like an historical beginner?
