Miles Davis "GET UP WITH IT" Poll

also i just want to put in a plug for miles' autobiography, it is so readable and engaging. so many great stories about other musicians in there too

Seconded, and otm. I've read that thing maybe 10 times, and I still find myself going back to it regularly.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprised no votes for mtume, it's a powerhouse of a song and matches up pretty well to the other rhythm-heavy tunes on the record.

Span this alb the other day - 'Calypso Frelimo' reminded me of 'Eyes of the World' by the Grateful Dead

MILES DAVIS: Get Up With It (Columbia) I don't trust Miles these days. Sometimes I suspect that his newer LPs are ripped off in a day or two of noodling over a pick-up rhythm section, and although I'm never sure--I'm never even sure whether it matters--I haven't played any of those records twice, just filed them as beyond me. Well, this set I play: since it contains over two hours of what sometimes sounds like bullshit: it's not exactly music to fill the mind. Just the room. A MINUS

augh how is that an A-

That's very trolling is how.

revisited this tonight. would've voted "mtume"

is that christgau? never understand why people have gathered in such a cult-like way to support this asshole, or any music critic really.

that came off weird, there are plenty of music critics i like and enjoy reading, but the elevation of christgau as some beacon of writing and criticism i never understood. half his reviews are thoughtless bullshit

personally i find most music reviews to be boring as hell, so his thoughtless bullshit capsule reviews are often refreshing.

generally the first half of "maiysha" is the half I love most but wow the second half is so rad

just such weird blues man

also al foster's beat on "rated x" is amazing, that whole tune is so wild

maiysha is godhead

it's funny, i don't think of this as a guitar record at all (unlike say jack johnson or pangaea/agharta maybe?) even though it's obviously got amazing playing all over it - something about the sound design and the scale of the songs

get up with it

get

up

with

it

my favorite Miles

So I've never heard this. As a HUUUGE fan of Pangaea and Agharta and the electric stuff, I'm guessing I'd like this?

haha waht that's crazy

yes you will like this

Maiysha has always reminded me of Prefab Sprout for some reason. And I don't know why! (Not meant as a put-down.)

my favorite Miles

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 20, 2017 1:25 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

me too

So I've never heard this. As a HUUUGE fan of Pangaea and Agharta and the electric stuff, I'm guessing I'd like this?

― octobeard, Friday, January 20, 2017 1:43 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

you'll spend countless hours w/ it i guess. it's amazing

My favourite Miles.

My favourite Miles.

― Dysphagia Nutrition Solutions (stevie), Sunday, January 22, 2017 2:51 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Mine too. Today it is, anyway.

"Calypso Frelimo," goddamn

what's up with the version of "Honky Tonk" on here, is it an edit of one of the longer ones from the complete Jack Johnson or Cellar Door sets?

i think it's an edit from the jack johnson sessions? definitely a studio recording from 1970.

It's definitely from the Jack Johnson sessions

Finally got around to checking this album out for the first time last weekend, on a long overnight train trip, pretty ideal listening conditions

“Honky Tonk” is from the Jack Johnson sessions but the open with the wah-wah clavinet first appeared as one of Teo’s brutal edits on Live-Evil. It’s on “Sivad,” the opening cut.

thank you! that was driving me crazy.

My favourite Miles.

― Dysphagia Nutrition Solutions (stevie), Sunday, January 22, 2017 2:51 PM (two years ago) bookmarkflaglink

Mine too. Today it is, anyway.

"Calypso Frelimo," goddamn

― Paul Ponzi, Wednesday, November 13, 2019 3:37 PM (two months ago) bookmarkflaglink

^^^

I know lots of Miles, but wasn't that familiar with this album. I just bought an original LP and I love it. It's so funky and rhythmic yet spacey as can be.

I regret passing on a clean copy of this the other month

Loved "Maiysha" for years, but always wrongly assumed it was John MacLaughlin playing on it. Turns out there are three (THREE) people playing electric guitar on that track.

also three guitars on "He Loved Him Madly" and "Mtume" iirc

Dipping into some Miles albums for the day... I have to say this may be my favourite of his. Each track its own weird planet of sound

when I listen to miles of this era the music conjures up this sense of incredible movement, speed, and directional changes of course that it just sets my imagination flying. When I see footage of these guys playing, it blows me away that there are just five guys standing on a stage. never fails to astound

Miles leans on the keyboard in "Rated X", right? I have a hard time with that one, otherwise yeah this goes well with "Big Fun". "He Loved Him Madly" pairs perfectly with "In A Silent Way".

