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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: Move, Boplicity. LOW PONTS: Darn That Dream.
Released in 1950 as Miles Davis's first full-length solo LP, Birth Of The Cool is considered a foundational album in the so-called "cool jazz" sound, which means the music on this album relies on a larger group (nine players, including tubas and French horns - not exactly the instruments you associate with jazz now), with more emphasis on sophisticated arrangements, less influence from the blues, and less emphasis on extended solos. If your concept of jazz is based on smoky clubs and John Coltrane going insane for twenty minutes on the sax, cool jazz is not going to be your bag.
It's not really my bag either, and this is never going to be my favorite Miles Davis album. But it's fairly enjoyable nonetheless, and repeated listenings bring out its considerable charms. Besides, it not only has Miles on trumpet, but also Max Roach on drums, the best jazz drummer of his time (and almost certainly one of the top five ever).
The opening tune, "Move," is my favorite on the record. It's got a fast-paced, catchy melody, close to the bebop Miles had played with Charlie Parker, starting off with a lulling crescendo, followed by a dynamic drum break by Roach, before the statement of the main theme. Miles's solo doesn't knock me out, but it'll do, and it's followed by another adequate solo by Lee Konitz on alto sax, before some hot trade-offs between Roach and the whole band. Roach's main genius is to play drum solos that are incredibly tasty and creative without losing even a smidgen of groove.
"Move" also sets the structure for most of the tunes on the record: statement of the theme by the whole band, followed by a solo by Miles and sometimes another cat, then the band playing some different material together before finishing off with the main theme. Most of the melodies are all right, but hardly any are incredibly memorable, usually because they're too complex. (Listen to "Deception" for a good example of this.) "Boplicity" is one of the few others with a melody you can really walk around humming.
The real interest on this album isn't the melodies or the solos, actually, but the arrangements. Gil Evans, an arranger with whom Miles would do some really tremendous work in the late fifties and early sixties, approached writing jazz like a painter: he uses colors and shadings for subtle effects. Check out the sputtering low brass intro to "Godchild," for example.
The album closes on a low note - the vocal tune, "Darn that Dream." Kenny "Pancho" Hagood's rather syrupy treatment of this ballad isn't where I'm at with male jazz vocalists - I like bluesy belters, like Jimmy Rushing of the Count Basie group. If I seem a little tepid on this album, I guess I am. But it's Miles's first record as a leader, and the beginning of his work with Gil Evans, so its historical importance gives it at least an extra half-point.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH PONTS: I'll Remember April, Blue Haze. LOW POINTS: None.
Before forming his first quintet with John Coltrane, Miles recorded a number of albums for the Prestige label with a variety of sidemen. All are at least moderately enjoyable and none (with the staggering exception of Bag's Groove and maybe Walkin') are essential. Blue Haze is a slightly above average and fairly typical example of this body of work.
It's an appropriately titled album, too: the tunes don't stray to far from jazz's roots in blues and popular song, but it overlays all of them with a misty, reflective, almost melancholy veneer. The opening tune, a standard, is a great example of this, with its minor-ish mood. The brush work on drums by Kenny Clarke adds to the somewhat otherworldly quality, as does the quiet, understated piano solo by Horace Silver. Everybody gets in a good jam on this tune, especially Miles, who has some nice up-and-down interplay with Silver towards the end of the first minute or so. The title track is another winner, featuring a very slow build-up introduction, based on a very simple bass-and drums groove, with just a few occasional piano chords before Miles takes over leads the band through a slow and determined blues tune.
There's certainly nothing to dislike about this album; there just isn't all that much to get terribly excited about. One limitation is that, with the exception of "I'll Remember April," where Miles is joined by Dave Schlidkraut on sax, it's all just quarter recordings, and loses the richness of a larger band. The other limitation is that Miles was to go on and do a lot of these tunes with other groups and much better, too: you can't compare the version of "Four" on here with the rollicking snare-punches of the version on Workin', or these versions of "When Lights Are Low" and "Tune-Up" with the medley of those tunes that the quintet plays on Cookin'. But then, is it fair to judge an artist's early creation by the standards of his later work?
Yes, I've decided it is. So I would certainly recommend this record to anybody who liked jazz (there's plenty of swell playing by everybody, including Max Roach, Art Blakey, and Charles Mingus), but there's no need to make it your first Miles purchase.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: Bags' Groove (both takes), pretty much everything else. LOW POINTS: None.
Now this is an essential recording. Miles is at top form, he has a great backing band, all the tunes are solid, there's lots of variety, and the album has a certain aura over it of serious playfulness, almost like the vibe of the first quintet, but darker and bluesier. And, on the two takes of the title track, it features Miles playing with Thelonious Monk, the most unique pianist - maybe the most unique musician - in the history of jazz. Can you go wrong?
The title track is one of the finest jazz tunes in the history of the genre. It's a minor-key blues, which gives it the substance and familiarity of the blues, but with an eerie touch. (Coltrane's "Blue Train" is another good one.) Milt Jackson states the main theme on vibraphone before Miles comes in on top, over a slinky walking bass line. Miles's solo is a great example of his evolving style, relying on melodic experimentation more than chops, and Jackson lays down some tasty licks as well, especially around 5:00 on his solo on the first take, and the whole atmosphere of the tune is mysterious and shrouded.
The great legend about this album, of course, is that Miles, after an early take, told Monk to "lay off" when playing behind Miles. It's at least moderately understandable - Monk didn't just play the chords while another cat was soloing (listen to what he does behind Jackson's solo on both takes) but evolved complex and interesting - and sometimes distracting - accompanying parts. Monk, though, took umbrage at this - very few great jazz musicians, I'm afraid, are known for small egos - and expressed his wounded pride (supposedly) on his solo on the second take. Listen to this solo if you want to hear jazz piano stretched to its limits, with notes and chords that sound wrong (but, on reflection, are oh so right) bouncing violently all over the place. And Miles actually comes in after him to play another solo, as if to remind everybody who's boss, with some nice mutations of the main melody. It's a brilliant piece of music; sadly, though, Miles and Monk never worked together again.
But the rest of the album is no slouch. "Aregin" and "Oleo" are two originals by saxophonist Sonny Rollins. "Aregin" is a fast bebop number with a very catchy melody and fierce soloing by all involved, and Kenny Clarke uses cymbals and toms to give it a tough-sounding introduction. "Oleo" also has a fast, complex, memorable melody, but involves the piano and drums sitting out most of the theme, except for the bridge, so the melody and the solos are done mainly with only bass behind them. This creates a feeling of tremendous space, which is perfect for a soloist like Miles who relies less on fast scales and more on concise melodic phrases.
The last two tunes are, I suppose minor work in comparison to what comes before, but they're great fun nonetheless. "But Not For Me" is a friendly, jovial standard, and "Doxy" is a real slow, grinding, sleazy tune. Rollins and Horace Silver both contribute solos that keep with this mood - Miles, though, plays a more uptempo, beboppy solo, for contrast I suppose, though it doesn't really fit the tune as far as I'm concerned. There's also a bonus track, another take of "But Not For Me," played much more loosey-goosey than before.
While Bags' Groove isn't one of those albums that changed the face of jazz, it's great work nonetheless, and I don't see how anybody could not enjoy every single minute of it. It's also highly accessible, and all the tunes are very different from each other, so it would be a great starting-place for anyone interested on Miles - or in jazz in general.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: Walkin'. LOW POINTS: The second half is a bit of a letdown
Despite its title, this album has no connection to the sequence of four records Miles would release in 1956 with his famous quintet. It is considered a very important document, however, as a seminal early example of the so-called "hard bop" style. Hard bop followed the bop of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, which had established jazz as a small-group affair, built around a piano, bass, and drums rhythm section, and primarily the trumpet and saxophone as soloing instruments, using the simplified form of head-solos-head. Hard bop was an evolution, however, in that it slowed down the tempos, and kept closer contact with blues and gospel music, and also reintroduced the trombone as a soloing instrument (though not so much the clarinet, which had been extremely important in pre-bop jazz).
Given this, the titanic title track of the album is perhaps the best introduction to hard bop. A rock-solid blues with a slow tempo and impeccable groove, and with these crazy piano runs behind the main melody, the solos, by Miles, trombonist J. J. Johnson (my second favorite jazz trombonist, incidentally, behind Curtis Fuller), and by saxophonist Lucky Thompson are all great melodic explorations. The one-note "cheer" right before the return to the head is especially powerful.
The remainder of the record fails to live up to this high standard, but it's all basically OK. You have uptempo tunes ("Blue 'N' Boogie," "Love Me or Leave Me"), a ballad ("You Don't Know what Love is"), and a midtempo number ("Solar"), with a variety of moods, from nervous to tender. The brushwork by Kenny Clarke, on "Solar" and "Love Me or Leave Me" in particular, is quite notable. The main problem with this album is that Thompson only plays sax on the first two tunes, and is replaced by Dave Schildkraut (not an auspicious name for a jazz musician) on the last three. I don't know who Schildkraut is but he's not a particularly inspired player - mainly doing scale-based runs up and down the sax, without the strong sense of melody that Miles, at this stage, was really developing. Still, on the strength of the title track alone - not to mention the high standard set, as usual, by such cats as Clarke, bassist Percy Heath, and pianist Horace Silver - this is definitely, with the exception of Bags' Groove, Miles's best work prior to the first quintet, though perhaps not quite indispensable.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: My Funny Valentine, Blues by Five, When Lights Are Low. LOW POINTS: None.
