There is a saying among Philosophers, “If you want to understand Kant…read everyone but Kant”. The same can be said of Bitches Brew. If you want to understand Bitches Brew, don’ t listen to it. Of course, what I don’t mean is, “Don’t put Bitches Brew in your CD player”. Nor do I mean, “Throw out Bitches Brew” after your first unrewarding listen.
What I do mean, is that you should treat Bitches Brew like a strange dog. Don’t approach it without introduction and expect it to like you. You might get snubbed or worse yet bitten. Ask a friend to introduce you. Better, you should let the Bitch approach you when its good and ready. Let it get used to your movements. Let it sniff your stereo and your crotch. Put it in your CD collection between “Porgy and Bess” and the “Rutles” and let it get used to your presence and your home.
You can’t force “a like” on Bitches brew. It is far too alive and volatile for that. It is far too metaphysical. Bitches Brew is alive. It expresses no idea that I can fathom. Yet, simply stated, it’s an audio-mirror that will adapt to you. It is a cacophony of orchestrated physics that will not express its purpose until you express your own. Bitches Brew is about nothing, yet reflects all. It won’t give you the simple melody that your mind demands for a quick audio vacation from reality. The Bitch, aptly named, refuses your demands for escape, refuses your immediate mental grope and doesn’t offer the easy yet sublime vacation from reality that Kinda Blue so easily affords.
This of course, takes nothing from the monumental Kinda Blue, which strangled the life out of perfectly one-dimensional jazz youth and capped, in no small way, the modulated free-wheeling experimental jazz beast unleashed by (insert favorite jazz great here). Where Kinda Blue closed the door on Jazz’s established age, Bitches Brew kicked the door open with a wildly enthusiastic leap into middle age like nothing I can express without demeaning it. An artist could scarcely pull off one feat much less the two. To close the door to one movement and than open the door to another,…astounding. It would be as much for Pollack to have been not only himself, but Picasso too; or Groucho Marx to have been himself and Karl as well.
From the start, BB does not commit, but lets you go about your business (recommended reading, writing and/or drinking). It won’t allow you to grab hold of a melody or satisfying solo, but it does build. And if you can put off your immediate dissatisfaction at BB’s refusal to like you, and if you can focus your attention on some other great matter of personal business or pleasure, it will sneak up behind you. And when you expect it least, it will startle you like the pinch of a lover, with its supreme rhythm, unrelenting drive and bottomless passion.
After you notice your foot tapping to the unstoppable rhythm just over the top of your glass of Scotch or well-worn copy of “The Metamorphosis”, and after six or seven comfort-seeking revolutions, the Brew will eventually settle down at your feet and radiate warmth up through your toes. It’s got your attention now. You are now aware of the motion and trajectory and in retrospect the launch sequence. The dog has let you scratch its head, the rocket has left the pad and you can begin to wonder about the future. Having placed you in orbit Bitches Brew will surround you with the absolute sound of alone.
Discordant atmospheric non-jazz jazz extends your perception to the far reaches and yet again demands that you impart to it, rather than it imparts to you. Like Schoepenaur’s hollow book, if you find nothing of yourself reflected in the listening, is it necessarily the music that is empty?
The depth of your thinking will determine the depth of its art. Is it bound or unbound, is BB black and white according to your imagination or is it color? Do the stark borders of it’s sometimes stark presentation enthrall you with possibility or frighten you with the unknown?
Bitches Brew is the audio representation of a Pollack. As if “Reflections of a Big Dipper” has been rendered not by can, brushes and paint, but by keyboards, horn and drum. Bitches Brew is audible Pollack, as audible cacophony is to visual cacophony. A necessary step from one form to another. From birth to death, from start to finish, from organized rhythm to mayhem and back.
Bitches Brew is a dog’s gnashing of teeth and a croc’s toothy love-making. It is reality’s disturbing meshing of ungreased wheels, the Cosmos’ grinding of gears and the satisfyingly organic machining whir of Hegel’s Dialectic.
“If you don’t agree with me than you’re a jerk. And while I may be drunk, tomorrow I’ll be sober and you’ll still be a jerk. ”
…Ambrose
