posted 12-12-2002 06:23 PM              

If you're going to talk about navigation, then yes, it might serve the discussion better to have a starting point. And as far as "cool" is concerned, it does have a beginning in our society. So, in that respect,
I'd like to ask anyone else reading this to contribute their findings to this question...when did the word "cool" appear in a dictionary as a product of pop culture? That answer does lie in a book somewhere.

posted 12-13-2002 12:51 PM              

Cool is important for progress. I hope we never lose it.

posted 12-14-2002 06:41 PM              

Now everybody shut up!

posted 12-22-2002 08:25 AM              

"Let’s reaffirm something here: catchy album title notwithstanding, the music of the Miles Davis Nonet was, is anything but cool. Controlled, lucid, tightly focused, succinct – yes. It’s all these and more. But cool in the sense of being dispassionate or otherwise lacking in the fundamental emotional character one always associates with the best jazz, no! As anyone familiar with the Nonet’s music can attest, it possesses an abundance of focused emotional power all the more effective for being so low-keyed, so apparently subdued in character.

This resulted directly from Davis’ and [Gil] Evans’ desire not only for a lighter-textured and rhythmically subtle music but for one possessing a total coherence of design among all its elements – presentation of its thematic materials and development of their implications through the ordered succession of written and improvised parts in interestingly nuanced arrangements devised by their writers for a specific grouping of players whose capabilities and special qualities were well-known to them. In this they succeeded brilliantly. Among these 12 performances is to be found some of the most arresting, resourceful, richly textured and abidingly creative small-ensemble writing in all of jazz history as well as an abundance of powerful, focused, assured soloing, much of it of classic stature."

posted 12-22-2002 08:33 AM              

"In jazz, as in other musics some things are of their time, some ahead of it, while others simply know no time at all. The music produced by the Miles Davis Nonet, whose entire recorded output is contained in this album, is all of these and more. Not only was it the product of a specific time and place - and the special grouping of musicians involved in its creation - but it was demonstrably ahead of its time, having influenced a number of jazz developments that followed and took their lead from it. Then too, as listening will make immediately apparent, it's timeless as well, as most perfect things are."

It's why something that has the genuine power of "cool" will be "cool" for generations to come.