PR is 98% of it

I love YouTube. It gives me old Miles Davis interviews with awkward msm wannabe anchors. 

“Don’t tell ‘em nothin, let ‘em guess. … What’s he gonna do next?”

Gumbel, “You like the Mystery”

“They like it, I’m cool.”

Miles with Bryant Gumbel:

I’ve read more books about Miles Davis than anybody else. His Autobiography at least twice, end to end. This Book about Kind of Blue. This Book about his later years. This Book, a biography written from an outsiders perspective. 

His autobiography is my favorite. Not because it was the most insightful, or because it taught me how to play like him, but because it was the most entertaining. His relentless pursuit for the love of music. His seemingly dark underbelly and rage; the opaque nature and sheer humanity that came through in the tenderness of his playing. Once I discovered Miles Davis, I stopped caring about playing music as technical as I could (perhaps, to my detriment), and started thinking more about ‘the sound.’ Timbre’s, moods, and personalities of sounds are what I think about these days. 

The late Roy Cummings told me once about a friend that highlighed every Motherfucker that he writes in his book. The whole book turned out highlighter green. He manages to find a way to use the word as an adjective, noun, and verb.

Miles Davis has meant a lot to me, it’s really neat to see interviews with him.