Bitches Brew Poll

Listened to this yesterday -- gotta be "Spanish Key". The overall band interplay on this track is fierce.

"Pharoah's Dance" is the high point for me. Bennie Maupin's lines in the theme get me every time. Probably the best extension of the "In a Silent Way" style on this album.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I love Jack Johnson and In a Silent Way but I don't get this album. I think it's too squarely an attempt at jazz fusion to be interesting.

you're thinking too much

Man, Spanish Key is the nuts. I remember listening to all of Bitches Brew in St Nick's pub in Harlem after drinking most of a bottle of Wray and Nephews and it really made more sense than ever.

That said I'd probably listen to 'On The Corner' or 'Live Evil' if I had the choice right now.

Had I spotted this poll in time, I'd have voted Spanish Key. That organ hook that rolls around every five minutes or so is just amazing, especially when it comes in the third time, I think, and Miles plays a little trumpet line up and up and up afterwards. Bliss.

http://imgur.com/yAP6u.png

Bitches Brew

Availability:
Limited

In honor of the 40th anniversary of the original release of Bitches Brew, Miles Davis' 1970 paradigm-shifting landmark fusion breakthrough, we've created our own Bitches Brew - a bold, dark beer that's a fusion of three threads imperial stout and one thread honey beer with gesho root, a gustatory analog to Miles' masterpiece.Featuring the album's iconic artwork, created by the late Mati Klarwein, on its label, Dogfish Head's Bitches Brew will be unveiled at SAVOR, An American Craft Beer & Food Experience, June 5, National Building Museum, Washington DC.

Haven't experienced the Bitches Brew album? Two 40th anniversary editions of Miles Davis' Bitches Brew -- a Legacy Edition and a deluxe Collector's Edition -- will be available Tuesday, August 31.

The newly created ale is designed, according to Dogfish founder and president Sam Calagione, "as the ultimate partner for chili or spicy curry chicken" and best enjoyed "sipped cool, not cold, from a snifter or red wine glass while listening to the Bitches Brew album."

Calagione was drawn to the alchemical spirits in Bitches Brew right out of college, acquiring a copy of the album "within months of the first time I brewed a batch of homebrew in my apartment in New York City. I listened to it when I was writing my Dogfish business plan. I wanted Dogfish Head to be a maniacally inventive and creative brewery, analog beer for the digital age. You could say that my dream was to have Dogfish Head, in some small way, stand for the same thing in the beer world that Bitches Brew stands for in the jazz world. You can imagine how excited we are to be doing this project 17 years after I wrote that business plan."

"There's a spirit of innovation, of creativity and individuality, thats at the core of Miles' music," said Adam Block, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Legacy Recordings. "Sam and Dogfish Head approach their art from the same place and consequently the marriage is an easy and cool one."

Dogfish Head and its "off-centered ales for off-centered people" were the subject of "A Better Brew," an article in The New Yorker (Nov. 24, 2008) examining the rise of extreme beer. "Beer has lagged well behind wine and organic produce in the ongoing reinvention of American cuisine. Yet the change over the past twenty years has been startling," wrote Burkhard Bilger. "Dogfish is something of a mascot for this unruly movement. In the thirteen years since Calagione founded the brewery, it has gone from being the smallest in the country to the thirty-eighth largest. Calagione makes more beer with at least ten per cent alcohol than any other brewer, and his odd ingredients are often drawn from ancient or obscure beer traditions. It is to Budweiser what a bouillabaisse is to fish stock."

Dogfish's Bitches Brew will be available in 750ml bottles in late August 2010. For more on the beer & the music, please visit the official Bitches Brew website.

Original Release Date:
06/2010

http://mlkshk.com/r/KUA7

Hah! In your face pillow munching suits, you don't fuck with Miles!

i actually tried that bitches brew beer last month. it was kind of amazing.

"What's wrong with being sexy?"

You can still get that beer?! I love that beer!

yeah, i've never seen it on the shelves, but a place in salem ma had it on tap.

i actually tried that bitches brew beer last month. it was kind of amazing.

yep. lately it's been on tap in a ton of places

Amazing!

"Please advise"

I might get "Please Advise" done as a back tattoo a la Rollins's "Search & Destroy"

"BITCHES BREW"

I would kill to be able to hear a recording of that call from Miles to Teo.

haha awesome memo

Last time I checked, amazon's profanity filter won't allow you to properly mention the title in customer reviews!

Kinda interesting that Columbia apparently didn't have a problem with the mild semi-nudity on the cover. Maybe because it was painted rather than photographed, making it ART instead of PRON

well they didn't have a problem with the title either
Teo Macero seems like a cool dude, as far as pillow munching suits go

i imagine teo enjoyed typing that memo up. he was obviously a hip dude.

Macero was an ace trumpeter who played in Mingus' orchestra, among others, prior to producing Miles. No pillow-munching suit he.

haw, i'm not sure i know what "pillow munching" means

tbh i thought 'pillow munching' pertained to anal sex.

yeah i was being sarcastic cause i wasn't sure what damo was getting at

it would be cool to see the reply memo, maybe they were like "Cool title! I smell a hit!"

after listening to the complete "in a silent way" i'd wager teo had as much to do with that album being great as miles did, maybe more

I didn't mean the comment in a homophobic way. I am an electrician and it is a term we use for arseholes in the office who make our life hard on site. Teo was cool and I have just remembered who he is from a doc I saw on Miles. Just an ill judged comment I made after too many beers and glasses of red wine on a friday night.

