[deep breath]
On the contrary, life would be too long without the music of Miles Davis. I can't even imagine a life in music without the massive space taken up by this guy's work, his various bands and towering discography. A hell of a lot of his music has been basically sustenance for me for over a decade now. And there are still albums I've not even heard.
Where do you start? You could do worse than with
Bitches Brew as I did. The crappy CBS cassette I had actually had the original analogue mix and master on it - all following versions have had a newer digital remix and master that while probably more geared towards audiophile tastes there are different (digital) delay effects and stuff. Either way it's awesome - pretty hard to make this album sound under par I reckon. It's hard to describe how and why this album is so good but those of you into Talk Talk's later albums will understand. This is not exactly music that you have to understand or 'decode' or anything else here I've read - it is very much concerned with mood and atmosphere and for me is like a gateway into something else - The Other? It's mental really.
It's sounds like a massive orchestra playing out in deep Space, or deep under the ocean and when I hear about these really far out psychedelic albums I always wonder why they don't sound like this. Something almost similar in the rock canon might be Hendrix '1983 (A Merman Should I Turn To Be). It still burns me that the Gil Evans/Miles Davis/Hendrix collaberation was due to begin a mere two weeks from Hendrix's death. Gotta wonder what that would have been like...
From a technical point of view, and following on and building on techniques on the more sedate
In A Silent Way (another masterpiece, of which there are many in Miles 1968-1975 period) this album was years ahead in using the studio as an instrument, the final versions of 'Pharoah's Dance' and 'Bitches Brew' are edited and spliced old-school style into something else - 19 edits on the former, according to this article
http://www.miles-beyond.com/bitchesbrew.htm
I can also recommend
The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, 4-disk expanded edition with various outtakes and contemporary tracks.
The great thing about Miles electric period was that the bands and line-ups, both live and in the studio, were totally liquid and personnel changed almost daily a lot of the time - bit like the Funkadelic/Parliament axis. So no two albums (or live shows for that matter) were ever the same - the albums through this period are like snapshots of who he was working with at that point.
Case in point - the
Live at the Fillmore East March 7 1970 (bizarrely enough sharing a billing with Neil Young & Crazy Horse, their show from that night is also an outstanding live album... what a gig!!!) sounds nothing like
Bitches Brew.
At all. In fact, struggling to describe who it sounds like. There's no guitars here for a start - but two keyboards (Corea & Shorter) playing very different stuff in each channel. This is more like Beefheart energy or something - a lot more 'freer' but not free-jazz. It's very direct and aggressive music.
My all-time favourite album has to be the awesome
On The Corner - I've raved about it on here a lot over the years but basically it still sounds like nothing else on Earth. Fuck knows what it did to people's heads back in 1972 - it's like one long loop over an album playing the same basic theme. I must add that despite what you think that might sound like it's immense - this really aggressive, hypnotic thing going on and on. There's a vast array of instrumentation on it (with changing personnel throughout) but pretty uniquely for that time all the tracks are mixed at a similar level, the trumpet is no louder than the congas, etc. It's like evil electric jazz(?) meets the Wall of Sound. This record is one of endless fascination to me and is far less 'radio-friendly' than
Bitches Brew IMO.
The Complete On The Corner Sessions, with it's awesome metal sleeve, is one of my prized possessions and has 6 discs of earlier versions and takes and loads of good stuff. Nothing (nothing!) beats the original album of course but I love hearing the stuff that surrounds it. I cannot recommend this one highly enough...
"I've got everybody in the band but the devil on tambourine...."
For a contemporary official live record check out
Live at Philharmonic Hall, similar themed artwork and a good chunk of the
On The Corner band playing stuff from it and others. Pretty dark and murky live production... really heavy percussion based sound here. Laziness inspires me to rip this from wikipedia who ripped it from the following:
According to Allmusic editor Steve Huey, "melody isn't the point of this music; it's about power, rhythm, and the sum energy of the collective, and of Davis' electric jazz-rock albums, In Concert does one of the most mind-bending jobs of living up to those ideals". JazzTimes writer Tom Terrell commented that the album "predicts hip hop ('Rated X''s bassline = 'White Lines'), Ornette's Prime Time ('Black Satin') and Talking Heads ('Ife')"
1971's
Live-Evil was marketed as the 'sequel' to
Bitches Brew but once again it's something else entirely. It's like a weird compilation of the studio and live stuff Miles was working on at that time - the live tracks came from a series of shows (later released as
The Cellar Door Sessions) which featured a comparatively smaller band in a tiny venue. I would love to have been at one of those shows! Anyway another excellent album, far more varied in tone, mood and tempo than the others I've mentioned so far. The studio stuff has a more immediate production and there are soft, reflective pieces mixed with pretty ferocious upbeat material. Outstanding sleeve artwork too!
