S&D: Miles Davis in the 70s & 80s

I got the <I>Complete On The Corner Sessions</I> boxed set in today's mail. Six discs, at least three hours (I haven't added it all up yet) of previously unreleased studio jams from '72-74.

I saw the Sep release date at amazon!

It's amazing shit. I'm listening to "Jabali," an 11-minute previously unreleased track, right now. It has the same kind of slow, repeating bassline as "Ife," but with more crescendos from the drums.

dear unperson, I stalk now

I know little about the eighties stuff except for the covers of Top 40 songs. Which is the best?

Tutu and We Want Miles are my favorites. Tutu is icy, inhuman cyber-funk; We Want Miles is small-group funk-metal (one guitar, bass, drums, sax, and Miles all spidery and muted).

Thanks unperson. I'm kind of tired saying, "Oh, Miles in the '80s? ... Well, 'Time After Time' is pretty cool."

Complete On The Corner Sessions

hi dere i really need three hours of one vamp

!!!!!!!!

/hoos is mad amped

xpost YES YOU DO

I started listening to the OTC box on the train ride home. The new stuff that I heard is slower than, say, Agharta or Dark Magus, and more about the groove than the rawk (not enough skin-peeling Pete Cosey guitar solos for my taste, at least not yet), but man, it's fuckin' killer. Boxed set of my year, no question.

OK, Aura is quite good. The last three minutes of "Violet" are chilling.

Does In A Silent Way count (I think it's a 1969 release)? It's gorgeous and vibrant, and one of my favorite albums ever.

"calypso frelimo" may be the greatest song ever

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxSFSdcGPLM

I have devoured everything I can get my hands on by Miles Davis, but I have yet to breach the 1980s. I suppose I'm going to have to turn there sooner or later.

I'm fond of Aura.

'Live Around the World' is a perfect summation of the 80s stuff, great tunes, performances and sound (and no crappy Marcus Miller drum programming).

― Jordan (Jordan), Saturday, December 14, 2002 1:09 PM (7 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i still rep for this

(7 years ago!)

kinda crazy to watch al foster playing heavy rock like that. i wonder if he liked it.

yeah, i'd say that live around the world is my fave 80s miles, tho i haven't heard it all by any means. what i have heard is better than i expected, but i think i wasn't expecting much.

wow looks like a TON of live 70s Miles stuff went up on youtube in the past year.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGal87rfH_4&feature=related

Pete Cosey!

Just watched an old Ch4 documentary on Miles. Its really sad to witness the tour de force Miles from the 50's to the mid 70's turn into the 80's 90's Miles. You can see that it hurts him as well. I got into Miles backwards via Bitches Brew and On The Corner but now I really prefer his 2nd Quintet period + Kind Of Blue + In A Silent way. Cant bring myself to listen to his 80's stuff.

Me neither. I've devoured and obsessed over pretty much every era of Miles (maybe save for his 40s material when he was a good, but not yet great, trumpeter), but the 80s stuff I've heard makes me angry. Not so much at Miles -- after 40 years, why not a payday? -- but at whoever the fuck thought those production styles and those instantly dated digital-synth-based arrangements were a good idea.

As someone who has everything Miles did up until 75 and as someone who finds that the 74/75 band's recordings only get better as time passes, I too wrote off his 80's stuff for years. Last summer, I made a concerted effort to sit down with 80's Miles and really listen, because I had never given any of that stuff a chance previously. For the most part, I found that if you can remove the fact that you're listening to a Miles Davis album, most of them aren't too bad. Fairly listenable stuff. A lot of it has dated pretty poorly because of production techniques of the day (there are sequencers on almost every single album he did in the 80's — something that has no place in jazz, if you ask me), so again, I had to just not get upset and accept it on its own terms to get anything out of it.

The albums from the 80's that I found to be the best of the era are Star People and Amandla. Amandla, in particular, is a great example of something that's dated horribly, but the performances overcome it pretty easily. When you just focus on Miles, you'll some of his best soloing since the 70's. Just need to adjust to the musical backdrops. 'Mr. Pastorious' is worth it on its own.

But, in the end, if you're only going to get one 80's Miles album, get Aura. It's excellent. And not in a recontextualized "excellent" way either. It's genuinely good and holds up with anything else in his catalogue. Really love that album.

To anyone really interested in the 70's and 80's era Miles, I highly recommend Paul Tingen's book on the subject.

I really dig this Miles quote, talking about about his awesome 70's period.

“I remember one time - it might have been a couple times - at the Fillmore East in 1970, I was opening for this sorry-ass cat named Steve Miller. Steve Miller didn't have his shit going for him, so I'm pissed because I got to open for this non-playing motherfucker just because he had one or two sorry-ass records out. So I would come late and he would have to go on first and then we got there we smoked the motherfucking place, everybody dug it.”

as weird as the pairing might seem today, i don't know if it was that far off -- i think steve miller band was kinda thought of as jazz rock and they almost signed to Impulse!