On May 11 and October 26, 1956, Miles Davis took the first Miles Davis Quintet - Miles himself, John Coltrane, Red Garland, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones - into the studio for two day-long mammoth recording sessions (popular legend incorrectly has it that it was one day). The result was the four-album sequence of Cookin', Relaxin', Workin', and Steamin'. And each and every one of these albums is a bona fide classic that no true jazz lover should be without, and all of them together, if they were Miles's last legacy (that is, if on the way out of the studio in October, he stopped to light a cigarette and was hit by an oncoming taxi, and thus he never recorded Kind of Blue, never founded the second Miles Davis Quintet, and never invented fusion, not that I wish him any harm), would be enough to establish him as one of jazz's great figures; not the Miles we know, but certainly as important as Sonny Rollins or Bill Evans or Benny Goodman. These four albums can be listened to at any time, and they will always bring you pleasure. They all fit together nicely too, almost like one very long album, but at the same time each record has its own unique identity, though it's often hard to put into words just what that identity is. Perhaps the great distinguishing quality of all these albums is their ferocious joyousness. Even when playing a melancholy ballad, the quintet played their hearts out with a fierce aplomb.
I don't know offhand how much influence Miles or any of the other musicians had on the way the tracks were distributed, but if Cookin' was meant to be an introduction to the group, they couldn't have done better. We start off with a fine version of the classic ballad "My Funny Valentine." This is like a warm-up, getting the listener settled in and relaxed and ready for the big event. Not that this is background music. There's real intensity in the minor-y sweeps of Garland's piano when the band goes into double-time.
Then comes "Blues by Five," which introduces the band, in a way. It's a blues, naturally, with only the rhythm section playing on the head, and then Miles, Coltrane, Garland, and Chambers all solo, with Miles then trading fours with Jones. So each player's distinctive style is represented. And what styles they are! Miles's solo is classic Miles; the first chorus features Miles just tossing off a melody good enough to be its own tune, and then he does it again in the next chorus. Coltrane's solo is distinctively Coltrane too: he sounds like he's trying to pack as many notes into each phrase as he can, while still keeping it melodic. Garland and Chambers express their personalities: suave and graceful, nice and basic with just a little edge of humor. Garland then trades off with Jones, and Jones plays some beautiful tom-tom fills. All in all, probably the high point of the album, and a great taster for what's to come while being very satisfying in and of itself.
After that, the band does a reinterpretation of "Airegin," focusing on the band's two star talents, Miles and Trane, both of whom blow out their chops. I don't know whether I like this better than the version on Bags' Groove or not: this one is probably more skilled, but the other is a bit rawer and funkier. With introductions out of the way, the band closes out the album with a medley of two tunes showing the quintet doing what it did best - midtempo hard-bop versions of standards. "Tune-Up" features Miles blowing a very fast scale-based solo; it's not what he does best (though he does it very well), but I assume it was a decision to fit the mood of the piece. But on "When Lights Are Low" (which Miles starts just a second into the wake of "Tune-Up," as if it was a snap decision), Miles is back in form, playing an extended solo which just keeps getting better and better, with some beautiful call-and-response interplay between Miles, Garland, and Coltrane going out of the trumpet solo and into the sax.
Cookin' is a great start to this amazing four-album sequence, and a good introduction, although I think better tunes exist on some other albums by the quintet. It's an album that exemplifies the strengths of the first Miles Davis Quintet, strengths that have nothing to do with innovation but everything to do with deep, soulful, jazz glee.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: If I Were a Bell, Oleo. LOW POINTS: Woody 'N You
The second released of the four great Quintet albums, Relaxin' is probably my least favorite, but by the merest flea's-hair's breadth, and certainly not enough to bring the rating down from the nice solid 9 that all these albums get. And, it starts off with "If I Were a Bell," a standard that Miles played a lot, and the second-best performance on these records. There's something about the texture set up by Philly Joe Jones's brushes and Miles's muted trumpet on the almost childlike melody that leads off the tune, and of course Miles's solo is a little gem, best representing his strengths in this period: melodic phrases that were concise and just off-kilter enough to be memorable. Coltrane's solo is great, too; he keeps making you think he's about to wind it up, then veers off just at the last minute.
The other gem on here is a reworking of "Oleo." This version is definitely much better than the one on Bags' Groove. Red Garland hits a strange little chord right at the start of Miles's solo, and Miles waits and waits to begin playing, so the chord just hangs their in the air as the bass line chugs along. Then Miles plays a little phrase and lets it hang some more. It all adds up to a very spooky experience at first, but Miles builds and builds and soon is playing some overheated lines against the dark, spare background. Garland and Jones also keep hitting this little five-note phrase after each bridge that is irresistable.
The rest of the tunes are all very fine, of course, but don't necessarily represent standout moments for the group. "I Could Write a Book" and "It Could Happen To You" are acceptable midtempo hard-bop, and "You're My Everything" is a ballad. Chambers does some of his best playing on "It Could Happen to You,", in fact: he plays in half-time, but just a little bit on top of the best, so there's a bouncing pulse behind the other players that's quite different from the usual walking bass line. However, I don't have a whole lot else to say about these tunes, which is not to say that they're bad, but I wouldn't add anything to what I've said already about these players.
"Woody 'N You," which ends the album, pleases me not. This Dizzy tune is played fast and everybody sounds like they're intentionally making themselves nervous. Coltrane's solo is particularly disjointed and grating. However, I think that was a deliberate choice, so at least I give Miles and the boys kudos for achieving what they set out to do. Still, I usually skip this last tune. Relaxin' is, however, no less indispensable than any of the other three albums, and "Oleo" and "If I Were a Bell" ensure that I listen to it just as much as any of the others.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
HIGH POINTS: It Never Entered My Mind, Trane's Blues, Ahmad's Blues. LOW POINTS: None
As I said, one of the really beautiful things about these four Miles Davis Quintet albums is the way they're laid out, the track order. With Workin', I believe the idea was to imitate the experience of seeing the Miles Davis quintet live, with side A and side B representing two different sets with distinct moods. Listen as ol' Jason L. spins ye a yarn . . . you'd get to the club around nine or ten, in your black turtleneck and your shades (don't take them off inside. If anybody asks you why you're wearing sunglasses inside, just ask them, 'What's there to see, man?' Dig me?), and slide into a table by the bandstand. No drinks, no dates - too corny. Just your cigarette and your turtleneck and your all-encompassing hipness, and the best jazz small group of the 1950s, taking the stage right now.
The first set is the after-dinner set: jazz that everyone can dig, even if it slyly winks at the real afficionados. It's music for the listeners. Not that it's bad: it's great. The opening ballad, "It Never Entered My Mind," is one of the best ballads Miles ever played on, not for improvisations necessarily, but for the beauty and purity of Miles's tone (Trane sits out), framed by the descending lines of Red Garland's piano. The band then kicks into a crowd-pleaser, the catchy standard "Four," which Philly Joe Jones begins joltingly with rapid-fire sixteenth-notes on the snare. Miles's solo is utterly logical, and Trane's is curiously subdued. Even when Miles and Jones trade fours towards the end, one gets the feeling the band is holding back just a tad. After that, it's "In Your Own Sweet Way," a quiet midtempo tune that isn't strictly a ballad but is given a ballad feel by Jones's use of brushes, Miles's mute, and the tenderness of the melody, and Garland's elegant backdropping. Miles states the main theme alone until the very end, when Coltrane comes in with a long yearning note, and Jones switches to sticks. It's very dramatic.
The set ends with "The Theme," which was Miles's trademark set-ending tune for years. It isn't really a tune, actually; more of an intro to freestyle fooling around, showing the great level of communication between these cats, loose yet tight.
That's the end of the first set: the band goes backstage and all the patrons refresh their drinks. Not you, though. You stay right where you are because you know that the real heavy stuff is about to start. And when they come back, they don't disappoint. This is the late-night, smoky stuff: if the first set was for the audience, the second set is for the band, and they stretch out as much as they want, demonstrating this on the eight-minute "Trane's Blues," a simple twelve-bar tune of Coltrane's devising. Miles's solo is one of the highlights of the record, demonstrating his distinctive talents: he starts off with a great twelve bars of melodic improvisation, then takes a three-note phrase and just works it for a whole chorus, repeating it with one note varied each time. Then it's off again, alternating between these modes for the whole solo. Trane responds with similar devices, adding his own passionate spin. Garland can hardly complete, but he gamely works the changes, and so does Chambers in his bass solo, where the individual notes are all right I suppose, but the rhythmic playing, the swing, is the real interest. A hi-hat fill goes to a four-note alternative melody before returning to the head. What a tune. What a band.
