Miles Davis : Electric by Alan Moore [evil:cat]

This month marks 10 years since the death of Miles Davis. It's only recently that his 1970s rock/funk recordings have gained recognition. Here, for the uninitiated, is a guide to some of the wildest music of the 20th Century.
This article covers the music made by Miles Davis between 1969 and his ‘retirement’ in 1975. This period of Miles’ creativity has been much maligned by almost everyone: the jazz lot never got over Bitches Brew, the hippies who loved Bitches Brew couldn’t take the music post-1972, no-one in the world liked On The Corner. While I agree there are no albums from this period that rank as highly as, say, Kind Of Blue or Sketches Of Spain, I still argue that Miles made some of the most forward-thinking, best music of the 20th Century during this period.

This isn’t a review of his music, or a re-hash of details of studio sessions. Between the Autobiography, the liner notes from the records and a great new book called Miles Beyond, you can get that information elsewhere. What I’m going to do is pick through the dozens of records Miles released, and recommend the ones I think are the best. Hopefully I’ll get you all interested in music made over 30 years ago that I believe we are only just catching up with now.

I will also approach this period in Miles’ creative life from a novel angle - I’m going to treat it as if Miles was a new artist who released his first album - In A Silent Way - in 1969, and his last (the duo Agharta And Pangaea) in 1975. This will prevent any ‘but his earlier stuff was better’ style arguments.

THE END OF THE 60s

In 1969 Miles Davis entered the studio with a group of musicians (including Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Josef Zawinul, Dave Holland and Tony Williams). He took with him some rough ‘sketches’ of tunes, and the band began to improvise along these themes (except for the tune In A Silent Way, which was based on a composition by Joe Zawinul). What makes the music notable is that, considering the type of music being played (jazz) and the year in which it was recorded, some very different techniques were used to construct it. It’s well known that many great songs are spliced together from different takes in the studio, but in this case the studio was as much a part of the creative process as the playing of the instruments.

Firstly, Miles was experimenting with electric instruments more common to rock music. Herbie Hancock was playing an electric organ. Next, he had the group record several tunes (In A Silent Way, Shhh, It’s About That Time and Peaceful), some of which received two takes. There were also some other tracks dropped from the final album. He took these performances, and much like a remixer would do nowadays, constructed the tunes from the raw materials. I won’t go into details about the process - this is an overview, not an in-depth study.

The result is one of Miles’ best albums of his Electric period. It’s not even jazz, not really. A certain well-known Drum and Bass artist has gone on record claiming In A Silent Way is the first Drum and Bass album, way back in 1969. In a way, this is correct. The album owes more to New Age and D’n’B than it does jazz, although the improvisational heart of jazz is still present, as is the vital ingredient - Miles. He played the same on most records - a unique, mournful, distinctive style. What made the difference was the backing music to his Horn - when he chose well, he came up with stunning albums like this.

The thing to realise with Miles’ electric recordings is that this was an evolutionary process. He was searching for something, for a new Music. In A Silent Way was the start of this process, and surprisingly, also a result as opposed to an experiment. In fact, that’s the best way to view all of these records - like Science experiments in school, they have a method, and work towards a result. Quite often, Miles would come out with a record not a result. This makes things more interesting, as we get to view the process, not just the result. It worked two-fold: we have the studio recordings and the live recordings. With the studio recording we only hear the results after manipulation. In the live arena we hear the same ideas being refined and perfected over a 6-year period.

STIRRING THE BITCHES BREW

Back to 1969. Miles continued to experiment, and in doing so, produced his best-selling album, Bitches Brew. Many hail Bitches Brew as the best of his work from this period, but I disagree. Bitches Brew was Miles’ attempt to capture the rock audience of the time. Just think back to what most American rock fans were listening to at the time - Grateful Dead, Hendrix (Prior to his death, Miles and Hendrix had jammed a few times and intended to record, along with Gil Evans. This never came to be) and so on. Hippie music. Bitches Brew certainly has its moments, but it is excessive. This music could have been cut down to 45 minutes and been much better. It’s too loose, and goes to extremes of both jazz and rock that make it irritating to listen to.