Of his 70s albums, this one has always been a little problematic for me. For one, I first heard it on vinyl and a few of the sides are so long the sound wasn’t great (HLHM and CF). Secondly, Red China Blues is just this weird oddity in his catalogue. Brass band and harmonica? Third, the really long tracks are, well, really long and as great as He Loved Him Madly is I’d argue it’s maybe a little overlong (Calypso Frelimo is def. overlong). Fourth, the thing is also a massive odds and sods collection – Honky Tonk is from 1970 and sounds like it’s even older than that compared to the more contemporaneous stuff like Mayisha. Lastly, while I enjoy tracks like Mtume and Billy Preston fine, they are sort of interchangeable in my mind.

The one complete success here for which I have no reservations is Rated X – and it’s one of the most glorious things he ever did for a gazillion reasons. So it can’t help but color the record in a boldness and clarity of purpose that elevates its reputation a bit beyond the material. Cover doesn’t hurt either.

Worth noting that whatever version of this they put on Spotify has multiple moments (I noticed in "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo") where the sound crinkles to nothing in one channel as if we're listening to a needle drop. In general, the sound is shit and not in a "Teo mixed it that way, man!" way. My disc is some German pressing from the 90s before these were redone, no idea what the remasters sound like.

Does anyone have this Session of "He Loved Him Madly" bootleg?

https://www.kind-of-blue.de/seiten/disco/sowhat_sw149.htm

I dimly recall finding it on YouTube a few years ago, but I'm not 100% sure that actually happened. At any rate, it's not there now and slsk and a certain torrent tracker are coming up dry currently.

It looks like the full "He Loved Him Madly" session is about 20 minutes longer than the album version. It's probably nothing revelatory, but I've been deep into this record lately and I'll take all the extras I can get...

I did come across it on Soulseek once and downloaded it. It was indeed not too revelatory, and I had to delete it due to storage constraints.

Yeah I suspected as much. Speaking of "He Loved Him Madly", one of the most surprising things I learned from reading Paul Tingen's Miles Beyond was that Pete Cosey doesn't play on that track; it's just Reggie Lucas and Dominique Gaumont on guitar, with the latter playing lead. The story goes that Cosey arrived at the studio from the airport right as the session began, and rather than tune up and join in he basically decided to just sit there and send good vibes to the band. A very advanced technique that achieved magical results

This and SAW II are pretty much my two favorite albums to do work to.

The Paul Tingen book had a breakdown of the final version of "He Loved Him Madly", and as I recall it was pieced together out of a lot of fragments, there wasn't one huge take that got pared down.
If you want more, have you listened to the Bill Laswell remix? Panthalassa was the CD in my car when it got stolen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhtWMQex-1A

Oh yeah, I listened to Panthalassa years ago and remember digging it but haven't revisited since then. I always forget it exists whenever I go through an electric Miles phase. Just fired that up and it's sounding real nice, thanks. The drums are mixed/EQ'd in a way that scans as more "modern" than the original. It takes away some of the mystique but it's cool to hear it from a different perspective.

In the liner notes, Laswell says Teo Macero "didn't know how to record drums" or some nonsense, but it is interesting to hear the piece mixed this way.

Now listening to the Panthalassa "Rated X" and I think the modern drum mixing is way less successful there. The original still sounds totally alien, a wild monolith of noise with the shrieking organ threatening to consume the whole track. The Laswell mix sounds good (it's hard to fuck up pure gold source material) but way less compelling than the original

questionable cover art for the reissue
https://i.imgur.com/olxoYMH.png

"He Loved Him Madly" needs to be exactly as long as it is imo

That shorter version is an interesting experiment, but the full-length version needs its duration to dramatize the process of accepting grief.

This album has a song called “billy Preston?” How have I never heard this

You need to get up with it, it'll change your life

This used to be one of those masterpieces that was equally famous for being hard to find.

