I don't think of it as avant garde but it's a fine place to start.

Get high. Put on your headphones. Walk at night in the woods, through the city, or ride a subway. Blast Miles Runs the Voodoo Down. If for any reason you feel inclined to turn it off turn it up instead.

Late period Coltrane is a progression. Some people might feel at home with it right away and jump in. If you don't feel like that first get to know A Love Supreme and African Brass. Late period Coltrane might not seem like it at first but it's very deeply connected to his earlier works. He keeps bending and bending and reorganizing the notes in more and more complicated patterns. Follow the path of My Favorite Things. Take your time about it. Learn the Sound of Music version. Take your time with early versions. Move at your own pace. Just that one song is decades of work. I also suggest going back to Schoenberg's early piano pieces. Take your time listening to how following composers dealt with his 12 tone ideas and how they worked with atonality through both dissonance and ambiguity. Also take note of how previously radical ideas are now mainstream. You're probably already far more connected with the avant garde than you realize.

What preceded Bitches Brew that would make not avant garde?

If you define avant garde as groundbreaking (which is reasonable) I don't have any clear cut examples. It is groundbreaking. I was defining avant garde as less accessible to the typical ear and I get your (probable) point that avant garde means on the vanguard and that applies to Bitches Brew. My gut reaction is that Bitches Brew is too immediately accessible to really be avant garde but I don't mind the correction. Definitions aside I think Bitches Brew is easier chewing than late period Coltrane and makes for a fine jumping off point. The OP mentioned the record so it seems reasonable to say start there. Especially since he expresses a willingness to expand his horizons.

Thanks, very much! You're probably correct that I am kind of connected.

I appreciate the wonderful suggestions (Gin is my strongest form of drugs so that will have to do. LOL.).

Do you find an association between avant garde people and their general personalities. I'm very positive and upbeat and have truly never felt "dark" or depressed. Sure a bit blue--when someone dies, etc--but never depressed or seriously angry. Just an even keeled grounded person.

Maybe my personality is just not AG? :confused:

Intersting.

For me, I don''t know what I don't know, so I'm loving the discussions of my MB Homies!
:beer: Thanks, guys!

Q-MAN!!

I love you!

:love: :laughing:

Drugs are important.