Man, Al, you beat me to the punch! A nice triple-shot of Bivins prose magic this morning had me whistling with the birds & grinning from ear to ear. Great to have you on board B!

Aw shucks, now I'm just a-cryin' in my coffee. Can there be this much love on/at any other blog? And fellas: thanks for the extra containers of dry food.

Oh, I forgot to tell you, I want mine back. I was just showing it to you.

;>}

Where are my slippers, dammit!?!?

Blivins, Blithering, Bl, Bl. Bloody hell, can't think of anything else beginning with Bl.

Tres kewl. Now we have that shortstop with a little pop in his bat for our annual softball game versust the scribes at BoingBoing.

I'll bring the potato salad. BYOB.

If that’s BYOBivins those BoingBoing cats are shit out of luck.

(We need a cool mascot like their Rosie the Riveter thingee, seeing as Jon is unwilling to serve)

Hey, another metalhead! (Just read your Dysrhythmia review at Dusted.) Welcome. Wish I was around more myself, but I'm neck-deep in my book, plus way too many other assignments. (I KNOW the word "No," but I can't seem to say it to an editor...)

Mama, weer all crazee now!

When we gonna git to see Bivins’ tour-beaten mug up in the About section?

Nat, I'm fond of blunder, blow-up, and bling-bling, all highly relevant to the Bag Posse. Such well wishes, such geekitude; I feel right at home.

Phil, maybe the good Mr. Jones will sponsor a subsection on metal. My current fave is Opeth's "Deliverance." Oh, and tell us about yer book.

"Deliverance" is pretty goddamn great. I wish I'd stumbled onto Opeth before this year. I wrote a piece about them in the Cleveland Scene a few months ago.

The book is on electric Miles. Rather than one more biography (or a rehash of Paul Tingen's book, which I didn't much like), I decided to write it as 13 linked essays dealing with the music from various angles. There are no interviews; it's all critical analysis, history, and half-assed opinion-mongering. Topics include Michael Henderson's bass and why it was the most important element of the sound from 1970 to 1975; a whole chapter on On The Corner (my favorite Miles album); a chapter on the relationships (including the musical, the personal, and pointing out of parallel artistic currents) between Miles, Hendrix, and Sly Stone; and a bunch of other stuff. I plan on spending a significant portion of the book defending the 1980s albums, some of which (We Want Miles and Decoy in particular) are way too often ignored.

Phil, the book sounds great!! Agreed about some of the later albums, by the way (I have a soft spot for "We Want Miles," the first half of it at least). Nice piece on Opeth too. I think you're much more knowledgeable about metal than I am, but dammit I know what I like. By the by, do you live in Cleveland? Some great bands from up that way (esp. Craw and Keelhaul).

No, I live in NJ. I was writing (and still am) for Alternative Press magazine, which is also published out of Cleveland, and my work there was spotted by the Scene editor. So now I write for two Cleveland-based publications, without ever having been there. (I've been to Chicago; that's close enough.)

"On the Corner"?!

Hell, yeah. Best Miles album of the 70s. Totally innovative, ugly on purpose/deliberately disconcerting, fantastic cover art...what's not to love?

Well, I personally thought it was a big disappointment after "Live-Evil," "Live at the Fillmore," and "Black Beauty" all of which I continue to love. To me, "On The Corner" seems like a pretty big dumbing down in search of rock $$ after those.

Anyhow, FWIW, I don't think it's particularly innovative, ugly or disconcerting, and I don't care for the cover art.

BWTHDIK?

"Black Beauty" is an astonishing record. I've been listening to it a lot lately.

I'm totally with you on that one!

ON THE CORNER wouldn’t be my pick either, but I can see how it would appeal to Phil’s metalhead sensibilities- there’s some very grungy grooves on there (Miles did the cover, no?). My money would probably be on AGHARTA, though Seventies Miles as a whole doesn’t gas my jets that much.

The cover's by Corky McCoy, who also did the covers to Water Babies and Big Fun. I'm talking to the publisher about making the cover of my book a knockoff of/nod to the On The Corner cover, including making it that grotesque neon yellow color. If nothing else, it'll stand out on the shelf.

My listening history with Miles (I talk about this in the introduction) goes as follows:

Kind Of Blue
Bitches Brew (hated it on first listen, still don't love it, but respect it more)
Agharta
Dark Magus
On The Corner

And on and on...

The first time I heard Agharta, when I was 16, it totally blew me away. But somehow, I was still able to connect it with the guy who'd made Kind Of Blue. And I think hearing those two records pretty much back to back (because all the albums listed above were purchased in a span of about two months) allowed me to separate Miles from history/chronology/whatever, and hear each album as a distinct chunk of music. Pick whichever ones you like, and don't worry about them as a progression from one to the next. Jazz is way too fixated on history and chronology; CD reissue programs, ironically, help fix that, by making everything exist simultaneously. Go down to Tower Records and pick up some Armstrong from the 20s, or the Art Ensemble's two brand-new discs, or John McLaughlin's Devotion, or whatever else, and none of it has to relate to anything else! I wouldn't have it any other way.

I hear you on the manufactured chronology of music & jazz specifically. So many examples of it being an easily contestable fabrication, yet it’s still the guiding yardstick for so much music criticism. It is fun to trace musicians’ development, but I agree, Miles was particularly adept at making the whole pursuit seem pointless. He played what he wanted, pure & simple, without much regard for what came before or what might come after.

Great idea for your book cover, by the way.

An entire chapter dedicated to ON THE CORNER? Nice. Might we see excerpts published in any magazines or online establishments?

I can't say which of the 70s albums is my favorite, but ON THE CORNER would be the first one to roll of my tongue before listing four or five more and backtracking by saying "I can't choose."

I will look forward to this!