Miles and Trane leave the stage then, and the rhythm section works a trio tune called "Ahmad's Blues." It's incredibly slow, with a great, low-key piano melody and lots of hi-hat flourishes. After a few times through the main theme, you would expect Garland to take over and do a piano solo, right? But you were outfoxed. The piano drops down and Paul Chambers takes out a violin bow and plays a murky, melancholy solo on his bass that way. Then Garland and Jones trade fours - and listen to the drums in this part. Jones keeps up the same swing ding-ding-da-DING-ding on his cymbal, but deviously speeds up what he's playing on his hi-hat with his foot, so it sounds like he's playing two different tempos at once. Certainly the best tune of the evening - and Miles wasn't even there! The full band returns for the uptemp "Half Nelso," which, speaking strictly from a tune, is weaker than its predecessors, but which is livened up with an exciting arrangement and a full-bore, no-holds-barred, climactic drum solo. (Jones gets more 'on' time on this album than you would expect.) And then it's another similar-yet-different rendition of "The Theme" to bring the second set to a close. What a show. And you walk home through the night, sunglasses never leaving your smiling face.
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(reviewed by Jason L. Corner)
High Points: Surrey With The Fringe On Top, Salt Peanuts. LOW POINTS: None
The structure of Workin' relies on contrast between the two sides (united by "The Theme"); Steamin', on the other hand, relies on a neat parallelism - each side goes midtempo; uptempo; ballad. The tunes on the first side are superior in every way.
The album opens with "Surrey with the Fringe on Top," which is my favorite single performance on any of these four albums. And yes, I know that it's a song from the musical Oaklahoma! But the group takes the catchy melody (which sounds almost as if it was tailor-made for Miles, with its quirky repetitions of a single note) and makes it swing beautifully: laid-back, steady, and light as a feather. Miles, Coltrane, and Garland each take solos, and each solo showcases really nicely their differing styles. Just listen to the very beginnings of the solos: Miles doing a simple, weird repetition of one note, Coltrane doing a quick flurry of triplets, Garland doing some graceful and traditional jazz melody-making (and dig the chordal mutations he puts the melody through later on!). The parallel number on Side B, "Diane," is good mellow fun and features some amazing virtuoso playing at the beginning of the trumpet solo (starting at 1:02), but doesn't compare.
If the album starts in a mellow vein, that quickly shifts with the band's maniacal reading of Dizzy Gillespie's bebop classic, "Salt Peanuts," which Miles had played in Charlie Parker's band. Instead of the vocal refrain, where Dizzy would go "Salt peanuts, salt peanuts!", however, Jones "plays" the words on the drums, which means an odd, semi-melodic combination of crashes and bashes. The tune really is all about Jones - some of the other players get short little solo breaks under thirty seconds, but around 2:57, the band just stops and give Jones the floor. I know that not everybody likes extended drum solos, but give this a listen: Jones isn't in league with the likes of Elvin Jones or Tony Williams, admittedly, but he has the gift that separates the excellent drummers from the good ones (though not the gift that separates the great drummers from the excellent drummers, which we'll discuss later) - the ability not just to play a lot of difficult licks, but to tell a story on drums, with a beginning, middle, and end. This tune's opposite number, Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't," again does not compare, but there are plenty of pleasures to be found on it: Monk's writing is always instantly recognizable, and Miles's trumpet and Coltrane's sax play catch-up with each other through the head. It's said that musicians playing with Monk often had difficulty soloing on his bizarre tunes. Miles and Co. manage to walk the fine line here of fitting their solos in with the weirdness of the tune's general mood while still maintaining their own styles, including some nice out-of-character runs on the low keys by Garland, who usually goes for more obvious combinations of chords in his solos.
Both the ballads are good, and both are equally good, though in different ways. "Something I Dreamed Last Night" is more impassioned - it's basically a Miles Davis solo spot, and has some of his most emotional ballad playing. The very last note, which hangs luminously over the proceedings, manages to be both triumphant and sad at the same time. "When I Fall in Love" is far more laid-back, kind of a last-drink-for-the-road-it's-closing-time tune, which is a pleasantly melancholy way to end this album, and this great, great sequence of records.
What's especially interesting to me about these records is that none of the adjectives that people often use to describe Miles's music - dark, brooding, churning, evil - really apply here. (Hear that, fusion fools? No, just kidding, I love the fusion period. A lot.) This points up, for me, what may be the key to Miles's genius, which is not his writing or his playing, but his ability to lead a group. A few years later, Miles would lead his second quintet into totally different territory. You can hear them play a lot of these same tunes on the amazing box set Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel and you would think the group was playing different compositions. That's because Miles had the ability to get the musicians he worked with to play as well as they could in their distinctive styles, and the ability to make the group mesh into the particular sound that would best accommodate those various styles. Hardly anybody will ever say that Red Garland, for example, is actually one of the great piano players, but the preposterously strong dynamic of this group made him seem so. Everybody who doesn't have these four records needs to get them now to learn what jazz is all about.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
Hehe, I'd never expect reviewing a box set. But apparently, I ended up doing just that thing. In this case, this very special box set is the target (victim, perhaps?). Three filled-up discs of Miles' output from the period of late '68 to early '69, and as the name very much states, it's supposed to reflect the sessions before the mysticism of the actual sessions for the album In a Silent Way. This means, though, that while I'm able to review the tracks separately, I'm not able to "rank" them (hence no listed high or low points); as box sets usually carry much material with them, it's impossible for me to do some sort of list of specific moments or tracks. Many times, I've encountered the fact that the quality of these seventeen tracks can change drastically from time to time because of the amount of tracks that sometimes prevents the listener (aka, me) listening to other stuff. Nevertheless, I can safely state that overall, this box set is well worth your money (and time if you wish). It showcases the dissolution of Miles' second quintet into a three-keyboard band with no focus on actual melodies, just vamps that are supposed to function as melodies. All three discs show this progress effectively, and it's impossible for any Miles fan not to enjoy at least a bit of this stuff. Seven of these tracks haven't been released elsewhere, and me being a completist, I needed it. Conclusion: My money was not spent mindlessly.
The first disc contains six tracks all displaying the build-up of Miles' new quintet into a three-keyboard band (Chick, Herbie and Joe Zawinul later to form Weather Report with Wayne Shorter, the saxophonist). The stuff ranges from ethereal stuff ("Two Faced" with its gorgeous shimmering piano lines and Tony's totally incredible drumming) to extremely groovy tunes ("Splash" and "Splashdown" both containing highly entertaining vamps and themes). Some of the stuff here also manages to showcase the drummer's abilities, of all things ("Dual Mr. Anthony Tillmon Williams Process", I can't believe how Tony does what he does), and the earliest of this bunch already prove to be very much rock-like ("Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Frelon Brun", the former being the better with its smoothly textured runthrough based on one single theme, and the latter being hard and fierce like never before). One thing to notice here is how the rhythm section (drums, bass, eventually keys) takes the spotlight more and more through this showcased progress (regarding the fact that it would be the key to all of Miles' stuff later on).
The second disc illuminates the real birth of the three-keyboard band ("Splashdown" was where it all started) and contains some stuff that's not rhythm-based at all ("Ascent" and the master take of "In a Silent Way"; both are incredibly harmonic and beautiful). Yet, it also contains some of the most fiercely-pounding stuff Miles ever did (both takes of "Directions" are music for cannoneers). As you probably already found out, the period the disc covers is also where the sessions of the original In a Silent Way album take place. It's needless to say that much of this stuff is barely recognizable after one's being so used to the original album. "Shhh/Peaceful" and the rehearsal take of "In a Silent Way" are the biggest surprises one will encounter while listening. "It's About That Time" is just as good as it's always been. The last disc showcases two new unreleased tracks; the first one, "The Ghetto Walk" is a 27-minute excursion into Hendrix-influenced blues jazz where everything seems very enigmatic and unsure, and "Early Minor" is a beautiful ambient jazz piece like "Ascent" was. Afterwards, you get the original album as it was released back then.
The progress one notices while listening to the pieces is the key to listening to this stuff: the rhythm section is not just a rhythm section, it's the main element to the groove one has so many possibities to construct. If you want a bit of history with your In A Silent Way, pick this one up. It's not necessarily better (no real masterpieces here, sorry, but hey, there wasn't any real masterpiece stuff on the original album either), but to understand how the original album was done, this box set is an absolute necessity. I refuse to give this any rating, though.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: In a Silent Way/It's About That Time. LOW POINTS: None.
This album marks the beginning of Miles' fusion period (although it would be with the next album that the genre would be created for good). Miles had been led by curiosity to this very transitional point of his career where he was about to revolutionize a whole new kind of music. But it hadn't yet happened; nevertheless, In A Silent Way is a perfect illustration of a so-called "calm before the storm". As the first album of Miles' not concentrating on actual melodies, but on vamps that are supposed to be the fundament of the music on which solos can be played, the sound is indeed very curious and somewhat enigmatic. You never know exactly what's going to happen next and even if you do, it will surprise you. The reason the music comes off this way is because of the mastermind of Teo Macero, Miles' producer for a hell of a time. He'd just begun experimenting with the possibilities of tape-splicing and cutting up music in ways unheard before, and his first "target" was In A Silent Way. And dang, does it show through.