Even worse are the sessions used to construct this album - listen to The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions - four CDs of music, one of which is a waste of time. Complete chaff. For the record, I believe Spanish Key from the album, and the track Feio from the sessions (and now a bonus track on the CD edition) are the best of the whole set. On the plus side, this album gave Miles (and Teo Macero, his producer) a chance to refine their studio technique for the following few years recordings. So, a valuable part of the process then, but not really essential now.

Much better is Live-Evil from 1971. Most of the album was recorded live in 1970, but was filled out with studio-recorded interludes. If earlier live albums (Black Beauty and Live At Fillmore) allowed us to hear the music from Bitches Brew being refined onstage, to the joy of the audiences attending, Live-Evil took us one further - new tracks, created and refined onstage. Miles himself said that Live-Evil was pretty close to what he had tried to achieve on Bitches Brew. It is certainly a highlight of Miles’ rock phase. By this point his audience was equally black and white kids, all into the rock music that had displaced jazz in the 1960s.

The most rock album Miles made was a soundtrack to the documentary about the famous boxer, Jack Johnson. A Tribute To Jack Johnson, released in 1971, is Miles’ last great studio record of the 1970s. Two tracks make up forty or so minutes of pure rock music. In this case, unlike Bitches Brew, there’s none of the sprawling studio jamming made its way through to the end product. Miles knew what he wanted this time, and it shows. The drums have the same rhythm as a boxer - Miles was a boxer and that too shows through. Again, this record is a masterpiece on Teo Macero’s part - great editing that even allowed him to splice a few minutes from the In A Silent Way album into this one!

TEO MACERO - PRODUCER OR NUISANCE?

Teo Macero is a much-discussed element of Miles’ electric music. He was trained in classical music, and while this meant he could record straight acoustic jazz music in an exemplary manner, he didn’t really understand what Miles was trying to do. Quite often Columbia would urge Macero to just get an album finished for release (remembering it was not uncommon at that time to put out two or three albums a year), and Macero would take the raw tapes and splice the material into something he could understand - quite often completely missing the point Miles was aiming for.

It is hard to know which albums Miles recorded at this time fit Macero’s or Davis’ vision best. There were arguments when Macero attempted to do something Miles didn’t want, but it is inevitable that some of the recordings released were not what Miles intended. Partly due to this, there are only three studio albums released in the 1970s after Jack Johnson: On The Corner, Big Fun and Get Up With It. The latter two are in fact compilations of studio sessions recorded between 1969 and 1974 (although Get Up With It did contain a single album’s worth of 1974 recording alongside the earlier material, so can be viewed as a proper album if we like).

GETTING FUNKY

By 1972, when On The Corner was released, Miles was under criticism for ‘selling out to the white folks.’ In his push to get a younger audience, Miles had concentrated on rock music, and in effect pulled in a mainly white audience. Black audiences at the time were grooving to Sly Stone and James Brown, and Miles wanted to get that audience buying his records. Listening to On The Corner, it’s clear where Miles was headed, but the album itself is a travesty.

The basic idea is sound - two long funk grooves (one each side) with Miles and band over the top. What must have seemed strange at the time is now commonplace - the Eastern elements such as the Sitar, and an additional percussionist playing bongos and so on. Miles plays a lot of keyboard, and when he does play his trumpet, it’s using a wah-wah pedal. You can imagine how this would have outraged critics, and it could have been a masterpiece. However the album is badly produced, the sound is muddy and the group were only just starting with this type of music, so the entire thing misses its mark.

Okay, so on listening again, it isn’t that bad. But it’s too short, the musicians don’t have room to breathe, there’s no real exploration of the music, and there seems to be no point to the tracks. The sound quality is poor, as already mentioned - perhaps the remastered edition sounds good, but I’m not wasting another £10 to find out. It’s a failed experiment, a necessary part in attaining perfection, but that doesn’t mean it should ever have been released.

That was the last proper Miles studio album, and luckily critics and fans alike panned it. Miles realised it was time to leave the studio and get on the road to perfect his music. He wouldn’t release another studio album for two years.

As a last note on Miles’ studio output - Big Fun is rather poor, made up of studio off cuts from the Bitches Brew and On The Corner sessions, and doesn’t even have the excuse of trying to achieve something new that On The Corner has. Avoid it like the plague. As for Get Up With It, it has its moments, but around half of it is rubbish. He Loved Him Madly is an interesting track, all ambient noise and electronic bloops, but at 30 minutes is over-long. The version on Panthalassa is much better. Calypso Fremilo is also interesting, but appears many times in many forms on the live albums, so you might be better off holding out for the live records instead.

