A BUNCH OF MY WRITERS’ GROUP ARE IN THE BASED BOOK SALE BOOKS AT 99c OR LESS: Because I’ve been ill, at this point I don’t remember which I’ve linked specifically, so I gathered them all in a post at my blog:  The Based Book Sale, Hun Edition.  Just to make sure no one got missed!

OPEN THREAD: Sorry, didn’t publish for some reason.

A TRACK-BY-TRACK GUIDE TO MILES DAVIS’S KIND OF BLUE, THE GREATEST JAZZ ALBUM EVER:

The critical reaction was sometimes baffled by the absence of easily graspable melodies, but it was mostly awe-struck. Benny Green wrote on the album’s liner that “Davis is the most delicately poised musician ever to use the jazz frame…classic severity is the hallmark of Miles’s painful sensitivity, as he devotes his attention to each single note.” Later it floated free from the jazz world to become, as Richard Cooke described it in the Penguin Guide to Jazz, “the hippest easy-listening album of them all”. Not everyone was ecstatic. Some missed the absence of jazz’s wonted driving energy, and Philip Larkin couldn’t stand the “passionless creep” of Miles Davis’s muted trumpet.

As with many classic albums, there was something miraculous about the birth of Kind of Blue. All the stars had to be aligned, and that wasn’t easy in such a volatile art as jazz, where everything depends on the musical chemistry between naturally headstrong individuals.

Well worth a read, but there’s a jarring “layers and layers of fact checkers and editors” moment in this London Telegraph article for even the most cursory of Miles Davis fans. It’s a sort of photographic Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect moment; as author Ivan Hewett notes, “Crucial to the album’s soft-edged, blurry sound was Bill Evans, also no stranger to heroin and booze.” So much so that Evans died in 1980 at age 51 of a “peptic ulcer, cirrhosis, bronchial pneumonia, and untreated hepatitis,” according to Wikipedia.

But the photo above that text is captioned, “Miles Davis (R) and saxophone player Bill Evans (L) performing on stage in Paris, 1982.” There was a second Bill Evans, born in 1958, who played and recorded frequently with Miles in the 1980s. But that’s not him in the photo, which based on Miles’ hairstyle and wrap-around sunglasses, is from the early 1970s. It’s Dave Liebman, who played sax with Miles in 1973.

Related: From me in 2019: The 60th Anniversary of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis’ Masterpiece.

OLD AND BUSTED: Bitchy Resting Face.

The New Hotness Massive Warning Sign for Craziness Ahead:

POWER WASH:

Related: The Price Is Right host Drew Carey lashes out at LA mayor hopeful Spencer Pratt calling him a ‘serial scammer:’

Drew Carey publicly slammed Los Angeles mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt in a social media rant on Friday.

The Price Is Right host, 68, proved he’s no fan, labelling Pratt a ‘serial scammer’ with no ‘moral compass,’ even though the former Hills star has received a surge in donations that places him close to incumbent mayor Karen Bass.

‘Anyone who votes for, or endorses Spencer Prattfall for Mayor of LA needs to get their head out of their a**,’ Carey wrote on Threads.

‘I understand being angry/unsatisfied, but at least get behind someone competent and not some serial scammer without a soul or moral compass.’

‘F*** this guy already,’ he concluded on a testy note.

I’m so old, I can remember Carey appearing in videos for the libertarians at Reason, before finally finding, in 2020, a presidential candidate who was “competent and not some serial scammer without a soul or moral compass:” “In 2016, Drew Carey backed the presidential campaign of libertarian Gary Johnson. This year, the long-time host of ‘The Price is Right’ has thrown his support behind the campaign of Biden, donating $25,000 to the Biden Victory Fund.”

UPDATE:

DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE:

“Then the manifesto dropped,” the tweet continues, “And everything went dead quiet.”

Much more from Stacy McCain: Why Would Two Jew-Hating Teenage Incels Shoot Up a Mosque in San Diego?

GABBARD NOT GOING QUIETLY: Matt Margolis sees a month-worth of weekly revelations from departing Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard.