Old White Dudes With Big Units

by Linx McGillicuddy

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Mr. Linx McGillicuddy brings forth an old dead guy to our contemporary Britney Spears listening asses. Old dead guys usually aren’t very interesting to listen to, being that they're dead and all, but apparently there is such a thing as posterity, so thanks to the big guns for keeping an old dead guy’s name around. Even if it is just to talk about his wang.

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Gil Evans – The Complete Pacific Jazz Recordings (Blue Note Records)

Ever see one of those old guys walking down the street, and they’re just so perfectly put together? Like he might have on some checkered slacks, impeccably pressed but rumpled just so, and a sweet-ass cardigan buttoned to the top over a crisp, collared golf shirt from 1948 that he wore on his third date with Esther Crabapple; and maybe a pimpin’ cane and some ancient fedora that has engraved its circumference perfectly around his peanut-shaped head. And you’re thinking, “Damn, if/when I get over this methamphetamine habit, maybe I’ll live long enough to look that cool.”

Well, lemme tell you young whippersnappers a little something. I’m through waiting for senior citizen status. I’ve already got my checkered pants, and lately I’ve been perfecting an endearing little old-man-shuffle courtesy of a bit of lower back pain (note: never attempt autoerotic asphyxiation on a wobbly chair). And on top of all that, I’m bumpin’ some 1950s-era Gil Evans on my ghetto blaster, givin’ a shout out to all the Esthers, Mildreds and Matildas on my block.

But who in tarnation is Gil Evans, asks the über-trendy yet strange-smelling Duct Tape & Rouge reader? Well, he’s actually a rotten corpse. But before that, it just so happened that he was the best friend of an obscure little trumpeter named Miles Davis. Gil and Miles were pals for life, and collaborated on some groovy little numbers like Birth of the Cool, Porgy and Bess and Sketches of Spain. They made quite a pair, those two rapscallions: Miles the badass cokehead rockstar and Gil the gentle potsmokin’ hippy-before-there-were-hippies. Gil even married a righteous black babe who was half his age. And this was before Viagra! Man, that guy must’ve had a big unit.

So now that you’re impressed, you should know that Blue Note has caught on to my retro revival and has just reissued a nice little combo CD that packages two of Gil’s classic albums from 1958 and 1959. Miles had just kicked heroin, had yet to indulge in a blow habit of Scarface-like proportions, and was probably off chasing white women with his newfound sex drive during these sessions. But this is still some seriously all-star scrum-diddle-eee-umptiousness here, folks, and if you’re a jazz fan you’ll recognize names like Cannonball Adderley, Art Blakey, Steve Lacy and Elvin Jones rockin’ the mic alongside Gil and a whole host of other hardcore homeys.

Now Gil is a mean piano player, but his main thing is arranging. I know, you’re thinking, “Damn, I arrange my living room furniture every night when I can’t get laid and I’m in a naked meth rage, and that ain’t no big deal!” Well, sure, ya got me there. But I’m talking about arranging musical scores and instruments. Our old man Evans takes an overplayed chestnut like, say, Thelonious Monk’s “Straight No Chaser,” and he’ll be like, “KA-POW!!! I got some tuba and French horn all up in this beeeatch!!” Then he’ll take Louis Armstrong’s antique “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” and go PA-SCOOO!!! and all the sudden it’s got some kinda heavenly harp-soundin’ shit playing the melody with a chorus of Siamese triplets playing titanium kazoos and the laser-gun sounds from Aliens going off in the background.

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating just a bit on that last one. Must be the meth. But gosh dangit, this record’s good. And it just so happens that it’s a bourgeois, limited-edition Connoisseurs Series CD. So pick it up now, and in 40 years, when you got your own little Esther Crabapple on the couch, slowly unbuttoning your cardigan (slowly, cuz of the arthritis), and that little blue pill is starting to pitch a tent in your checkered slacks, you’ll thank Gil Evans for the perfect bootyknockin’ soundtrack to get her Depends droppin’ faster than … well, let’s be honest, nothing moves fast at that age. Oldies rule!

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Linx McGillicuddy is afraid to associate with us, so he has created an alias. But because we hate him and wish him ill-will, his real name is John Jacob Jingle Heimer Schmidt, and goddamnit, his name is not our name too.