How iffy was the vinyl? Three sides weighing in at over 30 minutes a shot is nuts.

xp Yeah I got a Japanese import CD of it from the Virgin Megastore in Chicago in 1999 or 2000, which was incredibly exciting to find. It was for my birthday when I was 13 or 14, and my dad was kind of miffed to be spending $40 on a CD lol. There was an air of mystery surrounding it at the time, and because it was only available as an import you couldn't even stream samples of it on Amazon/CDNow.

The OG Columbia vinyl actually sounds great to my ears

Also on the vinyl something about the surface noise lends an extra layer of gravitas to "He Loved Him Madly"

xp to self I just remembered that when Columbia finally reissued it on CD a year or two after I got the Japanese import, I bought the US CD and gave the import to a fellow music nerd friend. Which I kind of regret now because the Japanese Mastersound CDs are supposedly mastered way better than the Columbia/Legacy CDs. But i've never been an audiophile, so I guess it's nbd

If it's any consolation, I have both and the difference in sound to my ears is negligible. But I'm not an audiophile, either

The only MasterSound CDs you absolutely have to have are the circa-2000 editions of Agharta and Pangaea, and that's because a) the mix is radically different — clearer and more spacious, you can hear everything everyone's doing — and there's about 10 extra minutes of music on Agharta and about 5 extra minutes on Pangaea.

Oh man the Agharta and Pangaea Master Sound CDs are a rabbit hole of their own. I have the 1996 vinyl replica Master Sound CDs of both, and they sound clear and fantastic, with the extra few minutes of music you mentioned (mostly ambient noise jamming):
https://www.discogs.com/release/2309989-Miles-Davis-Pangaea

Then in 2006 there was another series of Japanese vinyl-replica CD reissues with a completely different mix that is supposedly closer to the original Japanese vinyl mix (less dry than the 1996 Master Sound CDs with richer bass), and which do not include the extra few minutes of music:
https://www.discogs.com/release/3965702-Miles-Davis-Pangaea
I've downloaded this version, and I'm not sure I prefer it to the "dry" 1996 mix, but it's absolutely worth hearing for a more overtly psychedelic take on the material.

Then there was a series of Japanese "Blu-Spec" CD reissues in 2013, which are supposedly even more faithful to the original vinyl mix, though I haven't heard them.

There are whole threads on the Steve Hoffman forums devoted to the various reissues of these albums, and I've obviously spent too much time perusing them lol

"He Loved Him Madly" needs to be exactly as long as it is imo

"He Loved Him Madly" isn't long enough.

the correct answer is one of these, i think

a long time ago, when everyone had ipods, i was gifted a $10 digital apple music gift card. since almost every song was 99 cents, and wanting to maximize my enjoyment/$, i sought out the longest, best 99 cent songs i could find. i got a really bad version of In C and some other classical recordings, but by far my best purchase, on a whim, was "he loved him madly" for a buck.

i think a long time ago i read a description of "he loved him madly" as ambient music, and that didn't sound right to me. how could ambient music have funky drums for long stretches at a time? similarly, i thought the placing of In a Silent Way in The mind revealing itself to itself: the TOP 100 AMBIENT ALBUMS as voted by ILX was kind of weird for the same reason.

but now i do very much hear "he loved him madly" as environmental music, something to live to. i would love to have one of those old school, night out at the dark dive bar kinds of nights with it playing loudly over the speakers throughout the room, having conversations and also listening and watching the people grabbing their drinks and playing pool or whatever. it makes me think of hill street blues for some reason.

anyway, the length of the recording is essential to all that. imo it's so environmental that at times you can forget it's even there. you can let it fade to the background and exert its weird-ass mood in a more subliminal way, and then at some point, it returns like a friend in a new jacket. or, you can listen intently to all 30 minutes. i love the drums on it. ambient drums, sick

i think a long time ago i read a description of "he loved him madly" as ambient music, and that didn't sound right to me.

Nor to me. Ambient music moves at the pace of its own wisps; "He Loved Him Madly" creates the space in which it defines itself. It refuses to settle, the distortion and organ peals coming in at different angles.

Sometime this week I'll post links for the MasterSound versions of Agharta and Pangaea. People really need to hear them. They're like entirely different albums.

