Miles Davis 'Round Midnight

Wow I did not think I'd be writing about this record. Which is funny because I noticed it in the pile next to the turntable. Maybe my unconscious swept that connection under the rug. This is just too much of a monster: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, Joe Jones on drums.

You might be thinking, why? You wrote about Sun Ra, and Eric Dolphy. Why is 'Round Midnight, or Miles Davis, unwriteable? It's just a notion. It's like writing about Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, a serious masterpiece of modern art made by a guy who took himself and his work very seriously. Also, a lot of other people have already talked about it and written about it. And I'm not an expert. So what will be added to the conversation?

It's interesting, though, how avant-garde cultural output becomes masterpieces that often later seem so of that era. What I mean is, 'Round Midnight sounds quintessentially fifties. In a good way. The production, the attitude of the players, the sound: it's all so smart people then. The same could be said of The Beats' writing, for instance, who incidentally liked this music, or Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso's cubism. At the time what they were making was so cutting-edge and few people saw it, or heard it, let alone understood it, but now it seems like it's from that moment.

Does that still happen? Will it continue to happen? The way culture is disseminated is so different now. Is Lil' Wayne avant garde? Some would laugh at that. I think Tha Carter III is groundbreaking, and just because a lot of other people dug it too and a whole pack of them sampled the beats immediately doesn't make it less avant garde.