Hey Tyler could you recommend a good Miles documentary? I have seen the Channel 4 one and its not bad but there must be a better one out there.

we want miles is like the funkiest miles record, doesn't sound dated at all, wtf are you people on about

xp you know i've only seen that Miles Davis Story doc. Which is ok, but not amazing. Seems like he deserves a really in-depth, multi-part series, doesn't it?

The Miles Electric DVD is the closest I've seen to a definitive Miles bio, and it only covers a few years (as if you couldn't have guessed from the title). Some interesting interviews with Hancock, Joni Mitchell, Mtume, and, you should pardon the expression, Stanley Crouch. Also includes his full 1970 Isle of Wight set which is as reliably inspired as any of his shows from that period.

Yeah, have seen that. Carlos Santana rhapsodizing over jazz doods is always entertaining.

yeah that one is good. love the bit where herbie does a little electric piano "impression" of miles.

i've said it many times, but Live Around the World is a fantastic gateway to the '80s stuff. much looser and less dated-sounding than the studio records, great bands.

I've heard a number of people say that about LAtW...I'll definitely check it out. Wasn't Al Foster still in the band for part of that?

it's almost all ricky wellman (who is great), but maybe al foster is on a track or two?

love the bit where herbie does a little electric piano "impression" of miles.

^^^best moment of the doc. love Herbie so much.

feel like i never really listened properly to "Go Ahead John" before. what the fuck is he doing to that guitar? is it phasing? this is properly heavy shit.

I can never recommend the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions enough.

I like Kilimanjaro and Get Up With It a lot.

I always find it unusual that one of Miles' main side-men was some bloke from Doncaster. What he does with a guitar and wah-wah pedal on Go Ahead John is extraordinary, pure mind blowing type shit. It is better than anything from the Jack Johnson sessions or indeed the album. It was my number 1 track in William C's Miles poll.

he joined Tony Williams's Lifetime first, so I assume that was how he was introduced to Miles?

dave holland = some bloke from wolverhampton!

xpost to Hurting - yep, just recently read an old 'Hello/Goodbye' feature in Mojo where McLaughlin talks abt joining Miles' group from Lifetime, and then leaving Miles to form Mahavishnu Orch. Unsurprisingly, according to John McG, T. Williams was not too 'chuffed' abt having his old boss steal his guitar player away from him.

lol, I have no idea whether "not too chuffed" = not too upset or not too pleased.

lol, not too pleased!

dave holland = some bloke from wolverhampton!

Fucking hell I always thought he was American!

Holland definitely has one of the most interesting discographies of Miles' sidemen, particularly of the electric period (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Dave Holland Quartet, duo with Derek Bailey, etc.)

As is soda pop

lol, I have no idea whether "not too chuffed" = not too upset or not too pleased.

I'm listening to Go Ahead John again now. This thing blew my mind when I discovered it in college back in '94 or so.

Dur, no idea how "this is soda pop" made it in there. Late posting does me in.

Holland definitely has one of the most interesting discographies of Miles' sidemen, particularly of the electric period (Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Dave Holland Quartet, duo with Derek Bailey, etc.)

On one of the TV docs abt MD, Holland tells a great story about how, just after joining the Davis group, he played Miles an SME alb, and Miles' only response was, "Yeah, our group isn't going to sound like THAT"

'Conference of the Birds' is easily one of my all-time fave jazz albs - Sam Rivers AND Anthony Braxton, doesn't get better than that. And yeah, it's a goddamm crime that that Holland/Bailey duo rec has never been reissued.

I disagree with all of this. Most of these tunes feature the band wandering around trying to catch a spark. Which is fine because, well, they’re the best musicians in the world, but none of the tracks is better than what was officially released around this time. Also, Yaphet sounds pretty clearly like a run at Great Expectations.

Chatter of Miles getting pissy with Teo in the studio tho is A+.

I’m still a little sad we never got an actual Complete Bitches Brew Sessions box with dry runs and whatnot. No I don’t listen to my Jack Johnson or IASW boxes all that frequently but the process of these sessions is def. almost as interesting as the results. And now Belden is dead. Oh well.

does that material exist for Bitches Brew? if so, why did it not get included in the complete sessions box?

My favorite of these compilations is Champions, which is all the tracks named after boxers from the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box (except for "Archie Moore," for some reason). Put together, they're a seriously nasty electric blues album:

https://tidal.com/browse/album/233171325

This year's "Turnaround" had 4 tracks from the "Complete On The Corner Sessions" box. I had already cherry picked that stuff and came up with an excellent companion disc:
One And One (Unedited Master) - a completely different track!
Jabali (on "Turnaround")
The Hen (on "Turnaround")
Peace
Mr. Foster
Hip-Skip
What They Do

does that material exist for Bitches Brew?

I'm pretty sure I read that it no longer exists.