Great to see
Jack Johnson mentioned here - for me, THE album maybe to start with if you're new to this stuff. It's fantastic and I imagine right away it would appeal to many here - it's criminal that this record isn't better known,
Agharta is practically a popular record in comparison. Quite unlike anything else in Miles' vast discography (again) but it's fucking incredible. A two track album... but what tracks they are. Unlike most of his other 70s studio recordings he uses a really small, limited band - it's like Miles-goes-garage-rock but of course it's far more than that. It's the one record by him I'm certain to play first for the curious or those who've only heard
Kind of Blue. Raunchy guitars are big on this. Many would have no idea it was Miles Davis at all, until he starts playing on it perhaps... a wonderful moment indeed when he joins in here. As I understand it, due to his ultra-healthy lifestyle at the time his playing never sounded better than on here. He's not using any effects or wah like he does on a lot of this era's stuff. If you really want to hear pure, joyful expressive horn playing it's all on here. Plus the greatest rock 'n' roll band you've never heard...
Gotta mention
Big Fun and
Get Up With It, both released in 1974. I tend to think of these albums as related to each other, two sprawling double albums that are mostly compiled from material between 1970-1974. They do work as album length pieces though and present a vast array of different personnel and styles. Take
Get Up With It: the first track, the Ellington tribute, ('He Loved Him Madly') lasts nearly half an hour, and is an epic, meditative ambient thing. Amazing. You also hear a total straight up blues track, the most 'vanilla' track Miles worked on in the 70s I think ('Red China Blues'), as well as the ever-awesome and ever-bonkers 'Rated X'. Who can guess what was going on when Miles' and his genius producer Teo Macero decided to drop in and out the entire rhythm track throughout - it's gotta be heard to be believed.
The infamous
Dark Magus live album was also recorded at Carnegie Hall in 1974 and presents a really heavy, out-there version of the live band, the Michael Henderson/Pete Cosey/Al Foster 'Wrecking Crew' band that by then had been a pretty stable line up for some time. On this album there are no less than
three distinct electric guitarists going for it - in true Motörhead style 'everything louder than everything else' - and y'know what, this album shares far more with the likes of Motörhead than any jazz-fusion monstrosity from that particular period. This album is just ferocious, and brings a whole new meaning to the word 'intense'. It's not an easy listen at all and could do with a bit of light and shade perhaps - it's relentless. You oughta hear it though.
A year later pretty much the same band played two all-time-great sets in one day in Japan: a matinee and evening set which each make up the music on
Agharta and
Pangaea.
Agharta is a fantastic album and I suspect it's true value and influence has yet to be felt - it's pretty much on a par with the greatest stuff ever laid down on tape. What can I say... the band by this time are playing this mad, glacial take on wired future funk - the heavy onlaught of
Dark Magus remains but by this point they can spin it somewhere else in a second. There is this sorta well known bit about 12 minutes into the first track 'Prelude' where Pete Cosey suddenly enters on guitar and proceeds to melt your brain. It's incredible, incendiary stuff and is some kind of post Hendrix and Hazel stuff - did anybody play guitar like ever again? These are two long, epic albums but are amazing.
Pangaea is not as rated as much as
Agharta but it probably should be. Again, the fact these two sets were from the same day is mindblowing. Miles went quiet for a few years afterwards. Listening to these it's perhaps not surprising. All of human life seems to be inside this stuff but there's a lot of pain. The Real Heavy Shit.
... phew. This sorta felt familiar, and I found this thread rummaging around the dark corners of this forum:
http://ideensynthese.de/spiritualized/v ... 3#p27004at least there is some consistancy here! SIX years ago...
Probably my longest ever post - and the crazy thing is I've only covered a small portion of Miles' electric period, '69-'75. There's so much other stuff just from then, both official live releases and a million bootlegs. There's a great 1973 set from the Montreaux Jazz Festival which is just amazing, the exact midpoint between
Agharta and
On The Corner maybe, but it really rocks too.
Beyond the electric stuff, well, that needs it's own thread but there's so much. I discover stuff down the line and have grown to really appreciate the Gil Evans collaborations, the much maligned 80s material, there's also this amazing live album from back in 1961 called
In Person: Friday and Saturday Night at the Nighthawk which is just amazing and sounds so fresh - there's also the progressive series of albums with 'The Second Great Quintet' from the 60s, the
Cool era stuff, the bootlegs with Prince...
Good night.
Someday i'll get around to trying those funkier Miles albums, but at the moment life's too short!
