Miles Davis - In A Silent Way

Not that this should change your opinion of it (it either hits you or it doesn't), but Kind of Blue was actually very unique and tradition-breaking when it came out. It just also happens to be very easy to listen to and accessible, so much so that it's kind of become the definitive jazz album for many people. KOB was very much breaking with the bop tradition at the time, but most Charlie Parker probably sounds more radical to most people than KOB.

In a way maybe you could use the analogy of someone like Aaron Copland, who wrote very modern, innovative music that was also very pleasant to the ears, so that today a lot of his stuff is quintessential Americana, whereas Bartok and Stravinsky still sound avant garde.

I don't understand this reaction at all. I bought it when I was fifteen, and loved it for years, listening to it all the time. Now I don't listen to it much at all, but that's because I've got it all but memorized in my head, not because of some kind of inability to appreciate it on its own merits because it's been over-praised or some such I-read-too-many-magazines-and-believe-what-I-read-therein horseshit.

I would recommend the Silent Sessions, as it contains very little 'filler' - like 35 versions of a tossed-off vamp as in the Johnson Sessions - and it's the cheapest of the boxes.

It also does a really good job of showing how the album was edited, by including the full performances that were chopped up (something which as was mentioned above the Bitches Sessions box doesn't do).

Brakhage--thanks for the tip on the boxes.

I was actually going to post asking if anyone had some recommendations for something similar to that one, as i've still never heard anything else like it. "tauhid" by pharaoh sanders maybe comes close. doesn't need to be jazz, i just have a craving for that kind of dark, extended motif.

There's a track on Squarepusher's Budakhan Mindphone which, if it's not a straight sample, is an homage to "Circle". It's only a few minutes long, though.

-- pdf (newyorkisno...), November 9th, 2005.

Let me help you understand my reaction. I got into jazz around 1969 and the among the first jazz albums I had were IASW & BB and most of the Miles descendents mentioned upthread. But soon I got into the Chicago avant-garde: Roscoe Mitchell's Congliptious followed by the AEC material on BYG/Actuel (Reese & the Smooth Ones, A Jackson in Your House, A Message to Our Folks) and then the ESP avant material (Giuseppe Logan, New York Contemporary Five, Ayler, Heliocentric Worlds and so on). Whenever I heard KOB it was an anachronism, a bit of the past that seemed irrelavant in the light of Muhal's Things to Come from Those Now Gone, Levels and Degrees of Light and even things that had been recorded contemporaneously such as Ra's Angels & Demons at Play. For most of the twenty years from 1969 to 1989, I found it hard to listen to KOB even next to Miles's contemporaries--I loved Mingus no end, that shit swung, KOB was too down tempo for me.

I started going back though listening to the Coltrane Atlantic recordings and to Miles's classic quartets of the 60s. Sometime in the mid 80s KOB became available as a Columbia Legacy imprint and I put it on the player and played it over and over again. I think I had matured as a listener and began to appreciate the music that Miles and Evans composed as an alternative to bop.

Never was it a matter of my "inability to appreciate it on its own merits because it's been over-praised or some such I-read-too-many-magazines-and-believe-what-I-read-therein horseshit."

I have no idea where you got the idea that my not getting KOB was in any way innfluenced by such factors. It was simply a matter of slowing down and appreciating the music for what was there and not for what wasn't.

Working nearly contemporarily and forward (in jazz and jazz fusion--I'll leave the rock-fusion suggestions to those who hear those connections better than I):

John McLaughlin: Birds of Fire, and yes, Devotion
Hancock: the Mwandishi recordings up-thread and don't overlook Head Hunters
Jan Garbarek/Bobo Stenson Q-tet: Witchi-Tai-To
Soft Machine: 5
John Surman/Morning Glory: s.t.
Tony Williams Lifetime: Emergency
Khalid Yasin/larry Young: Lawrence of Newark

-- Tyler Wilcox (tywil...), November 8th, 2005.

Oh, ick! And let me assure you I am a Laswell fan. I hate what LAswell did on PPanthalassa. As in, let's imagine IASW without Tony Williams. Gack. I probably have forty or so disks by each of Miles and of Laswell and they ain't all gems, for sure, but Panthalassa is one I sold without regrets.

And he did do s sequel, sort of. It is called "Divine Light: Reconstructions and Mix Translations" in which Laswell remixes & recasts the Carlos Santana/Jonhn McLaughlin "Love Devotion & Surrender" and the Santana/Alice Coltrane "Illuminations." I have kept this one, but still prefer the original LDS. He may have improved "Illuminations" somewhat or at least offered a remix that is a little less pretentious than the original. (or am I thinking of Welcome?