That would be awesome. I’ve never fucking heard them despite being into this stuff since about 1993-4.

Never saw this thread! Great info x links. Of related, General Electric Miles interest---from a Rolling Jazz 2021 discussion, re my frustration w Hancock-Shorter in Miles Quintet:

I played one of those Legal-in-Italy CDs (from before Media Lord Berlusconi became PM), Double Image(Moon, 1989), live in Paris, 1969, and here Shorter's effective enough, switching back and forth from tenor to soprano, rattling along between Miles and Chick Corea, with Dave Holland and Tony Williams prividing subway momentum--but then on Paris, France(Moon, 1990), live, 10-01-64, the full Second Quintet, Shorter and Hancock are back to being the blurry center I remember from xpost Water Babies and others, although in this case it may be in part the recording quality (which the other players push through).

...another formerly Legal-In-Italy set, Two Miles Live (Discarios, 19??), live in Vienna 11-05-71---boot sites usually say: Wiener Konzerthaus, Vienna (Austria)

Österreischer Rundfunk radio broadcast (B+)

Miles Davis (tpt); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Keith Jarrett (el-p, org); Michael Henderson (el-b); Ndugu Leon Chancler (d); Charles Don Alias (cga, perc); James Mtume Forman (cga, perc)
Yeah, The Lost Septet, never as a full line-up, in the studio at the same time, apparently. Here. Miles draws dry ice and other smoke from the fractive frictions of wah-wah, Echoplex, pitch controls, whatevs, revealing passing patterns, indented on the inner surfaces of his glass headpiece, also for instance KJ's organ sustains metallic sheets which his electric piano hand taps more patterns into, while Gary B's alto and soprano go for microtones from the slaugherhuas, Henderson's bass is bruise as much as blues, drums are all around the town, in a supportive way---Disc One has a *bit* more variety, segmentation; Disc 2 grabs me by the back of neck right off and don't let go.)

slaughter*haus*, sorry.

On Double Moon, the first one of those mentioned, There may not be any "electric instruments," other than effects of mics etc., but lots of spindly, treble-y phrasing and textures, lots of crackling, crispy expression overall.

Really happy to see this material get a lot more love. I just accepted it as "acknowledged classic" and moved on pretty quickly when I first heard it in the early 2000s. It didn't really start to resonate more deeply until the On the Corner sessions box set was released. Something clicked differently hearing those songs in that context and ever since then I've rated Get Up With It pretty highly. Live stuff from the era is always at least decent.

RE: The Bill Laswell "remixes" of this material from the late 90s— That was my first time hearing this material, so when I heard the full versions, it was clear which was better, but the Laswell mixes were at least entertaining.

Sorry, enthusiasm has me hitting submit post before I'm ready to do so.

My main point in bringing up the Bill Laswell thing is that it served its purpose with me, as it was the thing that made me start paying attention enough to be to going to the record store and buying Miles reissues on their release date.

I still think that Laswell record is pretty good (not the Panthalassa remixes album, but the original edit/collage) especially the "Black Satin; What If; Agharta Prelude Dub" section.

Yeah agreed Maresn3st; that's the one I also meant. I heard the remixes of the initial Laswell "remixes" way later and was wholly unimpressed.

I guess there's maybe still confusion as the first record was a re-edit and mix, from the source tapes and the second 'remix' record was shitty. I think poor Teo was up in arms about his original edits being pulled apart, but 'In A Silent Way' is even more enjoyable in its longer version.

Yeah, I never knew what to actually call that Laswell thing.

That's what I'll call it from now on: That Laswell Thing.☺

It's called something on the record sleeve, let's have a look.

Oh yeah, 'reconstruction & mix translation', that's fair

Yeah, and it's still streamable, buyable

Following the May 1974 Rio show posted upthread, The Heat Warps posted three São Paulo shows from the same tour a few days ago:
https://theheatwarps.com/2022/03/09/sao-paulo/

I've had the May 28 show for a while and never really got into it due to the muffled sound quality. But the June 1 show is new to me and it's STUNNING, probably the best recording I've heard from the Dark Magus line-up. Amazing sound from Dave Liebman's onstage tape recorder--hot but not overloaded and everyone comes through clearly. I haven't even checked out the June 2 show yet because I keep replaying this one...