Hey Miles! Watcha’ sellin’?: A Guest Video Vault Post by George Grella Jr. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZrbtKUZFqQ] No disrespect, Miles deserved every dollar he got, and should have been paid a lot more. As I mention in Bitches Brew, Miles was more than offended when Clive Davis started to sign young white rock bands for six figures, he felt his music was better (it was), more important (it was), and that he deserved as much, if not more (it did). But the shameful economics of the music industry is a topic for…
Category: Miles Davis
George Grella on Miles Davis at BookCourt – – and other 33 1/3 events!
As you know from Miles Davis Week on our blog last week, George Grella‘s 33 1/3 on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew is now officially out! George will be doing an event and book signing at BookCourt TONIGHT at 7PM. GET YOURS NOW. I mean, Elvis Costello already got his signed copy. Also don’t forget that George Grella and Bryan Parker will be presenting Bitches Brew and Beat Happening at WORD Bookstore on November 5th! So be sure to come see the talk and hang out with us at the after party at t.b.d.…
Video Vault Episode 83: Miles Davis Week – Miles Ahead
TO CELEBRATE YESTERDAY’S RELEASE OF OUR 110TH 33/13 ON BITCHES BREW, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE FIFTH AND FINAL INSTALLMENT OF MILES DAVIS WEEK BY AUTHOR GEORGE GRELLA JR. ! [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zZXi6UGMs0] It’s not a back-handed criticism to open this review by stating that, as a Miles Davis/jazz lover, I’m fundamentally glad that Miles Ahead, the new movie about Miles Davis that stars (and was directed by) Don Cheadle, was even made. As integral as jazz as is to American culture, it’s also barely a divot on the capitalist/commercial landscape. And jazz just…
Miles Davis Week – Day 4: Miles to Go
TO CELEBRATE TODAY’S RELEASE OF OUR 110TH 33/13 ON BITCHES BREW, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE FOURTH INSTALLMENT OF MILES DAVIS WEEK BY AUTHOR GEORGE GRELLA JR. ! “Miles did Bitches Brew and from Bitches Brew came all those other broths. Mahavishnu, all that shit, that’s broths out of Bitches Brew.” … Mtume As Mtume said, all those who are today considered the iconoclastic Godfather bands of fusion—Mahavishnu Orchetra, Return to Forever, Weather Report, Mwandishi and Headhunters—owe their existence and genre to Bitches Brew. All of the principal founders/visionaries of those bands played on…
Miles Davis Week – Day 3: Do As I Say, Not As I Do
TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF OUR 110TH 33/13 ON BITCHES BREW, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE THIRD INSTALLMENT OF MILES DAVIS WEEK BY AUTHOR GEORGE GRELLA JR. ! Jazz history is the story of musicians and bands and the records they made, and it can be charted as a family tree. Jazz is an oral tradition, and even though it has now been heavily institutionalized (fundamental to the music’s economic survival, but not necessarily an aesthetic benefit), it remains so, and is pretty much the only still-living thing we have in the…
Miles Davis Week – Day 2: The Lost Quintet
TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF OUR 110TH 33/13 ON BITCHES BREW, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE SECOND INSTALLMENT OF MILES DAVIS WEEK BY AUTHOR GEORGE GRELLA JR. ! One of the compelling mysteries about Miles Davis’s music in the late 1960s is how got from here to there, from the formally free, but still idiomatic music of Nefertiti, Miles in the Sky, and Filles de Kilimanjaro, to In a Silent Way, then Bitches Brew. Miles in the Sky and Filles de Kilimanjaro are transitional in that they add soul, funk and rock…
Miles Davis Week – Day 1: Music To Read Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew By?
TO CELEBRATE THE UPCOMING RELEASE OF OUR 110TH 33/13 ON BITCHES BREW, WE’RE PLEASED TO BRING YOU THE VERY FIRST INSTALLMENT OF MILES DAVIS WEEK BY AUTHOR GEORGE GRELLA JR. ! Music to read Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by? Maybe so. 33-1/3 books, who have their own Spotify account, asked me if I wanted to put a playlist together for them as part of Bitches Brew week here at 333SOUND. Of course I said yes, I’m no fool. Then I started to put it together. Countless man hours later … https://open.spotify.com/user/gtra1n/playlist/0zXQ4QVj8NtnhrwHJFCo31 This is actually…
Excerpt: Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr., Coming in October
We are super excited to announce the upcoming release of one of our two October titles, Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr.! Bitches Brew is still one of the most astonishing albums ever made in either jazz or rock. Seeming to fuse the two, it actually does something entirely more revolutionary and open-ended: Blending the most avant-garde aspects of Western music with deep grooves, the album rejects both jazz and rock for an entirely different idea of how music can be made. Check out our Q&A with George…
The 33 1/3 New Author Q&A: George Grella
Today, we bring you a Q&A with George Grella, who will be writing the new 33 1/3 on Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew Tell us a bit about yourself in an extended author biography. I’m a composer, critic, and independent scholar. Those things go together without any particular credentials: being a composer means being a musicologist, which means being a scholar. And thinking about how I want my music to be, what my values are, makes me a critic. Conveniently, I write music criticism, the by-product of being an unemployed composer (a…
14 New 33 1/3 Titles: Coming 2015-2016
LIVE FROM TIMES SQUARE… Bloomsbury is extremely proud to announce fourteen new 33 1/3 volumes…coming to a bookstore (and kindle/iPad) near you in: Spring 2015, Fall 2015, Spring 2016 and Fall 2016. It was extremely difficult to select these titles from a pool of over 400 brilliant proposals so we hope you enjoy! Coming Spring 2015 Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros by Andrew Shartmann Coming Fall 2015 Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead by Buzz Poole Beat Happening’s Beat Happening by Bryan C. Parker Metallica’s Metallica (The Black Album) by David Masciotra Phish’s A Live One by…