funk and jazz..

i've been watching "everybody hates chris" a lot. it's a 4-season series inspired by the life of comedian chris rock, and since it covers his childhood up until he ditched school to become a comedian, it was a bit short lived. i'm so crazy about it that i time my 25 minutes of cardio watching an episode every morning. :)

there is a lot of music in this series (and not only black music, one episode starts with peter gabriel's sledgehammer and other starts with yes' owner of a lonely heart) and that led me to a very informal and lite investigation about funk (cause there is a lot of funk music too) and inevitably, i landed on miles davis.

i've had his landmark jazz record from 1958 "kind of blue" which is, unquestionably, a trully masterpiece (right up there with dave brubeck's "time out"): a very spaced out, laid-back album that send the word "cool" into a worldwide tour that has never stopped. this album and this trumpet player are synonyms to what cool is and we're talking about a record that is 50 years old. yes, FIFTY. this was BEFORE the beatles.

i found a very nice anecdote and review mixed into one here, where the author was lucky enough to be invited by sony (owner of columbia) to listen to the master tapes of the album in their purest form. as he said, even if you own the latest remaster, you are still 2 generations away from the original masters and you are listening to a reprocessed digital transfer. i can only begin to imagine what true, pure, honest direct tapes sound like.

anyways, my search also took me to james brown and betty davis (miles davis' wife for a year and the woman responsible for introducing him to psychedelia, hendrix and sly and the family stone). i have yet to hear davis' late 60s output, but i really like "kind of blue". it's a record trully ahead of its time, from it's wide stereo image, it's very unusual (for the 1950s at least) pure-sounding recording and most specially, because even after all the praise it's got in these 50 years, davis' was quoted saying that is was a failure, considering how high he wanted it to be.

so, as you can see the way we learn, we educate ourselves in this 2010 is amazing. i went thru a journey in time from 2009 (everybody hates chris), to 1958 (kind of blue), to 1973 (betty davis' breakthrough self-titled album) and back to 2008 (kind of blue's 50th anniversary remaster).

hope this power is never put to evil.

:)