Compact Jazz's Miles Davis

Rush Limbaugh has died. Surely some of you assume that i am jumping for joy on the inside, but that's simply not true. I adamantly disagree with many of the ideas he expressed, his manipulation of words to render intellectual discussion impossible, and his penchant for celebrity above substance, but he was no less a person. His loved ones no doubt feel the same grief at his passing that i did when my father died. All things must end.

On this subject i can say only that his stance on issues clashed with mine not because our ideas were diametrically opposed, but because he made a great spectacle of obscuring the larger ideals of Liberalism that his ideology was founded upon. America, whether you choose to believe it or not, was founded on the principles of liberty and equality, two fundamentally Liberal ideas. The trick is to always remember that those ideals apply to more than just "people like me." 

And so, may time work its magic for those who knew him, the same as it has for me.

Alright, you guys want to hear the real story of why the Allman Brothers Band broke up?

E: No.

S: Not really.

C: Probably drugs.

Of course it was drugs, but it's more complicated than just growing to hate each other. Like The Band, they were snorting, injecting, swallowing whatever they could find. They all agreed to stop abusing heroin, but they  just doubled down on the cocaine in its place. Gregg stole Duane's cocaine stash, they had a fight, triangle wins. Duane crashed his motorcycle and died.  Which reminds me. Compy, put on that bizarre Miles Davis compilation that travels backward through the 1950s. 

Fast forward to the DEA trying to take down a Georgia mob boss. Turns out ABB's manager is  by far their biggest client, so they arrest him and want Gregg to testify. Gregg didn't want to, but after the mob guy's death threats and his manager saying take the protection and testify against me, he did. Dickey, the now leader of the pack, was all "Gregg's a narc, and i just don't see how we can continue the high level of professionalism our organization is know for with such dissention and disloyalty in our midst. If there weren't so many passed out members of our entourage in the way, i would resort to fisticuffs." They made up and became friends again, by the way.

S: That's it? That's a dumb story.

B: Sandra, of course that's the story. Sure, i left out the many changes of pants in the middle, but those are the facts, Ma'am. Dave Mustaine wasn't wrong when he said he just assumed every manager was a drug dealer. Tracks 5-14 were actually created in Paris while watching the film they accompanied. We're still decades away from Miles Buck Cherrying on that Scratchy Polatchy abomination, this is his own heroin addiction bebop period.

S: Why do you keep focusing on the drugs?

B: Because they cared more about the drugs than their music. What's the punchline of that Bill Hicks joke about all the musicians who made the music that enhanced our lives?  Rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeaal fucking high on drugs. Crap, i guess we have to do the Tool discography at some point. What were we talking about? Oh, yeah, Miles Davis in retrograde. This is great stuff. Herbie Mann flutes all over a couple tracks at the beginning, you remember Herbie the Love Bug, right? Then we get the soundtrack, and last we get to hear him play with Charlie Parker. Miles dropped out of Julliard to play in Charlie's band.

E: Was there supposed to be a moral to this story, Bottle?

B: Nope. Never was, never will be. I can't stop you from learning things along the way, but not because i taught 'em to you. I'm just a couple ear holes and a mouth with an attitude.