Birth-and death-of the cool.

Lisa Simpson and I have the same favorite album: Birth of the Cool, Miles Davis' iconic 1949 jazz collaboration with Gerry Mulligan and Gil Evans. It is also the title of a wonderful new book by Ted Gioia. How I loved the cool era of James Dean, Jack Kerouac and Chet Baker. It was my antidote to the square world that was listening to Patti Page's "How much is that doggie in the window?" The first hip tip I got when I was 18 at UCLA was about my Chevy convertible. I was told that never put the windows up when the top is down. Attitude was the name of the game if you wanted to be cool. The term only applied to people, not things like today when you see cool apps for your laptop. All my heroes when I was young were grownups like Gordie Howe, Ted Williams, Charlie Parker and yes, Albert Schweitzer, certainly not comic book heroes or kids like Harry Potter or Narnia. One of the coolest things I saw was in a WWII newsreel showing Erwin Rommel wearing sunglasses, the ultimate cool fashion accessory. When I see the troops in Iraq wearing sunglasses it all seems very sinister and they look like the Imperial Stormtroopers out of Star Wars. But the cool era is over even though I can still put on "Miles Ahead", "Kind of Blue", anything by Lester Young and re-read "Catcher in the rye". Now we live in the time of Twitter and titter and "How much is that iPad in the window".

Attention Twits-Big Brother is Watching

I have just read that the Library of Congress is going to digitally archive every single tweet ever tweeted since Twitter began in March 2006. Every silly thing you've ever written is going to be on file forever. There's no Winston Smith to dispose of it down the memory hole. You have been robbed of your privacy and exposed to the lowest common denominator of your thinking. Did I mention that this is forever? A billion tweets in 18 months stored in an infrastructure that never forgets. You are now part of the mental spam that passes for intelligent communication. What a legacy you are leaving. It's an endless record that will haunt you to eternity. As the article states in closing: "George Orwell would freak out if he saw this". Of course he already has. Read "1984" again.

The amazing Bud Powell

I was having lunch at the Cheesecake Factory in Las Vegas when I heard something familiar in the background music. I stopped and listened since this "music" is usually moronic rock or sappy strings. But I knew this piece: "It could happen to you", a piano solo by Bud Powell. Unheard of quality in a restaurant. Once upon a time I was helping to sell background music in London and it was a complete flop. As the poor guy trying to sell it said, "all they want is Knees Up, Knees Up Mother Brown". I once closed up Birdland in NYC at 4 am after sitting through a tremendous evening of Bud Powell playing. I also saw him in Berkeley at an all-star concert. He is the father of modern jazz piano and a member of the quintet that played Massey Hall in Toronto for "The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever". He could swing and improvise like no one before or since and paid the price with mental illness after being beaten by the cops in a drug bust. What is it with cops beating up helpless blacks? I once met a cop in Newport Beach whose name was John Coltrane, but of course he had never heard of the iconic sax man and composer. As for Bud Powell, no less a genius than pianist Bill Evans said, "No one could surpass him".