As I was saying, I purchased Witchi-Tai-To about 6 months ago and it's barely left my record player. A wholly amazing album.

I hadn't listened to this in years, then put side A on the other night. I thought I had maybe fucked up my turntable because the guitars sounded kinda out of tune no matter what I did. Then I listened to a couple of iTunes clips and remembered "oh, that's just how it sounds!"

I have the Panthalassa mix of this and it really is beautiful music.

It's interesting that in both the Tim Buckley and Brian Eno biographies, both subjects got so obsessed with In A Silent Way that they listened to little else for a long period (nearly a year).

Anyone got Big Fun? Been listening to it loads lately and it's some of the best shit I've ever heard. Obv love on the corner, get up with it, and iasw. Where to next? Is dark magus good? Herbie hancock? All of you need Big Fun by the way, I listened to it on a long bus journey through Spain this week, just such end times experimentalism, about as rich as music gets.

lotsa good suggestions of similar stuff in this thread and this one: In A Similarly Silent Way

you've heard pangaea, right?

In A Silent Way is among the best albums ever.

I love Big Fun. Ife!

Dark Magus is great, Pangaea is great, Agharta is mostly great.

Herbie's solo stuff immediately following his stint with Miles is amazing too, but in a different way, not as out there. more pop hooks tho

I don't have Get Up With It, always annoyed me that this stuff is kinda hard to find on vinyl

Big Fun is also one of my favorites. Just going through this thread and thinking that it was getting the love it deserves. I should listen to it tonight.

I always thought it was weird that Ife was the one eletric-period Davis piece that hip hpo guys sampled (offhand I can think of at least two - Digital Underground and New Kingdom)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCO79Y1eQvI

speaking of Miles, am I a complete chump for sort of wanting this?
http://feature.legacyrecordings.com/milesdavis/images/Miles-CompleteAlbums-01.jpg
Miles Davis - Complete Columbia Album Collection

No more than any of the Beatles chumps.

seriously. tho u probably have at least half those albums already

i do. and unlike the Beatles things, these aren't new remasterings or anything, I don't think ... AND YET.

The 97-onwards Miles remasterings are all fine to my ears anyway.

oh yeah, I don't think there's any particular need to remaster those records again. They sound great!

i think i just occasionally get box set fever

nah I totally want that box set

there are a lot of box sets I would like to have tbf

The box sounds cool though kinda inessential since I already have 5 of the 7 Columbia sets (still gotta get the Gil Evans box and the Seven Steps box).

However this sounds cool: "The release of the MILES DAVIS COLUMBIA box set coincides with a three-month exhibition at the Museé de la Musique in Paris (October 16, 2009, through January 17, 2010) entitled "We Want Miles." The exhibition follows the evolution of the artist from his birth (May 26, 1926) and childhood in East Saint Louis to his final Paris concert in July, two months before his death on September 28, 1991."

I hope it's better than the jazz museum in KC, though, which is sadly kinda silly.

I always wonder if the "Complete Sessions" box-sets are worth it. I've got the studio albums of In A Silent Way, Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, and others, but there are these huge three-disc sets that I sort of want.

oh they're worth it. Jack Johnson esp., imo

in recent months i have struggled to listen to anything other than miles davis (post IASW stuff basically).
guess that means Big Fun is now on my list as i had given that one a miss.
oh, and the remasters sound fantastic, excellently packaged (no digipack nonsense), and are reasonably priced now for us cheapskates.
a good example of how to do a reissue program.

Can't nab the Jack Johnson complete sessions on eMusic, since it's like 1000 credits. But my local used disc store has it.

Jack Johnson, IASW, and BB boxes are all really good.

So are the On The Corner and Cellar Door boxes! Do you have $500 to spare.

Columbia House did me right on these boxes (like $30 a pop), except the On the Corner one which was a Christmas gift b/c otherwise it was like $120 for 6 disks and it's tough to justify that (though the packaging is gorgeous).

yeah you can actually find pretty good deals on some of them. Bitches Brew I think I got new from amazon for $25.

exactly, I got the three I mentioned for around 25 each. Still haven't seen the OTC box for less than 100 though.

The Miles + Gil Evans box is really nice, probably my favorite pre-IASW Miles stuff.

As I understand it, those boxes end up compiling most (if not all) of stuff like Big Fun, Water Babies, Get Up With It & Milestones (the wierdest one of them all)...

The Silent Way box takes some getting used to, the way it splits up Filles de Kilamanjaro.