Miles' "On the Corner"

I keep meaning to revisit Jack Johnson because it's never made much impact on me.

(x-post)

This is one of my 2 favorite Miles albums (if one can have such a thing). The other is "Get Up With It," so take that how you may.

It's one of the dirtiest and most frantic records I've ever owned. It's like a frantic machine-guns-and-motorcycles chase seen through the streets of the crowdedest city on Earth on the hottest day of the year during rush hour.

Hah, completely OTM, but I have to admit that in practice this translates into something midly irritating..

the best thing about this period is that miles thought it might get him through to the kids but he failed completely. one of the best-sounding failures to meet an objective ever.

fusion was also the death of jazz in many ways.

It's funny how Miles was trying to hook the kids like Sly and James Brown did, but he created this utterly dark, ferociously hectic album instead. On The Corner will freak out many more partiers than it will inspire them to dance. I've never heard such menacing hand claps in my life. And, yes, OTC *is* funky, but in an alien way. OTC was way ahead of its time and remains one of my favorite albums ever.

What'd you think about Miles Beyond, the other electric Miles book? And how are you going about things differently?

I thought the Tingen book was pretty good, but like every other writer on Miles to date, he gave unfairly short shrift to the 1980s material. I think that's the biggest difference between my book (Running The Voodoo Down: The Electric Music Of Miles Davis, coming out from Backbeat Books in spring 2005) and all the others before it. I started listening to Miles in 1986 or 1987, and I have always heard Tutu and You're Under Arrest on the same plane as Kind Of Blue or Milestones or Bitches Brew or whatever. (In fact, I don't like BB all that much; the first two tracks are great, but some of the other stuff really plods.)

The other big difference is, I deliberately set out not to write a biography. I didn't interview hardly anybody; the book is criticism, pretty much from front to back. There are facts present, of course, but I didn't feel the need to be the 4000th guy to ask Herbie Hancock what he thought about switching to electric piano for Miles In The Sky, or whatever. I wrote my book by reading all the others, listening to all the albums, reading a shitload of other stuff, and gathering my own thoughts on Miles. So you get Miles from a 32-year-old metalhead's perspective.

I expand the scope a little, too. I talk about his sidemen's (and ex-sidemen's) records - Mahavishnu Orchestra, Tony Williams Lifetime, Mwandishi, the Headhunters, Return To Forever. I talk about James Brown, Jimi Hendrix and Sly Stone. I talk about bands today that are exploring Miles's ideas, like Burnt Sugar and DJ Krush and Tim Hagans and some of the Thirsty Ear Blue Series guys, plus that Henry Kaiser/Wadada Leo Smith project Yo Miles. It's probably gonna be received by the jazz press as a bizarre melange of useless tangents and ranting, but fuck 'em. One of the things I say early on is that I think everybody has their own Miles. I decided to write a book about mine.

Honestly, I was just discussing this with Dahlen the other day: Miles' 70s stuff? SO much has been written about it, but it's all, yeah, mostly the same. I think people have spent a lot of energy rehashing what Miles' motivations were—who he was listening to, etc.—but almost none figuring out what he actually did on those records.

So, needless to say, I'm looking forward to your 32-y/o metalhead perspective. Maybe you can find some obscure connection between Pete Cosey and Yngwie Malmsteen.

btw, i always thought it was greg tate who got more critics to take 70s miles more seriously.

otc is halfway to kraftwerk on the stiff funk meter, but only halfway. who in the post punk world was avowedly influenced by this stuff? i always used to mix otc and agharta into metal box and hex enduction hour.

I listen to Jack Johnson and Get Up With It a lot, and regard those two as the best electric Miles records. And Agartha, but I'm a bit burnt on that one these days, having listened to it quite a bit over the last few years. Altho there's lot of great stuff on other records. On the Corner is something I admire and in certain moods really like a lot, but it's never gotten me like JJ or GUWI. I bought the remastered CD recently and have been listening to it more, and I've come to appreciate it a lot more.

this is my favorite miles after in a silent way.

I haven't actually heard this one but it sounds like it would be my favourite album ever.

since when is funk not about finding new alien ways of being funky? It's one of the funkiest things I've ever heard

But yes, he's more fair than, say, Bill Cole was. And it's light years beyond that Ornette book, where the author refers to all the Prime Time stuff as having "emphasis on the 2nd and 4th beats".

