It's About That Time: Miles Davis, On and Off the Record

[ghost of miles]

This is a new book by Richard Cook, being billed as a sort of biography-by-way-of-discography, though it focuses (thankfully, IMO) primarily on the music. Basically an overview of Miles' "landmark" recordings, with enough nuggets of interest & insight to make me feel as if the time spent reading it had been worthwhile (reads pretty quickly, too). One thing that stood out was Cook's lack of reverence for the electric era; I don't mean that he's contemptuous of it at all, and in fact he likes a great deal of it, but (much like Ian McDonald in his great Beatles book, REVOLUTION IN YOUR HEAD) he's not afraid to point out the indulgences & the less-than-successful efforts.

[DanG]

Thanks for the heads-up.

Are there a lot of quotes from Miles, or is this mostly Cook?

[Guy Berger]

Interesting. It got slammed on the Miles list.

Guy

[ghost of miles]

It's mostly Cook. He generally brings Miles' life in only to relate it to the music; there are occasional quotes from the autobiography & other sources. The title's a bit misleading, in fact... it sounds as if it's a compendium of interviews or something.

Edited March 10, 2007 by ghost of miles

[ghost of miles]

Interesting. It got slammed on the Miles list.

Guy

What did they say about it?

[sidewinder]

This is a new book by Richard Cook,

Have had this one for 6 months or so. It's quite a good general overview and especially good if you haven't got too much Milesian literature. No great revelations in it though.

[Spontooneous]

I tried to read it and got bogged down about 90 pages in. It's basically another dude-writes-about-his-record-collection book. No real insight at all.

It's tragic that a major university press was snowed into thinking that this somehow advances jazz scholarship.

[Guy Berger]

Interesting. It got slammed on the Miles list.

Guy

What did they say about it?

I don't remember...

Guy