Especially on the first track, "Shhh/Peaceful", that on first listen seems to be a never-ending groove that takes eighteen minutes of your life, but later on reveals itself to be a very rewarding listen. The electric pianos (Herbie, Chick and Joe) swirl around each other in a way that's so unbelievably smooth, and Tony's drumming, though it always stays the same, fits very well into the soundscape; in fact, they almost sound like a train chooglin'. Comparing this to the original "Shhh/Peaceful" (the one they did before the edits), you notice that the melody is completely gone and Teo even repeats the same parts a couple of places (for instance, an almost four-minute trumpet solo at 1:33 and 13:29). But yet, it only contributes to the gloomy atmosphere that surrounds the piece, and it's impossible not to dig it. There's no progress, sure, but the pace it just keeps at for eighteen minutes is downright great. And best of all, the title fits wonderously. The only complaint is that they could have spared a bit of the time and add some more solos instead, but heck, what do I know, it was supposed to be like this from the beginning. Always trust your producer!
The next (and last) track proves to be more of a jazz/rock fusion than "Shhh/Peaceful" was. But it's not until later on in the piece we encounter the rock feel, because the first four minutes consist of an ambient groove ("In a Silent Way"). The story behind this short piece is that Joe brought in a piece sounding very much like a bossa nova, but it didn't sound alright in Miles' ears. What Miles then did was to ask John McLaughlin (the newly-invited guitarist) to play the first one chord unaccompanied onto which the other musicians laid their parts. There's no rhythm, just sonic bliss, and it's gorgeous like hell. However, the peace is cut off abruptly by a cymbal crash that leads us into "It's About That Time". And this is almost a full-frontal rock performance; the groove is there, the solos rock, but what to notice here is the way the guys try to find the right theme all the time. Sometimes, somebody just tries off a whole new theme and others follow him, but then he is cut off by an old theme or something, and this happens all the time, but it's very fascinating; that ten-note theme occuring some minutes in is truly rock-like. Tony keeps the same rim beat for nine minutes non-stop until he decides to blow yer brains out and then delivers a god-damn hard-rock beat that, well, rules. The piece winds down shortly after, though, and as an appropiate finale, Teo duplicated "In a Silent Way" and put it at the end, just to bookend the real thing.
See, looking at what I wrote about this stuff could easily earn it a super-high grade, but there's something about this music that bugs me a bit. The editing removes the actual sincerity of the pieces, and seeing how beautiful they are at their core, that's a real shame. "In a Silent Way" would move me to tears if I didn't know that it would be followed by "It's About That Time", and hearing the original music (bless the box set), I sometimes think that the music could have been even more effective than it turned out to be. That said, there's no denying that the album is one true classic, and only could prove that Miles was really up to something. It was not here the Big Bang re-occurred, but it was just one step away.
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(Rollo's review)
HIGH POINTS: Bitches Brew, Pharaoh's Dance, Spanish Key. LOW POINTS: John McLaughlin (the track, not the guy).
Now this meant change. Even the cover signals change. What do you see on that cover? You'd better tell me. See, after a couple of live dates (after the In A Silent Way sessions), the performances started to sound more and more far-out. The arrangements wasn't not just jazz-like at all, more like gritty rock. There was a scent of new times to come. And with Bitches Brew, Miles finally rolled the dice. As his first ever double album, it is correctly viewed as the birth of fusion; the merging of jazz and rock in one dangerous brew. Miles changed jazz forever, gave it new idea and possibilities and ended up being one of the most revolutionary men ever to have lived. The revolution hadn't been realized at the point of release, but in the later years, Miles wound up being the father to - and believe me here - all kinds of new jazz. This is ninety-five minutes of lush voodoo funk-rock. It's the first jazz album that doesn't sound like jazz at all, and now you'd better not tell me that that is not revolutionary.
I sounded like a dork right there, didn't I? For now I could just slam the music to death, give it one of the most vulnerable grades ever that would look like the shape of a compact disc, and go home and be proud and all that. But you're damn right I won't! This stuff is and will forever be awesome. The small amount of mishits is complimented by the better moments to make up a spectacular experience, and the atmosphere is dark, nocturnal, mercurial, you name it. It's some dark stuff we have here. The instrumentation is very varied, taking more from rock than ever before (even jazz stuff like a bass clarinet sounds very rock-like). Only complaints are the length (and the samey-ness, ugh...Kevin is right) and well, one single track that doesn't satisfy my fusion needs. That track is "John McLaughlin", a four-minute groove that's somewhat blurry and very hard to distinguish from the other grooves here. It's nice, yes, but compared to the other stuff it's downright useless. John was surprised when he found out the track had been named after him, but guess what? I don't give a...
...aw, shit! The other stuff is so great! The first disc is practically the peak of how dark Miles would ever be. It's just two tracks that are edited to the point where everybody would throw up because it would be so unbearable to hear so much different music cut into one piece, but I love them both. The first track, "Pharaoh's Dance" is a Joe Zawinul composition that's the most paralyzing of the two. It's also very hard to review, but the grooves change all the time (edits), and the music breaks down and picks up steam and breaks down and picks up steam and so on and so on. But I know one thing for sure and that is that it never becomes tiresome. It's cool to hear how much music they put together from some amount of improvisations in the studio, and it's nowhere near irritating to follow the groove because there's a god-damn progress and the concept works as always (no melody, just vamps). Only flaw is that it's very paralyzing in its twenty-minute running time, and once you lose the groove, you aren't able to find it again unless you "restart" the track. The other one is "Bitches Brew", a 27-minute composition that's not as edited as the former piece, but even more trippy. Two parts, a rubato section and a groove section, are put together into a brew that's downright genius. The groove is extremely lush and complicated, but yet, it reveals to be quite enlightening since there are so many good ideas put to tape here. It's adventurous to the point of nausea, the musicians try out everything with their instruments and I guarantee that it's not an easy listen. It wasn't for me at first (neither was "Pharaoh's Dance") but eventually it opened up its gates of quality and...duh, I'll stop here before I become too Shakespearesque. Awesome!
The second disc is a bit more "accessible", though. We still have some brooding stuff here, though: "Spanish Key" opens with a straight rock beat and continues to shine on throughout its entire running time. Even though it's rather down-to-earth, it's still more far-out than any of the other pieces because it's not jazz anymore; it's one hundred percent real rock glory. The brass actually sounds like they were destined to play rock (doesn't the saxophone here sound like a guitar?) and the key changes (clarified by an electric piano/bass theme that just pops in and changes it all) are incredibly effective. The music gets a bit tedious later on, though. "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" is just what its title says: a deep heavy voodoo groove that's just a bit worse than all the other stuff here, and to top it all off is "Sanctuary", consisting of two literal explosions, each coming right after a foreboding build-up. Not much else to say here, though. "Feio" (on the new re-release) is a tune driven by a three-note bass motif repeated over and over onto which the guys do their solos and blah blah, I've said enough already. If you listen to all of this in one sitting, you will, without a doubt, turn it off halfway through or something because the music can become so unbearable to your ears (I've encountered many who said that it sounded like a mess, more or less). But once you find the key to the groove, you will praise this stuff forever. Too long, too samey...it doesn't really matter in the long run. Bitches Brew has, over time, become known (to many) as a sort of Sgt. Pepper to fusion. I love it, you should too.
Yup, from Third Eye Blind to Miles Davis. Quite a change. I'll go ahead and confess that I know jack about music theory, so if you want deatiled examinations of the usage of the diminished Am pedal mixolydian or whatnot, look elsewhere. I may make up some fancy music term though. Just to make me feel special. At any rate, if you haven't at least heard of this one, you probably haven't done much looking into the history or rock or of jazz, as this really is a monumental recording, similar to the famous barbershop quarter record of George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddie Roosevelt singing "Songs Of The Great American Statuary." I saw them live once. Quite riveting. This is lame, isn't it? Well, cruddy jokes aside, Miles was really one of the first to try and combine modern jazz music (as opposed to older, more traditional jazz like Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and Count Basie and so-on) with rock rhythms and instrumentation. Instead of just acoustic pianos and brass and saxes and such, we've got electric piano, electric bass, electric guitar, and all sorts of other neat things on top of Miles and his trumpet, as well as some sax and even a bass clarinet. This is the first jazz fusion recording (that I'm aware of, anyways), and for that it does certainly garner some respect from me.
However, I initially couldn't get into the sound. It's almost mind-bogglingly odd at first. Honestly, I thought it sounded like a bunch of people got trashed and starting playing instruments in a studio. There was no predictability, no easily recognizable melody or riffs, and certainly no big, meaty pop hooks. But that has changed some with listening. At first, I really disliked the first two cuts, which together go on for 45 minutes and take up an entire disc. Those are some long compositions, to be sure. Especially when you're convinced that someone had spiked their coffee in a "Grace Slick visits the White House" manner. Thus, I couldn't even sit through them the first time around. So, I switched to the second disc. Then stuff started to click. Maybe there's just something about the first cut on it (Spanish Key) that is a bit more "rock" that grabbed me. At any rate, it did grab me. Viciously, too. It kicked my butt, through my poppier cds out the window, tied me into a chair, and forced me to marvel at it's jazzy glory.
OK, not really. But it DID grab me pretty good. Pretty good. Pretty good, pretty good, pretty good...sorry, with my Texas accent, that phrase just rolls off my tongue and fingertips. Next thing you know, I'll be calling this record "darlin'" or something similar. Well, Bitches Brew is not darlin'. Ashley is, but not this. However, Bitches Brew is certainly fascinating. The individual pieces seem to be almost mood-landscapes, but very dark ones. The electric pianos give a spacey feel to the music, while the bass clarinet REALLY adds some residual creepiness to the mix. The exotic rhythm gives a taste of Africa or the West Indies. John McLaughlin's SUPERB guitar playing certainly is an emotional ingredient to the brew, whether it be smooth, jazzy explorations, or more gutsy and raw rock licks. One very interesting aspect is the presence of both acoustic and electric bass at the same time. That gives a real feel of depth to the music, almost like an ocean trench. Then of course, Miles is "runnin' the voodoo down" on his trumpet (not to be confused with his strumpet, which you can only see on videos stowed away in the very dark recesses of Uncle Bubba's Slick XXX Video Store, with locations in Little Rock, Harlem, and of course, the West Wing). The sound is "night-oriented" inasmuchas it has a very after-dark feel to it. I get images of dark beaches on remote islands when I listen to it.
To be more specific, each song really conjures up a mysterious and majestic world of it's own. Since there are but a few cuts...you notice I've said cuts instead of songs? That's intentional. To me, song implies a definite, recognizable structure. The musical comparison to a stricter poetic set, like a sonnet. Fairly defined rules, but lots of flexibility on some counts, and unlimited creativity within the frame. This music is very much "outside the box." Super-long grooves that have some planning, but are often very improvisational. And moody to boot! So, here are some images that come to mind, both serious and not. Why? Because I'm killing time. On second thought, why break this up cut-by-cut? Heck, I'll just throw words at you. Shoehorn, duck, tan, fortune, kielbasa...oh yeah, these words are supposed to be related to Bitches Brew. OK, Hillary Clinton, Tonya Harding, Lorena Bobbit...ok, I'll be serious this time. Night, beaches, tropics, primal, rhythym, spontaneity, wildness, sinister, unpredictability, encroaching darkness, hot, searing yet cooling....get the picture?
Well folks, this is a biggie. It created a whole new genre by combining two existing ones. It's rock, but it's jazz. It's unique. It also makes me want to look into more stuff like it. However, there is a flaw in all of this unique greatness. IT'S TOO FRIGGIN' LONG! At least for one sitting. At least an hour and a half's worth of fusion on two discs....ay chihuahua! Also, while certainly unique, it's also certainly somewhat samey. Similar rhythms, similar instrumentation, and let's face it, improvisation is by no means limitless. But it can be really far-out.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
Actually, if you want Bitches Brew, I'd rather recommend buying this box set instead of the original release. See, not only does the box set cover much more than the actual sessions for the album, but some of the music is also better than the original stuff. I'm not able to rank this or point out the best tracks (twenty-one tracks in one package is a bit hard to take for most people), but I can tell for sure that it's more needed in a Miles collection than the album is. It covers the period of when Miles used "big bands" in the studio all the time - "big bands" meaning that the bands consisted of ten persons at least - from late '69 to early '70 where a great lot of exotic instrumentation was tried out. Sitars, tamburas and miscellaneous Indian percussion roam and explore the free nature of the tracks that just blow your mind if you ain't prepared. One notices that there's no progress in the chronological order of the tracks, it's just the same grooves and mantras with different people over and over. But "samey" doesn't mean "sucks", does it?
The box set starts off with the original Bitches Brew, so look there for a proper review of those tracks. Afterwards, we're led into several sitar-heavy compositions. Of these, there are some that are relying mainly on grooves ("Great Expectations" and "Corrado", the former incredibly funky, the other incredibly dark and gloomy) or weird sounds (both takes of "The Little Blue Frog", holy mother, that's some weird stuff you're up to hear!). Others are downright dangerous ("Trevere" that is the musical equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb and "Corrado" again...brrr) or even beautiful ("Orange Lady" which is one of the best tracks Miles ever did and "Yaphet" that's a bit loud but still peaceful in some way). One single track of this period concentrates primarily on noodling ("The Big Green Serpent" with its slow musical shifts and a bewilderment that really evokes images of a big green serpent!).
The next period showcases the disappearance of the Indian instrumentation into the "original" one (the one to be found on the original Bitches Brew album). Two tracks focus on twenty-minute-long grooves ("Lonely Fire" with a fantastically climactic build-up and "Guinnevere" - an unrecognizable version of the song by Crosby, Stills & Nash - that's actually quite beautiful and worthwhile for nearly all of its running time). The remaining tracks range from peaceful ("Recollections" with its soothing bassline upon which it reveals itself to be quite reminiscent and "Take It or Leave It" that concentrates on noodling that yet seems so planned) to scary (both versions of "Double Image", the longer one is the better with its dark progressive arrangement, and the shorter is buuuuh-ring). "Feio" is unfocused and has a weak arrangement, but it has idea and is quite effective anyway.
All in all, a super package. About seven of these tracks are not available elsewhere, so you're getting a good deal of extra stuff with this box set. It functions perfectly as a representation of the mystique and idea gunfiring that classified this short period as a time of its own. It's better than Bitches Brew, for sure, and is naturally highly recommended.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Willie Nelson, Directions. LOW POINTS: None.
You can't expect a live date after the Bitches Brew sessions not to be special, for there's a chance of hundred percent that every concert Miles did back then will sound completely different from another concert, even though the guys would play the same stuff every night. Black Beauty was recorded just two months after the final Bitches Brew session, and the live gang only played stuff they were familiar with. However, some of the music may seem totally unrecognizable at first. For instance, "Miles Runs the Voodoo Down" sounds completely different from the original studio version: the beat is way faster, there is really nothing to hold onto, but it manages to rock out even more than before. And perhaps that was just the point; to sound like your average drug-abusing hard rock band that would jam outta its pants every night just to keep the drunk crowds satisfied. But this was really a jazz band, no drugs were taken and every player was in great health. They knew what they were doing on stage and there would never be any mishits, it was jazz-rock at its most meaningful. But that fact doesn't really reflect back on the listener, as the tracks are hard to recognize at first, even for the average Miles addict; the only thing that actually identifies the separate tracks is the track's theme and nothing else. But isn't that everything you need?
The music is very hard to describe since I could easily forget mentioning certain changes here, and believe me, there are changes everywhere. Some things are quite noticeable, though; Chick Corea put a ring modulator on his electric piano that night, thus making it sound like a synthesizer whenever he wanted it to which results in some really really apocalyptic and hard sounds coming out (check the ending of "Directions" and see what I mean). Many of the tracks are very hard-hitting (especially "It's About That Time" that's about three times faster than its studio equivalent and the last half hour of the set from "Bitches Brew" to "Spanish Key", now that's what I'd call heavy jazz!) and even peaceful (the subtle "I Fall in Love Too Easily" functions as an introduction to the agony of "Sanctuary" that sounds much like the studio version). Miles is arranging the order of the tracks with the use of his trumpet and this results in a very organized sound that manages to be so convoluted that one wouldn't see any system in these tunes. But there is. Two tunes prove themselves to be very rewarding in the end ("Directions" is some great, heavy funk, and "Willie Nelson", a track from the Jack Johnson sessions, later to end up on the album itself, proves itself to be very inspired and showcases itself as an example of how much pressure a groove really can take). Chick is really the man here; his key wanking always turns out to be incredibly soothing and refreshing and put onto the groove, the music's sometimes given a whole new meaning.
But this is just a live concert like many others Miles did. The album itself is quite unnecessary unless you want a picture of how Miles did his concerts back then in the first half of the year 1970. That doesn't mean the music is useless, though: really much of this stuff is great and it's doing well as one of the pieces in Miles' jigsaw puzzle of fusion. One major complaint against Columbia, though...why THE HECK did they release this material on two discs when it can easily fit on one? They're just trying to make some dough and are making us pay double the price...the day they release this stuff on one disc, I'll rejoice!
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Right Off. LOW POINTS: None.
Apparently, Miles didn't stay with "fusion" for so long as he here moves completely away from the jazz and plays some straight, clean (yet dirty) rock 'n roll. There's no mercy here, every jazz musician in the studio plays like he was destined to play rock for his entire lifetime, and it was be foolish of me not to state that this is probably Miles at his conceptual peak: as the title states, the album is a tribute to the black heavy-weight champion boxer Jack Johnson of whom Miles was a really big fan. Jack Johnson had it all, women, flashy cars, money, but he was hated by any white man because of his success (as Miles cleverly says in the liner notes, "no black man should have all this"). Miles thought that he could relate to himself when talking about Johnson because he also lived a life on the edge with racism and success fighting each other in terms of relative life priority. When he heard rumours of a documentary movie about Jack Johnson being made, Miles contacted the directors immediately and was ordered to make the soundtrack for the film. Naturally, Miles was wild about this project, and some various sessions short time after the Bitches Brew sessions yielded the music for this album. There's still a nice amount of editing present in these tunes, but it's nowhere near the sky-high amounts of edits that were done on the formerly-mentioned album. As I said before, this stuff is straight rock 'n roll, and Miles was truly inspired when he did this music. Teo's editing is so well-flowing one could wonder if there really were any edits here. The musicians rock out, the solos are amazing, so what is there to complain about?