IN CONCERT

The music Miles was playing needed to be played live - in a large hall with good acoustics where the music could have room to breathe. The improvement in the music is apparent on Miles Davis In Concert, recorded in September of 1972. The music Miles had created over the past 3 years was used as a base for the musical explorations of the next three, and finally we can hear improvements in the live recordings now available to us. Most of these were only issued in Japan in the 70’s, but thanks to Columbia’s aggressive reissue policy, are easily available now.

Despite the fact Miles Davis In Concert is superior to On The Corner, it is a poor quality recording, so may as well be avoided. There is a better disc from this period, available as an import from France, recorded at the Olympia theatre in July 1973. Also worth mentioning is an MP3 available from Beatthief.com. Both of these feature what would become regular elements of his sets - known to the musicians in technical terms such as Turnaroundphrase but often titled differently on the records. Of course, by July 1973 the musicians had had chance to perfect some elements of the music. Also, Miles was now playing both his Horn and the keyboard. This keyboard was pre-synthesiser and was not played in the usual manner.

Much of the music appears at first listen to be atonal and arrhythmic. Quite often, the keyboard would seem to be out of tune compared to the rest of the music. This is the first obstacle to overcome in listening to these live recordings - elements would not fit together correctly. However, after 40 minutes of this, your ears become attuned to these seemingly incompatible layers of music, and you open yourself to a whole new groove.

In 1973 the music was made up of Funk drums and bass, with Eastern rhythms offsetting the basic beats, layers of keyboards washing and screeching over the top of that, and finally flute, saxophone, multiple electric guitars and Miles’ horn providing the (for want of a better word) melody. As the man himself said, the band settled into a deep, African and Eastern groove. This structure would not alter noticeably right up to 1975. The musicians themselves were interchangeable, and generally never rehearsed. Many of them would arrive at their first show and be told to get onstage, listen to what was being played, follow Miles’ directions and just play for two hours.

JAPAN, 1975

You could buy every recording released (numerous available both officially and as bootlegs, all over the world) from 73 to 75, but I suggest you save your money and simply buy the following two albums: Agharta and Pangaea. These represent one day in the life of the Miles Davis band in February of 1975. Agharta is taken from an afternoon show, and Pangaea from the evening show. Both albums weigh in at around 90 minutes each - Agharta has three songs, Pangaea has two. Yes, you read that right, three tracks on Agharta’s two CDs and two 45-minute tracks on 2 CDs for Pangaea!

These two albums also represent the furthest Miles got with his electrical explorations - the music people would only just be catching up with 20 years later. He had cut down the number of musicians onstage to seven: Miles himself, Sonny Fortune, Pete Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster and Mtume. This was a far superior band to his previous groups, and if you check it against the band from On The Corner, you’ll see how few of the musicians on that abomination made it through to the end. Miles had his musicians well trained, too. With one movement of his hand, the entire stage would become silent for a few beats before the band started up again. As many of his band have asserted over the years, you had to think all the time onstage with Miles, and you had to listen to the music too. If you stopped paying attention or stopped listening you could wreck the whole thing. Both albums are full of the sort of tricks you wouldn’t expect to hear outside a studio.

Although there is a deep funk groove to these records, there are also some stunning guitar workouts reminiscent of Hendrix, some great cross-continental sounds from Africa and beyond, and, although he plays very little on these records (due to ill-health), Miles shines also. Every time I play one of these records I hear something new. There is that much depth to this stuff! Over the course of these four CDs Miles and his band travel from hard funk/jazz to ambient chill-out, revisiting many old tunes (including one from as far back as the Jack Johnson soundtrack, recorded in 1970 and released in 1971).

Perhaps Miles intended to go further. People were having a hard time keeping up anyways, and these albums were not released outside of Japan until 1990. No matter, as he never went any further. Agharta and Pangaea are the last official recordings of Miles in the 1970s, and four months later he made his last recording of the decade in New York, which, to this day is unissued.

I played these two records to a friend recently, and asked him who made them and when they were released. He guessed it was someone like Roni Size, and that they were released between 1995 and 2000. When I revealed the artist and the release dates, he was stunned. Hopefully, if you buy these albums, you will be too.

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