These two artists have very dissimilar approaches. Apples and oranges. This looks like the ol' 'let-me-pull-a-couple-names-out-of-a-hat' trick to me.

what if art ensemble of chicago had a funk rhythm section

Have you ever heard their music? Was there a more versatile double-bassist than Malachi Favors? They're quite capable of playing in just about any style they wish, as needs arise. But what about their very singular music do you find unsatisfactory? i.e. why would you ask them to blithely gesture when they've spent lifetimes cultivating a sound that is very much their own ( hint: they don't sound like "coltrone/coleman" either)

Anyway, On the Corner is a definite top-5 Miles disc. Used to consider it my all-time fave, but I'm not so sure now. Yes, handclaps! ALso sitar and cowbell.

Ha! Same here. One of those records you instinctively understand (or not ;) even if it's like nothing you've ever heard before. First jazz (or should that be "jazz"?) record I ever bought and still my favorite of his (together with Bitches Brew, never can decide which is my fave/fave).

(ok i can really, but it's just so... not quite funky, but... maybe jess is otm.)

...okay, I'll dig it out and have another listen.

they [coltrane and coleman] are different but their innovations are fundamental to what cutting edge jazz is today: they established harmonic freedom in the solo, melodic freedom in the scale including microtones, and popularized songless improvisation.

in the 70s and 80s, jazz was no longer making money like it did before. so there was a huge split between purist/avant jazz typified by aeoc and million-selling lite fusion typified by grover wash. jr. a representative 80s performer, wynton marsalis, regularly ventured into coltrane and coleman territory in his solos and occasionally in his composition style too. their style had been absorbed into the main stream, if less comfortably than that of the boppers. that of 70s miles had not, and perhaps has not even today.

i didn't say i didn't like aeoc: i was imagining a world where those players of the 70s i esteem had chosen to get down with a vengeance. i would like that even better.

hint: they don't sound like "coltrone/coleman" either

in terms of the nuts and bolts of their solos, i guess i disagree. from a music theory standpoint, i would contend, free jazz is free jazz, just like blues is blues and chromatic composition is chromatic composition. you can say ligeti is way different from schoenberg, and so too aeoc was way different from ornette, but the difference is of degree not of kind. [strange, i feel like geir talking in this way... am i wrong about all this?]

--

interesting to see on this thread that lots of people pick out different choices for the album that does nothing for them... for me, it's "it's about that time"

Sounds great.

who in the post punk world was avowedly influenced by this stuff?

Contortions and Voidoids (though don't know if I'd call 'em "post"). (Quine r.i.p., poor fellow.)

while light on the electric guitar...

From my self-centered view it's an incredible guitar album, since it flipped how I thought of the instrument. Guitars not used for outfront solos, more for darts and jabs and laying down barbed wire, shooting nails in your wheels, suckering you into the ditch.

actually this is a crucial point I've been curious about for a while. how many of us love 'sketches of spain' as much as we love the 70's stuff? how many of us love 'kind of blue' as much? 'birth of the cool'?

I kind of actively hate 'sketches of spain'.
'kind of blue' & 'cool' I like on occasion, but with a certain detachment.

we now raise an eyebrow at the violent critical reception of 70's miles, but how many modern fans of those albums are just as passionate about the earlier stuff?

i'll second ascensceur pour lechefaud.

Considering some of the music that Gil Evans made in the 70s like his arrangement of Hendrix tunes and 'Svengali', it is a shame that nothing between him and Miles never happened in that time period. I wonder what a Gil Evans arrangement for a big band like the one used on Bitches Brew would have sounded like. It seems to me that Evans was also there in spirit on the arrangement for "He Loved Him Madly".

All this time I've thought I thought I was all alone [sob]!

Fwiw, I'm rather fond of the "atrocious" Sly & Robbie cover of Black Satin too (it's on the '85 album Language Barrier btw Gaz!).

why is [reputedly difficult album/book/film of choice] considered difficult, I got it straight away

But this genuinely was my experience with OTC - I was expecting something that would need repeat listening before it sounded like music, and instead got a dense but immediately enjoyable slab of energetic funk that doesn't seem any more difficult than, say, James Brown's more abstract live stuff. I'm still baffled by its reputation as Miles's least accessible album.

Crap things about You're Under Arrest:
Sting

It's not in the same league as Tutu 'though, my love for which is enormous and probably irrational on account of it being the first jazz album I ever bought.