Unfortunately, some things. See, while I can say that Miles was truly inspired, I can't say that the ideas function as well. These pieces are some twenty-five minutes long, and like a lot of stuff running longer than that length, the music really can get tedious. It's fascinating to listen to the shuffle groove of "Right Off", but I can tell that there's no need for the piece to have a running time like it has. The piece's already explained what needed explanation somewhere around nineteen minutes in, but eight more minutes? I'm not saying the music isn't great because it really is, but after nineteen minutes, the music seems a bit unnecessary. It also happens that the inspiration stumbles upon its own feet, like in "Yesternow" where the music halfway through just fades out and we land in "Shhh/Peaceful". I mean, come on, isn't that a bit of a put-on? The twelve-minute introduction jam in "Yesternow" can also be very boring at times (it's just a bassline repeated over and over and the guys solo over it) and regarding the fact that it takes eleven minutes for Billy Cobham to establish a good drumming pattern and suddenly it just fades out (you know the rest)...ugh. You know, it could have been better, but that's not to say "Yesternow" isn't good, for it really is. Heck, that intro thing is actually very nice when you're up for it, and the stuff coming after "Shhh/Peaceful" is downright genius; it's a tune originally dubbed "Willie Nelson" that was recorded a month or so before the actual Jack Johnson sessions, but yet, it fits perfectly into the place. The groove is gritty and funky, and the stuff never becomes unbearable because it's all very focused. The slow ending is really anticlimactic, though.
And then there's "Right Off", a piece built on the shuffle drumming pattern of Billy Cobham. John does some fantastic stuff with his guitar including some hot licks that Prince would die for, Miles adds one of his finest solos ever to the brew, Herbie delivers two of the funkiest organ solos ever (the first one culminating in some wild organ chords), Steve Grossman, Miles' saxophonist at that time, does some fast stuff that's not really outstanding, but still very fitting, and Michael Henderson keeps the pace very nicely with his bass. Miles once said that he wanted the track to evoke pictures of a boxer's moves in one's imagination, and I can certainly say he succeeded at that (don't the drums remind you of some random boxer jumping from side to side and doesn't Herb's organ slashes remind you of some punches right in your face?). Don't mind the fact it took a good amount of takes to complete the piece (they only needed four in the end, though), just enjoy it as it is; it's supposed to be that way, and it adds considerably much to my overall liking of this album. Like the two precedent releases, Jack Johnson is a classic, but not as revolutionary as, say, In A Silent Way, and I'll tell you why: no jazz musician ever played like this before or after the release of this rebellious attack upon the traditional jazz-loving fellows. But hey, that only adds to the album's uniqueness, and there's no reason any fusion or jazz-rock lover should not own this.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
It's a bit hard for me to recommend this box set that contains five discs filled to the brim with a lot of great stuff. For though, as I say, the stuff is great, the structure of the box set can become extremely tedious. For example, the first disc opens with six takes of the same tune ("Willie Nelson") totalling fifty minutes of music already. Don't you think it would become really tiresome to listen to the same tune over and over, just played in a different way each time, for almost an hour? It's nauseating already. And unfortunately, that's what happens a lot of the time in this box set. Many of the tracks are covered by at least two takes, and who wants to listen to practically the same tune twice? Yeah, I know I'm sort of repeating myself, but it's a fact that's anything but trivial, and you would understand me if you were in my shoes. The music's great, but that structure just sucks ass. And I know the guys just want to let us know which takes were used to complete the masters of each tune, but uhhh, think twice next time. This stuff could easily fit on four discs if the crew at Columbia had been smart enough to cut it down a little.
But enough complaining. As I said, the music rules, and my opinion about it will most likely never change. The box set covers another transitional period for Miles (only realized when compared to stuff not in this package), and even if it only lasts for four months, the music here reveals a great lot. The first disc showcases the earliest rendition of Miles' rock-oriented sound (represented by the hard funk of "Willie Nelson" that has a groove worth gold, the sentimental funk-rocker "Johnny Bratton" that just floors me all the time, and the short "Archie Moore" that's essentially a blues work-out driven by John McLaughlin's guitar). The second disc then dives deeper into the experimentalism (the five takes of "Go Ahead John" reveal something quite mysterious in its use of complex polyrhythms and chords; a pleasure to hear) and the funk ("Duran" is a heavy, fruity and funky blues and "Sugar Ray", though a bit lame, is led through several cool solo phases by John's hot guitar licks). Finally, the third disc gives us takes of the stuff from Jack Johnson (quite nice to listen to what was not used on the album, in fact) and "Honky Tonk", a fine blues shuffle as it is, brings the keyboard virtuoso Keith Jarrett into the group.
The fourth disc is perhaps the most diverse of the lot. We have the rubato tunes later used for Live-Evil ("Nem Um Talvez", "Selim" and "Little Church" all sound rather samey, but they're all beautiful in their very own way), a lush funker ("Ali", that one's pretty heavy), a speedy house-rocker (the fierceness of "Little High People" is very...heh, fierce), but the true highlight here - and the best track the box set can offer - is "Konda" that is a piece not driven by anything; there's no bass, no saxes, just Miles and a quartet, yet the effect is undescribable and profound like nothing else. The fifth and last disc does not only contain the original album as it was released back then in 1971, it also has the two-part "The Mask"; the first is the heaviest piece of the whole box set (that should say enough) and the latter is chillin', calm and cool. In fact, everything in this package is cool, it's just that god-damn previously-mentioned flaw that makes it hard to recommend. Buy the original album first, then go for this stuff if you feel you're ready for it. I'm not holding you back, but I'd rather warn you than not. Gee, sometimes the Columbia crew is a bunch of sheep!
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: What I Say, Sivad, Nem Um Talvez. LOW POINTS: Gemini/Double Image.
This can be seen as Miles taking yet another step away from his groundbreaking early fusion days. Some time after the sessions that yielded the stuff for Jack Johnson, Miles realized that he'd done what he could do in the studio and formed an extremely powerful live group that without a doubt was the hardest-working band in the jazz business. This particular group had such an overwhelming and great sound live that Miles thought that if this group was brought into the studio it wouldn't sound alright. Instead, Miles wanted every single concert recorded, and the tapes for one particular concert at the Cellar Door in Washington D.C. ended up being edited heavily and finally released in this fantastic package. Now, perhaps the splicing of tapes and so on and so on may mean a lot to the actual meaning of the music, but, to be frank, what Teo did here was not only fantastic, it was also the most righteous thing to do. The music wasn't just music, for with Teo's hands it suddenly became art. And that's what fusion is, right? Art-jazz? Not a bad idea.
So, Live-Evil contains almost an hour and a half of heavily edited live hard-rock jazz. And all of it rocks. It shows how much endurance and enthusiasm a band could bear to possess, and I bet that the energy of this particular band was unmatched back then. Everybody in this band would perform like this for one hour straight twice a day, and imagining how much these guys could rock the house is a thrill in itself. On this date, it was the first time John McLaughlin ever played with the group, but nobody can ever tell that it was his first day. The album starts off with "Sivad" which is a hardcore rocking funk jam slowly transforming into a slow terrifying blues that sounds like some cockroach doing summer gymnastics at your grill party. The solos are tight, the polyrhythms rock harder than boulders, but man, is it creepy! Even harder, though, is "What I Say" which is the most astonishing track of all on the album. I seriously think it's impossible to rock that hard for a jazz band. Take Jack's drumming, for instance. Fifteen minutes of straight, but complicated polyrhythms in your face and then a five-minute drum solo that doesn't suck?! How? There's so much else, though. Keith's keys are smokin', Michael's bass is whompin', John rocks the roof off, there just ain't a thing this track hasn't got.
"Funky Tonk" on the other disc manages to be just as hard as "What I Say", but not as interesting. It starts off with some incredibly tight rocking soloing, after which it doesn't quite know where to go for quite some time. It results in a total sound chaos about eleven minutes in (Airto's even screaming, what more proof do you need), and the guys finally find a groove that happens to be deadly slow and mesmerizing. The music dissolves and Keith's in for a solo perfomance on electric piano where no second is wasted at all and his genius is proved (he can hit any note and it will always sound great). His solo then culminates in the ultra-funky "Inamorata and Narration by Conrad Roberts" that happens to be a showcase for how ultimately cool hard rock can sound when given the right ingredients. Somewhere around ten minutes in, this neat little jig is formed and over the next minutes transforms into...proto-punk. Yeah, you heard. Go listen yourself. Any of this live stuff is worth gold. Or maybe a pizza trophy!
