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

To me, this would be the better buy.

agreed, so good

Those "Complete ________ Sessions" on Columbia / Legacy are so friggin' good across the board, but the Bitches Brew set is the one I've gone back to most frequently over the years. The In A Silent Way box is a very close second.

Recollections is 'the one' for me on the Big Fun set. But Go Ahead is something else again. De Johnette (and Macero's treatment of him) is insane.

I'm listening to the LP so I've not heard Recollections. I'll have to give it a listen.

To me, this would be the better buy.

― outside, you're never alone. (Austin), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 11:35 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

agreed, so good

― sleeve, Tuesday, September 4, 2018 11:39 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i was totally wondering about whether to buy this this weekend.. so thanks!!

(bb sessions box)

Especially at the price range it's currently going for on Discogs, it's worth every penny.

Today being the anniversary of Davis's birth, I wrote about AURA, a 1989 album that's never really clicked for me.

The next volume in the Bootleg Series has been announced; it's called That's What Happened 1982-85, and includes a disc of unreleased tracks from the Star People sessions, a disc of unreleased tracks from the You're Under Arrest sessions, and a live disc from 1983 (which is being released separately). I'm kinda excited. One of the previously unreleased 1985 tracks is a version of Tina Turner's "What's Love Got To Do With It":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-ZBl_rvmRE

https://www.discogs.com/release/24534968-Miles-Davis-The-Bootleg-Series-Vol-7-Thats-What-Happened-1982-1985

indeed.

A new remaster of Star People is the Vinyl Me Please "Classics" title for November.

I so wanted to like his eighties stuff...I love the attitude of going completely commercial and reconnecting with his audience, but I found it a chore.

I've always thought Star People was the weakest of the 80s albums, but maybe I need to revisit.

The Heat Warps blog has been posting a lot of great shows from, I think, the late 60s, and for sure on up to '75. In the 80s, I especially liked the fairly raw live We Want Miles[ and Aura, where he's with McLaughlin and The Danish Radio Big Band, feat. ace bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen: it's composed and arranged by Palle Mikkelborg, in the manner of Gil Evans, like if Miles and Gil got back together to make a *tasteful* update of their previous collabs, with a bit of electrification---real good for what it is.

Decoy is a good Miles 80s album too, with John Scofield.

listen to the live stuff!!!!

Live 80s Miles > studio 80s Miles pretty much across the board, except that I love Tutu.

Tutu and Amandla are both classics

Here’s one of the most insane mid 80s miles live sets

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

I love 80s miles. The incorporation of 80s production techniques feel especially fresh to me these days

My go-to 80s Miles track is "Fat Time"

i was typing really fast earlier but reading the pfork review of the new set inspired me to elaborate: the '80s miles studio recordings are for the most part great, tutu and amandla are my faves but star people which this set explores is maybe the closest his '80s studio work got to the (always revelatory) live work. but, like, even the man with the horn is dope af, people listen to it with their ears clouded by preexisting notions of him falling off in the '80s but it sounds like a direct follow-up to get up with it if you're hearing it right

decoy, star people, and you're under arrest see him folding in '80s production techniques and contemporaneous covers but they just sound, idk, amazing, unlike any other music, alive, emotional, sleek, mechanical, and generally always the funkiest thing you've ever heard. deej otm essentially

i also think the portrayal of him "going commercial" in the '80s ignores that his '70s fusion work was also an attempt to "go commercial" and connect to the youth but the translation came out beguilingly weird. same thing largely happened here, imo

This was posted on the jazz thread, but it's a fantastic interview with Pete Cosey, includes some bits on planned bands/records that failed to come together between 75 - 80. Also that Zigaboo Modeliste was supposed to join the band in the 70s.

Milford Graves was approached by Miles in the early '70s, too. Not sure how that would've gone -- if it would've been a typical Miles situation of, "You know that thing you do? Don't do it," or if he would've been in more of an Mtume role -- but either way, Milford turned Miles down.

Let me say that "Hopscotch" is fantastic.

i also think the portrayal of him "going commercial" in the '80s ignores that his '70s fusion work was also an attempt to "go commercial" and connect to the youth but the translation came out beguilingly weird. same thing largely happened here, imo

I agree a little, disagree a little, and/but in any case I wrote a whole book on electric Miles and it didn't stop at 1975, nor was it just about the music qua music — I talked about the Honda scooter commercial, the Miami Vice appearance, the way he started doing many, many more interviews in the 80s than he had before, and generally how he consciously attempted to become *a star* in 80s pop culture terms. And the music is definitely a big part of that, but not all of it; he wanted to be part of the pantheon. Look at the way he constantly praised Prince, in a way he never talked about Hendrix or James Brown or Sly in the 70s.

I could more readily picture a Graves/Coltrane album, though.

xp

Milford was a Latin percussionist before he became a jazz drummer; if Miles wanted him to do some Tito Puente shit, that could have been amazing.

The thought of Miles of approaching Graves is kinda of blowing my mind, just the two of them in the same room at the same time might have been too much haha

ooh have i missed the link for the cosey i/v?

new box set contains more instances of miles saying "teooooo" so it was worth releasing imo

Sorry, Cosey interview:
https://www.thelastmiles.com/interviews-pete-cosey/

ecollections is 'the one' for me on the Big Fun set. But Go Ahead is something else again. De Johnette (and Macero's treatment of him) is insane.

― The shard-borne beetle with his drowsy hums (Chinaski), Tuesday, September 4, 2018 2:13 PM (four years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I'm listening to the LP so I've not heard Recollections. I'll have to give it a listen.

