Listening to Miles...

Miles Davis - an on-going enigma to me: I adore his early works on Columbia and have come to aesthetically shy away from his electric cacophony from "Bitches Brew" forward. Love it intellectually but can't tolerate the chaos and hurt it puts on my ears any more. I am particularly listening now to the interplay between his drummer and bass player to get a deeper sense of how my bass playing fits into this genre. As one wise teacher recently told me, "It is much more about feeling what you play - in the groove - than what you play." (Although, let's be clear: WHAT you play still matters.)

But the groove-thing - playing with rhythm, sound and silence - is totally where its at: as an old-school rock and roll bass player this nuance and finesse thing is starting to be fun to explore. My old heroes - McCartney, Entwistle and Lee Sklar - certainly understood this better than many of their peers. I remember the first time I heard Sklar play on "Sweet Baby James" - so fluid and also tenderly funky - I was awed.

So, for the next year, I'm going to be learning and practicing and figuring out how my old hammer-hand style can fit into the jazz groove. Like my dad said to me, "You're ALWAYS finding something new and creative to explore, aren't you?" (This in reference to the Istanbul trip.) I guess that's just one of the ways I continue to experience the holy - through creativity, imagination and exploration - and it just keeps getting to be more and more fun. Harder, to be sure, but also deeper... and the whole experiment with improvisation is mind-blowing.

So, off we go...