But that was just Live, we still need some Evil to take care of. And that Evil is represented by four studio tracks recorded during the Jack Johnson and late Bitches Brew sessions, where only "Gemini/Double Image" is rather bad. It's just some guitar slashing onto some hardly halfway-finished drum-bass groove and the track doesn't really go anywhere. That said, the track is not unlistenable per se. The rest of the bunch, "Selim", "Nem Um Talvez" and "Little Church" range from decent to great; particularly "Nem Um Talvez" is some really relaxing stuff and so is "Selim" (over time, I found out that these two are the same track, the former is just repeated twice or something). "Little Church" is marred by some provocative whistling, but other than that, I see no actual reason to dismiss the track. All in all, Live-Evil is the best album Miles ever released and arguably the best live fusion album ever. There's hardly ever been a better example of how hard jazz could be, and not to forget that it's jazz-rock at its core: no gimmicks, just that rough sound that impresses like nothing else.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Black Satin. LOW POINTS: None.
Approach this record and the following ones (Big Fun excepted) with care; from now on, it becomes way harder to get into the music. Now, just as you hit "play", a guitar is slammed into your face. And that's the sound of On The Corner, a fifty-five-minute mess that eventually should become the fundament for Miles' later live performances. Many were offended back then at the time of release and heard this as a huge "f*ck you" because they didn't really understand what Miles was up to - only the younger, hip audiences could dig this. Over time, the album has become some sort of cult element, said to be the precursor to hip-hop, jungle, trance and so on and so on, and while I sort of agree with the statements used to describe the album's importance, there's no way I will ever downright love this music. I like groovy stuff, but this is a little bit too much. Miles arranged these grooves incredibly well, and the playing is practically flawless, but there's too much going on at the same time. If you try to sit down and concentrate on the music, you'll either fall asleep or get a headache. For best effect, this music needs to function as background or working music - though I can't imagine anyone doing the dishes to the sounds of "Black Satin" or something, but that's another story...
But no matter what, I can't deny this stuff is good. The mess of the four-part "On the Corner" can really get on your nerves, but that's not to say the music hasn't got structure. There's something going on all the time, but it isn't really distracting: it's just the very same groove going on for twenty minutes. But keep in mind that this really is a percussion album; if you can't get into the drumming here, you will never get a grip of what's going on. That said, "On the Corner" can really be powerful if you also concentrate on John's hot guitar licking; now there's some great playing. The rest of the crew's stuff is kinda blurry, though; you won't notice the solos, and even if you notice them, you won't be able to tell which instrument is which. That's not a problem in "Black Satin", though, as the sound is very focused; it's just Miles that solos, but if you can't notice that, you can surely notice the great use of percussion in that track. Holy crap, those tablas are used for great effect and that drumming pattern is certainly no slouch either! Being five minutes long, there's no way you can really complain about the track...you'll just dig the groove.
Then "One and One" enters the scene, but it's really just a continuation of the stuff found in "Black Satin". This is also where the music starts to get really worn-out as the saxophone here is very distracting and doesn't fit well into its surroundings. It's not bad per se, but it's not working as tightly as it should. Fortunately, "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X" makes up for the flaws of the precedent track of agony, as it continues the groove of "Black Satin" in a good way. The melody has disappeared, leaving space for the groove to develop (score!), and it slowly becomes a very mystical track. About thirteen minutes in, some of the stuff completely cuts off (score!), and later on, we're just left with percussion where the instruments just fade in and out to signal that there's still some melody left (hat trick!). Everything drowns in tablas afterwards (SCORE!). All things considered, On The Corner is not an easy album to get into, and the grooves are likewise; even I can't get fully into them. But there's an actual concept for this stuff, the music certainly has idea, and it's hard to disagree with its importance. On The Corner remains hit or miss.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Orange Lady, Lonely Fire, Ife. LOW POINTS: None.
Miles spent a lot of time after On The Corner sessions touring, and to satisfy the crowd's needs for a new studio album by the famous trumpetist, he and Teo assembled this album that consists of outtakes entirely, since Miles didn't have enough new studio material for an album. Therefore, some tracks were picked out among the heaps of rejected tracks that lay in the vaults; two from the Bitches Brew sessions, one from the Jack Johnson ones and another one from the On The Corner sessions. The material is of course, because of this, pretty diverse, but the separate pieces still seem to share several qualities: they are all rather mysterious and schizophrenic and probe their musical differences quite nicely. That said, the album is still a bit long (almost a hundred minutes) and with the addition of four bonus tracks taken from the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, the length of the album becomes unbelievably large (the tracks last for forty minutes, go figure). If you're prepared, though, you can easily digest all of it (I've listened to the entire album at once before, it's not that hard).
The first disc starts off with "Great Expectations" which is a groove built on a complex rhythm and one single theme upon which everybody naturally solos. The difference here lies in the addition of sitars and Indian percussion, though, that give the music a very exotic and paralyzing, almost hypnotizing feel. Miles at his trippiest, to be sure. The music continues whompin' like this for fourteen minutes after which it dissolves and "Orange Lady" begins (it's still "Great Expectations" on the re-release). The track may not seem so impressive, but once it hits you, it really hits you. It's perhaps the most beautiful fusion track Miles has ever recorded (even more gorgeous than "In a Silent Way"; both are written by Joe Zawinul), swirling around an incredibly evocative and powerful brass theme that sends your speakers to Mars. It's here the sitars really are given the spotlights, and once the groove (finally) begins, the music takes off into another dimension and just dazzles around you with a sadness that at the same time sounds so hopeful; I've never heard anything like it. After the piece ends, the introductory organ swirls of "Ife" greet you immediately. The track is really diverse, starting off with a bass-driven vamp that manages to go everywhere possible in its running time. It's really hard to describe the track itself, but it's certainly one of the better ones here, and had they only replaced this with, say, "On the Corner", On The Corner would get something like an eight. So there you go!
The second disc starts off with "Go Ahead John" that was taken from the Jack Johnson sessions and is a full-frontal house rocker! The main attraction here (for me) is actually not the music, but the production. The way the drums shifts speakers constantly is crazy! The music goes through a couple of distinct rocking phases, but the production never changes, and the possibly most memorable part of the whole twenty-eight-minute tune is about seven minutes in when John is given the solo spot. Now, without the production his guitar solo would sound perfectly normal, but here it sounds like an army of naval officers chasing mice with chain saws! I'm not kidding! But never mind, good track. The original album then ends with "Lonely Fire" that is one long bloody climax. The way it just builds up from the pure nothing to some heavy funk during its running time is downright fascinating, and the Indian instrumentation is again used for great effect; doesn't the slow build-up actually evoke pictures of a small fire spreading across an empty landscape? It does for me, and it almost seizes "Orange Lady" in terms of quality. And of course, then there's the bonus tracks. "Recollections" is a really nostalgic peaceful and tune that requires quite an amount of patience but turns out to be worth the time; "Trevere" is a literally explosive track which freaks so out and breaks down a hell of a lot; "The Little Blue Frog" is very eerie but contains some very gorgeous moments that make the tune worthwhile and "Yaphet" is a bit noisy but yet peaceful in approach, and as it picks up steam it suddenly becomes a fast, confusing rocker that disappears and reappears (in terms of groove) all the time.
As tacked on as the extra tracks may seem, I couldn't imagine Big Fun without them. And though it really has the feel of a compilation's, there's no doubt that it's a must-own for any fusion lover since the percentage of good tunes is better than most would think (regarding the length of this thing). However, I fail to see Big Fun as anything but a simple collection of outtakes, and that makes it lose quite a bit of its charm.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: None. LOW POINTS: None.
This is what I hoped not to happen. You see, I mentioned in my review of Big Fun that Miles toured a whole lot after the On The Corner sessions, and it was only natural that the live music would be heavily inspired by the output from those sessions. The music wouldn't concentrate on solos but on pure grooves and Miles wrote a good deal of new tracks only to be played live with tons of energy so the audience would be blown away right away. But Miles obviously went a bit nuts over time (understandable with all the drugs he did, though), as he fired all his other keyboard players and became the only one in the band (he would play an organ). Also, the stuff eventually would become filled to the brim with rhythm guitars, solo guitars, you-name-it guitars, and this live album is meant to be an image of how hard they worked every night. Unfortunately...well, I can say that I kinda like the album because of the grooves and the stuff the guys actually manage to do on stage, but there are indeed problems; problems that can become so overtly irritating that I wonder why they even released the stuff in the first place.
Remember what I said about On The Corner? I said that it was an album where you mainly should concentrate on the percussion. It wasn't wrong to concentrate on the eventual solos, but it would be easier for you to concentrate on the percussion because it's the thing that shines through all the time. The case of this album is entirely different, though: here, it's impossible to concentrate on anything but the percussion. And why? Well, because the other stuff is some filthy shit that shouldn't belong anywhere because it makes everything incredibly messy. Miles used three guitarists this night, and it shows: what they play is good, for sure, but they never seem to find each other on stage. Miles is no big deal himself, and his organ wanking is absolutely useless, and the two saxophonists here don't do jack for me at all; really, the brass sounds like two braindead elephants wrestling. Michael's bass becomes almost entirely unnoticeable (only in the beginning of "Wili", he seems to be useful), what is this crap?! Therefore, the only good stuff that can be associated with this stuff is the percussionists. Al Foster (drums) and Mtume (percussion and a god-damn drum machine!) keep my lazy buttocks moving all the time and they're arguably the only ones that make this concert worth a listen. I admire them, really...what they do is astounding!