I like Sketches Of Spain, but I hate all the other Gil Evans albums, especially Porgy & Bess. Soundtracks to naptime if ever there were any.

Should note, btw, that Language Barrier was produced by noted On the Corner champion and Panthalassa "Conceiver," Bill Laswell...

I have a very nice Japanese CD of Agartha. It really sounds better than other re-releases. There are some truly sublime moments on Agartha, right up there with some of the spooky and for me incredibly evocative bits on "Calpyso Frelimo" off of "Get Up With It."

As far as liking '50s/'60s Miles better than the '70s...well, I relate more to the '70s stuff since it's closer to my era, I suppose. But there are great performances from the period when he had Bill Evans and Adderley in the band, I'm thinking of an amazing version of "Love for Sale" from '58 on which Evans is so fucking cool. I also don't love the Gil Evans soundscapes (except for the great, great "Miles Ahead"). The '60s stuff is actually somewhat like the "process" music of the '70s, just minimal "heads" and then out, with Tony Williams basically the main reason for listening. I have heard a boot of a '67 performance with Shorter/Carter/Williams/Hancock that for me blows pretty much everything else Miles did in the '60s away, completely intuitive long medleys of various tunes. It's called "No Blues."

But I think Davis did some incredible music during all his periods--I love "Aura," for example. I do prefer Monk and Rollins to Davis during the '50s and '60s, for the most part, and I like Wayne Shorter's '60s solo stuff better as well. So in the end, I do listen to the electric stuff way more than anything else by Miles.

(Love Pangaea, never heard Agharta, find Magus a little tiresome at bits but great at others.)

"Like a great hip-hop mix, every sound disorients you, suprises you, but somehow every sound fits so perfectly that you couldn't imagine it anywhere else (it's the Miles Davis effect, in other words, but the sounds themselves are the least Miles-like the group had ever come up with)."

On the other hand when the sitar and bells come out a bit more and the groove seems to be disrupted I kind of like it. Caught me by surprise.

'I didn't get this album until after I had gotten into Can and a lot of electronic dance music'

Did Macero and Miles know abt Can?

'To describe this album as "funky" seems odd as it I don't think it is very funky and I don't think it's supposed to be either. He was listening almost exclusively to Sly Stone and Stockhausen when he made it and it shows'

hey dada, what albs would you describe as 'funky'? I haven't got very far into funk so i'm interested. Not sure I'm hearing on Stockhausen either but its only on first listen.

Funky, to start: Bar-Kays, Meters, Lee Dorsey, Mer-Da...

thanks eddie.

I think I love Workin', Kind of Blue, Four + More, Miles Smiles, Jack Johnson, Pangaea, and Live Around the World all exactly the same.

Btw, I finally got around to get Art Taylor's book of musician-to-musician interviews Notes and Tones, and it's fantastic. It seems they were mostly done around the late 60s with Miles, Tony Williams, Richard Davis, etc. so there's a lot of great of-the-moment talk about the music, changing times, etc.

Also, he took most of the pictures included himself so there are all these brilliant candid shots, like "here's Art Blakey walking a small dog" and "here's John Coltrane crashed out on the couch".

except that fresh came out a year later

That's because Sly tended to get lost in a drug haze, and consequently worked a lot slower than Miles did. Miles was listening to advance tapes of "In Time" before recording On The Corner; when I interviewed Dave Liebman, he told me a bunch of stories of how Miles used to make him listen to Sly's newest stuff at the house all the time.

I like On the Corner a lot but it's probably pretty low on my favorites list of the period--I just always dug the live stuff a bit more. my 1-2-3 is In a Silent Way, Jack Johnson, and Dark Magus, probably in that order. the first 10 minutes of Magus is just jaw-droppingly ferocious, maybe the most GALVANIZING thing I've heard from anyone, damn near. but "Black Satin" is some kinda masterpiece for sure.

Get Up With It
On the Corner
Pangea
Bitches Brew
Live/Evil
Jack Johnson
Big Fun
It's About That Time
Agharta
In a Silent Way
Dark Magus
Live at the Filmore

They're all fuckin' great records!

But I like other Miles periods just as much. If you had to pick one 20th century musician, he's the man.

Yes, I'm surprised people are describing it as 'funky'. It sounds edgy and jerky, not quite fluid.

Also the first one or two discs in that mammoth Montreaux box are 70s era. I haven't heard them. My brother actually has that box, the nutball. I keep meaning to get him to burn me the 70s stuff.

