Miles Davis - In A Silent Way

how did bach justify that

He was paid by the minute.

hey hey hey, don't get me wrong - i love it, and there's a strange feeling similar to a 'rewind' in dance music. but shit, i hadn't relaised it was just the first part played over again; I thought they were just playing it very very similarly.

hang on, so is it the same or not?

also, i mean, if there was so much stuff cut out of it, it surprises me that they'd just repeat a whole part of the record again... but yeah, i didn't know if they altered the repeated part or not - as in you get to the end of Benefit of Mr Kite and it just starts playing the first three songs from Sgt Peppers all over again or whatevs...

well if you eat the same breakfast next monday you had this monday, is it the same or not

i don't throw up last monday's breakfast and eat it again?!

what i'm asking is - are the two parts EXACTLY the same or are they different? I've never been able to tell.

I think the amazing thing about the record is that Miles had only met John McLaughlin for the first time the evening before, and invited him to the session the next day. Such a chance thing, and yet the music is unimaginable without his contribution.

McLaughlin's playing on those few Miles records is some of the best work he ever did imo.

yea i agree.

i've found it very difficult to get into mahavishnu orchestra. i put on birds of fire here and there but i never make it through.

are the two parts EXACTLY the same or are they different?
they're exactly the same

but you're different

Love that Miles supposedly told McL, a technician supreme, "Play like you don't know how to play," so Go Ahead John had to unravel himself on the spot.

It worked!

Marcos you should listen to him on a Wayne Shorter record called Super Nova, which also features Sonny Sharrock, similar "I don't know how to play" type playing from him.

they're exactly the same

― tylerw, Friday, November 14, 2014 3:17 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

but you're different

― tylerw, Friday, November 14, 2014 3:20 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Love this. I think this nails it.

^^^ Yes

whoa, great post

http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/newseventsimages?p_image_type=mainnews2012&p_image_id=23110

^^^^^^^^^^^^

lol

Just realized that this is one of those albums I have managed not to listen to in about 15 years. Crazy. (I listened to it so much between the ages of 16 to 25 that I basically have it internalized, but still ...). Gotta get a new copy I think.

Every time I try and play this back in my head today, it starts seguing into a short French horn section on Beach Boys' Smile.

Hah. Sounds pretty great actually.

the "complete" box set from these sessions is definitely not as compelling and cohesive as e.g. the complete jack johnson stuff. but i still enjoy it.

this album was one of my proper introductions to jazz, back when i was in high school, and it's hard not to cherish it for that reason alone.

i mean, i heard plenty of jazz before that, but i didn't really seek out whole albums, and some of the stuff i had been exposed to previously was a little jive (like wynton marsalis).

complete on the corner sessions is really the best of the complete sessions series imo. there is like 9 stellar albums worth of music in that collection (some of which was actually released as albums but still).

As the guitar had captured my brain at an early age the prominent guitar on this era of Miles really resonated with me. Such cool playing (as noted many times here) and for sure a gateway for me. Was into some other jazz at the time but pretty much none of the trad stuff with guitar worked for me that well. Still not a big jazz guitar fan, but this is of course a way different animal.

i think it was maybe the electric piano that first hooked me on this record!

Definitely a huge plus.

Just for reference, if anyone wants to gift me a Fender Rhodes I will give it a good home.

Promise.

complete on the corner sessions is really the best of the complete sessions series imo. there is like 9 stellar albums worth of music in that collection (some of which was actually released as albums but still).

― marcos, Friday, November 14, 2014 4:37 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's really good. i checked it out after you recommended it on another thread. i love on the corner, but it kind of amazes me how much they cut out, and dare i say it, how it could have potentially been a more coherent and diverse album had it been cut differently out of these sections.

As the guitar had captured my brain at an early age the prominent guitar on this era of Miles really resonated with me. Such cool playing (as noted many times here) and for sure a gateway for me. Was into some other jazz at the time but pretty much none of the trad stuff with guitar worked for me that well. Still not a big jazz guitar fan, but this is of course a way different animal.

