'MILES' LEGACY AND SPIRIT LOOM LARGER AND LARGER'
The late Miles Davis is in a league of his own when it comes go inspiring an eclectic array of other artists.
This was reinforced to me in 2001, when I spoke to a variety of musicians for a Night&Day feature story about the legendary trumpeter and bandleader.
“We've taken and stolen from him shamelessly, not just musically, but in terms of his attitude of moving things forward,” Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood said at the time. “We listen to Miles' music obsessively.”
Ditto English singer-songwriter David Gray.
“Miles expanded the world of music countless times, and now we take it all for granted,” Gray said.
Closer to home, jazz keyboard great Chick Corea and Pearl Jam drummer Matt Cameron sounded equally enthusiastic.
“In every kind of creative musical endeavor, you want to be fearless,” Cameron said. “And that's what Miles instilled in me – the fact that you can be as fearless as you're able to be.”
“As the years pass,” noted Corea, who rose to fame in Davis' band in the late 1960s, “it seems Miles' legacy and spirit loom larger and larger.”
That legacy will be celebrated Monday at the all-ages Dizzy's, across from the San Diego Convention Center. Between 2 and 8 p.m., three different bands will perform Davis' multifaceted music. The first is The Jazz Ensemble, a 20-piece San Diego big band whose members range in age from 14 to 19 and include tenor sax phenom Chloe Feoranzo, 16.
Next up is ESP, the 16-year-old San Diego band co-led by former Ray Charles Orchestra trumpeter Mitch Manker. The group performs music that spans Davis' career, from his landmark 1949 “Birth of the Cool” album through to some of the final music he made before his death in 1991.
The concert will conclude with trumpet dynamo Gilbert Castellanos and his quartet. At 34, Castellanos is a pillar of the local music scene. His past collaborators range from Dizzy Gillespie, Diana Krall and San Diego's Charles McPherson to Poncho Sanchez, Natalie Cole and rapper D-Knowledge.
Like Manker, he is a learned student of Davis' musical oeuvre and a first-rate interpreter who knows the crucial difference between mimicking a musical legacy and extending it.
THE STELLAR MOMENTS WILL SPARK UP YOUR LIFE
Pioneering riot grrrls don't fade away, they diversify.
That's certainly true in the case of former L7 frontwoman Donita Sparks, who performs Saturday at the Casbah in Middletown with her new band, The Stellar Moments.
Now 45, Sparks led L7 from 1985 to 2000. She now writes The Spin I'm In, a weekly column for the Web site Firedoglake.com, and scores films (most recently the documentary “The Life of Reilly”). She's also the co-founder, with Throwing Muses alum Kristin Hersh, of the Coalition of Artists and Stakeholders. CASH, as the coalition is also known, encourages fans and artists to interact by enabling fans to do their own remixes of songs and download songs for free, and to even buy a $100 share of Sparks' new song “He's Got the Honey.” (In return for their investment, fans will get half of a percentage point of any licensing fees Sparks earns from the use of “Honey” in films, on TV or other mediums.)
“Honey,” incidentally, is a standout song from “Transmiticate,” the debut album by the Sparks-led Stellar Moments, which also features former L7 drummer Demetra “Dee” Plakas. The album, which draws as much from vintage 1970s glam-rock as L7-era grunge, also soars with “Into the Hi Fi” and the tender-but-tough ballad “Creampuff.” But it could benefit from greater variety, vocally and instrumentally (seemingly every other song features interchangeable guitar riffs and mid-tempo rhythms).
Even so, Sparks performs with unmistakable commitment and attitude to spare throughout, sounding mean, lean and full of both vigor and wit. At an age when far too many rock veterans tend to coast on automatic pilot or, worse, lapse into self-parody, that's something worth celebrating.