Well, of course, I shouldn't throw useless hatred at all of the stuff. Some tunes here ("Wili" and the first part of "Nne") are actually quite good overall (at points, even very good; "Wili" is a nifty funk-rocker and that "Nne" thing is certainly not bad though it could've been better), but there's not much else to say about the other stuff bar what Mark Prindle said about it ("just polyrhythms with crap piled on top"). Boring, that's what Dark Magus is. It has no purpose and no direction. Al Foster and Mtume pull the rating upward, and so do the previously-mentioned tunes, but still, that only makes Dark Magus a decent, unimpressive live album.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Maiysha, He Loved Him Madly, Red China Blues, Rated X. LOW POINTS: Calypso Frelimo, Mtume, Billy Preston.
The last studio album before Miles' retirement in late '75, Get Up With It has the same purpose as Big Fun released the precedent year, but turns out to be rather uneven when compared to that one. We all know Miles changed direction rather frequently in his first fusion years until On The Corner where he finally found his niche and starting doing stuff that way. And regarding the quality of each short period and the fact that Get Up With It takes something from every camp, we're up for some very mixed results. There are definitely great moments here, but there are definitely bad ones, too. Also, the length of this thing is something highly unusual; it's a double album, yet it manages to be over two hours overall! Miles simply used up all the possible space on the LP's back then (the second LP was sixty-four minutes long, isn't that worth an entry in Guinness'?). But some other stuff needs mentioning. While it is possible to certify which genre any given fusion Miles record is belonging to (rock, jazz, funk, so on), this record can't be classified. There's no way I can tell which type of music this is because it sounds like nothing else. That was probably what frightened the jazzers so much at the time of release as it seemed so ahead of its time. Finally, there were some great conflicts going on not only around Miles, but also inside Miles. The musicians didn't like each other very much and even though Teo produced and edited the stuff under Miles' semi-direction, the guys just jammed and didn't care how it sounded. But Miles had too many troubles inside to take care of; his hip hurt bad constantly, he'd lost his wife to some obscure guitarist (I believe his name was Jimmy Hendix or something like that), Duke Ellington, his biggest idol, was dead, failed record sales...it was bad times for him.
Which was why he chose to retire just after the release of this album which is quite hit or miss, even more so than On The Corner. It contains two thirty-two-minute sidelong marathons that require constant concentration to obtain full effect - either good or bad. The first (and best) of these, "He Loved Him Madly", is a tribute to Duke Ellington whom Miles really loved madly. It's a very unusual track for Miles in all its silence and peacefulness, but reveals itself to be a very mournful and hopeless, but worthwhile requiem for Duke. There's nothing specific to concentrate on, although the flute and guitar solos in there are really great, and the overall sound reminds me of "In a Silent Way", which definitely not is a bad thing. However, "Calypso Frelimo", the other marathon piece, turns out to be incredibly boring. I have no problem against the pseudo-samba groove going on, and certainly nothing against the apocalyptic, slow middle section, but I certainly do have something against the way the piece just goes on and on. The music's digestible, but please, don't let me sit through the same stuff for over half an hour. That's almost torture. Same can be said about the two concluding pieces "Mtume" and "Billy Preston" that don't deserve their running theme at all (both run for over ten minutes) and have almost no distinctly excellent or memorable passages.
However, the other stuff is great. "Red China Blues" is downright hilarious because of its straightness; it's som' of 'at heavy country blu's stuff yer'll be playin' while diggin' up th'olde Texas highway! It even has a harmonica in there! Who'd expect that? It's functioning extremely well as a breather among all this otherwise deadly serious stuff. "Rated X", though, is anything but straight. It's the first drum 'n bass tune ever, with its armies of fast, banging drums and dissonant and spooky organ blasts creeping down your neck. Teo even edits out the band at points to bring Miles' organ to the forefront which guarantees that organ will haunt you in your dreams; gawd, it's awesome. Then there's "Honky Tonk" which is a decent blues piece (Miles' trumpet is not wah-wah'd, thank the lord) from the Jack Johnson sessions; I'd rather recommend the live version to be found on Live-Evil, though ("Sivad"), but that's not to say this original studio version isn't cool. Even better, though, is "Maiysha" that's a two-part soothing Latin rocker that makes my day completely. The main melody of the first part is fascinating to follow and every instrument only adds to the quality of the track which in itself is really blissful and relaxing (not your body, but your soul), heck, it's even happy which is very unusual for this kind of Miles in general. Well, happy until Pete Cosey enters with his guitar and transforms the piece into a spooky blues-rocker that still manages to kick butt with its manic guitar soloing (thanks, Petey!).
Come to think of it, Miles really deserved a break, no matter how long it would turn out to be. Get Up With It is a quite prolific ending statement to a long career that, no matter how useless it would seem at points, was worthwhile and necessary in the long run. It's not the best Miles money can buy (even though it's the best one of his "funk" period), it's very uneven and inconsistent, and it's certainly not a good way to start off your fusion Miles collection, but there's no doubt it's very good, and it doesn't deserve the criticism it received when it was released.
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: Maiysha. LOW POINTS: Prelude.
Oh, wait! I forgot these two live albums! Don't go and think this stuff sounds like Dark Magus, because it doesn't! This stuff's actually quite good, even though it's very overrated (any late live Miles album is). This was released as a sort of postlude to Miles' fusion days some time after he retired (along with Pangaea), though recorded before the release of Get Up With It, and it's a bit different from the stuff done before that album. Here, you actually have to concentrate on anything but percussion (it's not as interesting as on Dark Magus), and the experience becomes quite rewarding in the end. The guitar playing is brought to the forefront to great effect (although I admit that sound can become really grating on your ears), but the real star here is Sonny with that gorgeous flute that's always delightful when it's given solo space. There are no downright bad moments here, but the music can't help being a bit too far-out and will become damn tedious if you aren't prepared for the load of funk assaults the guys are going to charge upon you. For instance, "Prelude" and the entireness of the second disc suffer under these circumstances, but heck, the stuff's not bad!
This is heavy funk at its core, to be sure. "Prelude", like I said, may be really tiresome with its thirty-two minutes, but that's not disagreeing that the guys have an awesome groove going on! It has funky wah-wah guitars, Hendrixian lead guitars, nifty percussion, anything a funk groove needs. And this package includes "Maiysha" too! Woohoo! It's even calmer than its studio equivalent, and the guitar solos here are freakin' great! Sonny's flute is what does the trick, though, since it makes the piece turn incredibly beautiful even if it wasn't that already. And the second part manages to rock even harder than it did in the studio! Whoa, great stuff. The second disc, though, requires a pair of tolerant ears (time, people, you need to learn how to make the music deserve its running time). The music's still great, there's almost nothing musically to complain about, they do "Right Off" and the most beautiful "Ife" yet, dang, how I wish the stuff would be shorter! The music certainly has its moments (if you're willing to wait patiently for them to arrive), but...ugh. Well, at least it's no Dark Magus. All in all, Agharta remains a very fine live document (arguably the best one of the "funk" period); though it's something of a drag, it's good if you want a bit more funk with your Miles than usual. It's like ordering a burrito with more meat, damnit!
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(reviewed by Rollo)
HIGH POINTS: None. LOW POINTS: None.
Recorded on the same day as Agharta (this stuff was the evening set, Agharta was the afternoon set), Pangaea remains the darker and grittier of the two. This time around, though, the stuff's a bit harder to tolerate since there's just two tracks in this package, each going on for over forty minutes. You know what I'm gonna say, aren't you? Yup, this stuff drags and drags and drags until your ears are bleeding. But the music here seems even more focused than on Agharta - the music's a bit complex, but it only adds to the interest, really. For instance, "Zimbabwe" cuts off some twenty minutes in and becomes this neat afro-groove for twenty minutes onward. It's truly masterful, actually; the solos are colorful, only enlightening the true meaning of the music's existence. But it takes some time to get there, of course, and it may not be that rewarding in the end. On the other hand, "Gondwana" is one true sweat-inducing junk pile of a groove; it's just steaming in all its grittiness, and continues being that for its entire running time. No matter how you look at it, the music stays focused all the way through, and the many changes and musical shifts only add to the admiration of these guys.
However, the music needs to be treated much like Dark Magus in terms of concentration; much of this music is fast with the percussion in the forefront. However, this is not to say the stuff sounds like an atonal mess or something like that. I don't care if the crew didn't really care about how it sounded for as long as it stays within the groove's boundaries, I care the least about the makings of the music. Always keep one thing in mind when listening to this album (or Agharta, for that matter): no matter how tired the guys were of each other, there'll forever be no doubt that not just this band, but every single band Miles had in his fusion days, cared about the music first, no matter how useless or ugly it might turn out to be. I know for sure that Miles never hesitated to play the music he loved whenever he had the chance, and even if Miles didn't have that much engagement while doing this stuff, he acted like a mother to all of his "children". Don't tell me that the cool ending jazz jam in "Gondwana", for instance, was something Miles didn't like (or even love) to do every night. That said, Pangaea remains having the same flaws and qualities Agharta had, though being slightly worse because of the inaccessibility. The music is slightly better than the stuff on Agharta, though, so heck, it gets the same rating.
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