― grandavis, Friday, November 14, 2014 4:38 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It astounds me how many different times I tried and failed to get into jazz because i was checking out the wrong (i.e. shit) stuff.

yea the electric piano and miles playing hooked me. my brother was trying to tell me a few weeks ago that miles' greatest skill as a musician was picking the right band members, and while i think that is obviously one of his major strengths he is also just an amazing player.

xp oh yea definitely, tbh i rarely listen to the regular on the corner lp anymore, i just go to the complete sessions. that is not true for in a silent way or jack johnson.

miles' autobiography is so fun to read as i mentioned elsewhere, and like 80% of the book is him talking about how this player or that player was "just a motherfucker" on his instrument and was such a joy to watch

didn't the "on the corner" sessions actually produce most of like three or four LPs? i get really confused about this period of miles, in terms of what was recorded when. seems like he was in and out of the studio quite frequently without necessarily designating certain sessions as intended to produce a specific album. and of course the fact that the albums were created largely by macero in the editing room complicates it all further.

i actually had been listening to louis armstrong and count basie for a few years by the time i discovered this album, so i guess i was a fan of a certain kind of prewar jazz. but for me that stuff coded as pop music: concise, catchy. i don't think i really "got" jazz in its postwar form until after i really got stuck on this LP.

yea "on the corner sessions" is kind of misnomer, it covers like a 3 or 4 year period. feel like it could have easily been called the complete get up with it sessions, since the entirety of that double album is included

the weirdest part of listening to those "complete" box sets is when miles is speaking to the other musicians in his characteristic croaky whisper. i had always sort of imagined that his weirdly taciturn public persona was just that, a persona put on for public consumption. but eavesdropping on these sessions you realize he really was a complete weirdo.

jesus how many times can i use a variant of the word "weird"?

substitute "eccentric" for at least one of those instances

it's okay dude weird is like the best word

Yeah, the title The Complete On the Corner Sessions is really misleading; a more accurate title would have been The Complete Sessions 1972-75. The material for On the Corner was all tracked in, like, two days in June and an overdub session in July of 1972. The other sessions in the box wound up on Big Fun, Directions (IIRC), and Get Up With It. But as has been stated, there are literally hours of fucking glorious outtakes in there too.

All the various repackagings of Miles's early to mid 70s electric takes/outtakes/whatever get very hard to follow.

Can i just stan for the Panthalassa record for a sec, *not* the remixes record, but the original which is 4 suites, re-edits of tracks each about 15 mins long as I recall with two or three tracks in each suite.

i like that too, tho i know that some on ILM hate it with a passion!

Several Miles boxes (incl the apparently OOP Cellar Door) are on Spotify. Loved the first couple discs of OTC box, but yeah it seems to be just going by chronology, so I'd rather hear "He Loved Him Madly" and several others on the albs where I first heard 'em. But as dog latin says, always good to hear boxes as sources for your own edits, in reverie or elsewhere.
Yeah I like McL. best w Miles and elsewhere in this phase of the electric Miles era, like Devotion, with Buddy Miles(!)and organist Larry Young---- listening reminds me that all three played with Hendrix (McL, on jam tapes, Young also with Miles), but there's no imitation, just bold raw-edged cosmic fun (though McL was reportedly bummed by Alan Douglas's edits). Seems like the original vinyl had a track (or two?) missing from the CD versions I've found, but there's no reduction in the exhilaration.
McL. and Young were good with Tony Williams Lifetime too (even had Jack Bruce for a while: now there was a heavy band).
Live tapes of McL, and Carlos S. are worth looking for, in my ltd. experience (don't remember the studio album that well).
Liked Mahavishnu, but Cobham could seem kind of musclebound. Try the first and live ones.
Acoustic-wise, liked the re-re-mastered My Goal's Beyond, and (much more exciting) the live Remember Shakti twofer on Ryko.
xpost Super Nova won't knock yer socks off, at least not as consistently as you might think, from checking http://www.discogs.com/Wayne-Shorter-Super-Nova/release/774676, but it can generate the Shorter vibrations.

not a fan of panthalassa though i can't say i've given it a thorough listen

Isn't panthalassa that Bill Laswell "remix" album? That's some bullshit imo.

oh whoops explained upthread nm