― Scam jam, thank you ma’am (Sparkle Motion), Tuesday, September 4, 2018

the "obx ballad" suite is awesome, what the heck

i'm so happy

Speaking of this one, as Brad just did, I mentioned here in 2016:

I like just about all of Miles' 80s albums---The Man With The Horn could be so smoove, uh-oh---except he also had pre-tasteful Mike Stern showing up periodically with these greasy mullet licks, so it was a Miles experience after all.

Not just quotes, Miles also plays new stuff on the album.

unperson otm- he definitely *seemed* more open to pimping himself after coming out of retirement. it bugged me for a long time, but it occurs later in my own life: if he could appear on miami vice and then talk mountains of shit in interviews -just in the name of being MILES- why tf shouldn't he have?

also not trying to argue with brad, but the big difference about 70s vs 80s miles is that he was straight up playing others folks (very popular) music in the 80s. same shit he did in the bebop days, but the tech was just totally different, obviously. that just didn't happen in the late 60s/70s. he played music "inspired by" the pop stuff he liked but, well, on the corner was never gonna sound like sly or james brown. tho i do agree we want miles is a seriously undervalued recording - especially if you like that fried acid funk he was doing just before calling it quits.

new archive set is really fascinating. really glad to have the bootleg series back. hopefully this isn't the last one.

i mean i'm not trying to flatten the shift but pop music and the notion of engaging with it in the '70s vs the '80s are v different propositions to begin with. anyway my point mostly is that his commercial ambition didn't necessarily result in commercial music in either decade, e.g. how "human nature" and "time after time" get pretty exploded live, and i mostly just want to encourage people to listen to this stuff with open ears bc you will hear the same miles from the previous decades just pushing mercilessly forward. fuck if tutu and amandla sound like anything else really, even though they're critically thought of as occupying the same space as smooth jazz

i mostly just want to encourage people to listen to this stuff with open ears bc you will hear the same miles from the previous decades just pushing mercilessly forward

This I agree with 1000%. I wish the individual concerts from the giant 20CD Complete Miles At Montreux box were broken out and released separately, because all those different bands (1984, 1986, 1988, 1989) absolutely destroyed live.

excellent points all around- and i have to admit that i was one of those people who used to be very snobby re:80s miles. but you're both right: he always used his bands to build off of and that's really on display in the 80s. just because the tech changed didn't mean his chops did.

Thanks Jordan!

also not trying to argue with brad, but the big difference about 70s vs 80s miles is that he was straight up playing others folks (very popular) music in the 80s. same shit he did in the bebop days, but the tech was just totally different, obviously. that just didn't happen in the late 60s/70s. he played music "inspired by" the pop stuff he liked but, well, on the corner was never gonna sound like sly or james brown. tho i do agree we want miles is a seriously undervalued recording - especially if you like that fried acid funk he was doing just before calling it quits.

new archive set is really fascinating. really glad to have the bootleg series back. hopefully this isn't the last one.

― ミ💙🅟 🅛 🅤 🅡 🅜 🅑💙彡 (Austin), Tuesday, September 20, 2022 11:44 AM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

the way he 'tried to' become a star in the 80s (was still a star...) is actually much closer to jazz's formative essence than the stuff in the 70s where he's essentially fitting into rockist formatting (70s and 90s are alike in this way, and it makes sense that his 80s music became so ignored in the 90s when ppl got very hardcore real instruments-ish). what is a song like 'time after time' 'human nature' 'whats love got to do with it' but the contemporary version of a jazz standard?

lately been really into the 1987-1988 era miles stuff when he was working with Ricky Wellman on drums. You literally have the drummer who essentially innovated Go-Go with Chuck Brown playing behind Miles Davis for like two three years?? its insane stuff, that ppl pretended working w one of the most innovative percussionists -- innovative in an all-around musical genre sense -- was 'going pop' is bonkers, no one would interpret a similar maneuver that way today

good revive, I gotta check some of this stuff out. another vote for the greatness of We Want Miles!

Also while I do appreciate this stuff on a surface textural level, for feeling like a lost sonic template that feels fresh because of how difficult it is to find today, the amazing thing is that it isn't disposable 'on trend' either...like there's real meat to it, there's prismatic depths to what's being created here, even as its begun to feel prophetic for incorporating certain sonic accents that are swinging around to Cool again, it's never one-dimensionally That (well or rarely...)

Also random but Prince evidently was a huge fan of "You're Under Arrest," which I do love but that era feels a little blunt-instrument compared to TuTu and Amanda for me

lately been really into the 1987-1988 era miles stuff when he was working with Ricky Wellman on drums. You literally have the drummer who essentially innovated Go-Go with Chuck Brown playing behind Miles Davis for like two three years?? its insane stuff, that ppl pretended working w one of the most innovative percussionists -- innovative in an all-around musical genre sense -- was 'going pop' is bonkers, no one would interpret a similar maneuver that way today

Yeah, "Big Time" from Amandla (with Wellman on drums, and Jean-Paul Bourelly on guitar) is fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C85mwkuOCy0

ever since i relented about a decade ago, i've always considered amandla top tier later miles. that stuff is super rad. i thought for sure it would see a revival with the vaporwave stuff; maybe it did, i'm not hip enough to be in the know about such things. really hope there's a bootleg series installment to coincide with it.

also xpost back to unperson re:the big montreux box- always waited for them to piece that out, but alas no.

There was also a DVD version, because all those sets were filmed, too! I never did pick that up and kinda wish I had.

stuff in the 70s where he's essentially fitting into rockist formatting fuck this: he and Macero were finding their own formats, with musicians from various traditions, subgenres, individualized specialties pulled into and changed by his playing and instructions and Macero's edits. More audacious than his and Marcus Miller's partnership, but "rockist" doesn't say it.