"No I meant 'gay' like stupid, not 'gay' like homosexual"

i mean tbh it's v difficult to use a derogatory term for a homosexual in a non-homophobic way

I actually just thought it was a goofy non-sequitur.

And compared to Miles, pretty much everyone in the universe is a pillow-munching suit. Miles liked to treat Macero like a square sometimes, but Teo never took the bait. On one of the Bitches Brew outtakes there's studio chatter where Teo says, "So is this part 2?" Miles replies, "It's part NINE motherfucker! What difference does it make?" Teo says essentially, "Yeah, whatever, dude."

And yeah, Teo should've gotten more credit than he did. Maybe he should've been co-billed like Gil Evans was. I think it's fair to say Teo had as much to do with the brilliance of IASW and Bitches Brew as Evans did with Sketches, Miles Ahead, and Porgy & Bess.

I would kill to be able to hear a recording of that call from Miles to Teo.

i wanna hear the part where Teo is like "do you mean to put an apostrophe in Bitches? are you saying the brew belongs to the bitches, or that the bitches brew, an activity?"

"Never mind. I'll just call it Steve Miller Is A Non-Playing Motherfucker."

i mean tbh it's v difficult to use a derogatory term for a homosexual in a non-homophobic way

For what it is worth Stevie I get upset when people the 'R' word because I have a ten year old son with autism. So I understand how some words can be offensive and unacceptable, especially to people who have suffered prejudice. As incredulous as it sounds I really didn't know 'pillow muncher' had homophobic connotations and I apologise if any offence was caused. I am a real thick working class cunt at times.

I feel the same way re: r-word (have called ppl out on it on this board before); sorry if I came off as attacky, I didn't mean to & didn't realize that you didn't realize the connotations.

Terms like "pillow munching" etc gave me very off-base notions of anal sex when I was young.

Do more straight people realise these days that it's mostly not done that way?

Anyway.

That memo is fucking awesome.

i wanna hear the part where Teo is like "do you mean to put an apostrophe in Bitches? are you saying the brew belongs to the bitches, or that the bitches brew, an activity?"

― but the boo boyz are getting to (Z S), Friday, November 2, 2012 8:35 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've always taken it to be "brew of the bitches" in essence, thus no possessive apostrophe required

Like "losers brigade"

Where has the picture of this memo suddenly appeared from? Are there other memos to come?

Ha, I wondered the same thing... Then my cynical side wondered if it was a forgery. It really does ring so precisely as "current-day FB meme" in its tone and language.

Here's an interview with a guy who said he unearthed the document in Teo Macero's archives at the New York Public Library.

http://jazzblog.scena.org/2010_04_01_archive.html

Can't believe John McL got no votes

underdone poll for this monumentally perfect record

all great records should get that header on the cover: 'directions in music by'

Going back into a deep fusion kick listening to those early records by Weather Report and Herbie Hancock's Headhunters; it's kind of a shame that the economics of jazz in the pop world wasn't such that somehow those key players could have kept working together. I'd love to hear what Miles Davis trumpet would have fit in on the first couple of Weather Report records, as they really did take up that spacey feel from Bitches Brew and In A Silent Way. Conversely it's not hard to imagine what Herbie, Mike Clark and Paul Jackson would have sound underneath one of Miles 70s funk groups.

Them's the breaks, never happened.

this result is as lopsided and rong as 'rated x' winning the 'get up with it' poll

it's kind of a shame that the economics of jazz in the pop world wasn't such that somehow those key players could have kept working together. I'd love to hear what Miles Davis trumpet would have fit in on the first couple of Weather Report records

The weird thing is (in retrospect, maybe not at the time), Hancock and Weather Report were handily outselling (and outdrawing -- Miles was Herbie's opening act at least once in the 70s) Miles. Miles playing with Weather Report would no doubt have been a thrill for the members of Weather Report, but it might not necessarily have been a selling point for WR's fans.

There's more "rong" in this thread but it got worked out in the end.

xpost

thread needs a teo to do some splicing, work all the best takes into an underrecognized collaboration between him and us

Thread made the mistake of releasing the unedited masters first.

part twoNINE was. In particular.

Pharaoh's Dance got robbed big-time here.

rated x didn't win the get up with it poll

I was so mad at my ipod today for not having Bitches Brew on it.

FWIW, I like the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions more than the album. Some great tracks on there that didn't make the final.

i have probably listened to 'feio' only one time in the entire number of years i have had that set

Feio is great

Donald Fagen, co-founder of Steely Dan, called the album "essentially just a big trash-out for Miles" in 2007: "To me it was just silly, and out of tune, and bad. I couldn't listen to it. It sounded like Davis was trying for a funk record, and just picked the wrong guys. They didn't understand how to play funk. They weren't steady enough."[21]

not enough guys named Skunk

i've read fagen knocking fusion in general, which seems odd.

kind of feel like part of the album's strength is that the players "didn't understand how to play funk"

what does fagen have to say about OTC i wonder

BB is the opposite of sure-footed and slick, and Fagen not liking it tells me pretty much everything I need to know about Steely Dan. Except I already knew it.

Yeah I don't know much about Steely Dan at all really, but I just thought this was odd and funny. And wrong.

Fagen also despised the new music (which is maybe less surprising than him not digging BB); I seem to recall him saying snarky shit about Sun Ra.

I'm not convinced that Steely Dan ever "understood how to play funk"

well they certainly hired people who did.

People who played on Bitches Brew, even.

i mean, it would be pretty disappointing and out-of-character if Steely Dan was really into Bitches Brew.

released 50 years ago yesterday

still sounds like 50 years tomorrow