Miles Davis "GET UP WITH IT" Poll

I have listened to this a lot, and I won't say it's not classic, but I can't say that Miles did his due diligence in making sure that every song needed to be exactly as long as it is.
I mean there are a number of longeurs here, its only contemporary rival may be X by Klaus Schulze, which is actually 7 minutes shorter.

Sorry, "longueurs".

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

What do you think of the 13-minute version I posted above?

I'd call "Billy Preston" and "Mtume" the biggest offenders.

"Mtume" is the only one that goes on too long for me. I just find the main vamp for that one kind of ugly and unpleasant. The B section is better but 15 minutes of back-and-forth between those two sections is exhausting. But He Loved Him Madly, Maiysha, Calypso Frelimo, Billy Preston--all exactly as long as they need to be.

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

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...