Does anybody else but me have the bootleg More Live Evil, most of which is a Japanese concert from March '73? It's terrific. There's one track where Dave Liebman's soprano sax sounds like an electric violin.

An attempt: I'd say no, he hadn't heard them. The same artists always get rhymed off in Miles' bios (Sly, Stockhausen, Buckmaster) as what he was listenng to at the time. I just assumed that Miles, listening to Stockhausen, and Czukay, having been taught by Stockhausen, came to the same conclusions.

As for the question about whether Miles was listening to Can, I, too, would venture a "no fucking way." You'd have heard about it — Miles was insanely proud of his European listening tastes.

Phil, do you know if any of the stuff Miles did w/ Buckmaster ever made it to tape? I seem to recall from the reissue's liner notes that he was disappointed with the final outcome...

And I definitely think Can was listening to Miles Davis. A song like "Pinch" from Ege Bamyasi sounds like a jam that would happen during a Miles set from that period - except without the trumpet.

Don't forget Irmin Schmidt, too.

This had never occurred to me before, but I can see it. "Pinch" always struck me as similiar to the live 2-part track on the second side of James Brown's Mother Popcorn LP.

great anecdote! was this after a concert, or were you interviewing Teitelbaum?

Wow, Phil totally OTM here. I always feel like everyone has a different top-five Miles records. The other day I found out that a friend of mine's favorite is, like mine, Filles De Kilamanjaro. I've never met ANYONE else who shared this opinion. I have another good friend, a musician, who loves Jack Johnson and loves Nefertiti and Sorcerer and stuff like that, but when I played him Filles, he couldn't get into it at all. I myself can't get into Jack Johnson, but I'm really loving On The Corner. I think whoever made the Can comparison above was also pretty on point.

It's a remarkably repetitive album, but the changes that take place over the repitition make it effective. It's amazing how different the same groove sounds when it comes in on Black Satin and when it comes in on One on One, all because of the handclaps on the former, versus the second drum track added on the latter.

I think I lost On the Corner, which is too bad because I'd really like to hear it again.

some djs have, regardless of when these were released.

MD: "Sonny, give me your amplifier!"
SS: "But Miles, you don't play guitar."
MD: "FUCK you!" [slams down phone]

Maybe he doesn't like white people.

http://kaufman-center.org/merkin-concert-hall/event/street-talk-miles-on-the-corner

on the corner otm

lol this is great

Sonny Sharrock once recounted the following exchange to me:
MD: "Sonny, give me your amplifier!"
SS: "But Miles, you don't play guitar."
MD: "FUCK you!" [slams down phone]

― Rickey Wright (Rrrickey), Wednesday, May 31, 2006 3:19 AM (8 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

listened to this on the way to work this morning. so good

it's kind of an unbelievable record

lol @ Sharrock story.

It's such a cliche at this point, but this record still sounds ahead of its time. I can't even imagine what listeners -- of any stripe -- must have made of it at the time.

I was listening to Hancock's Sextant last night, which I just got a couple months ago. It's great, I love it, but I can't shake the feeling that it's Hancock basically saying, "Oh yeah? Well...I made a record like that...too...! ...called... Around the Block!" Like a shinier OTC, but with synths.

Those two records sound nothing alike.

Henderson's playing on the Herbie record is a dead ringer for Miles', right down to some phrases xeroxed from Miles records.

sextant sounds a bit more like some of miles OTHER fusion-era records, but not especially like those even, the synth prominence and the band makeup and the full on slow funk in the rhythm section makes sure of that

The synth prominence is the key difference in terms of the arrangements, and I'm not saying the two records are utterly indistinguishable from one another; more that Sextant strikes me as Hancock's more tidy and/or slick (not meant pejoratively) impression of what Miles was doing. ymmv, presumably.

the two recs that hancock made just before sextant - Mwandishi and Crossings - are even more milesean fusionoid.

slick?? are you sure you're even talking about sextant

Yep, relative to OTC.

One of the things I love about the first Mwandishi album is that Hancock hired Ronnie Montrose as a session guitarist on it, then had him play a little tiny clicking noise for 20 minutes, like the most minimalist possible interpretation of James Brown-ian rhythm guitar. Hilarious.

a lot of Sextant sounds almost like minimalist techno while On The Corner sounds like a full on industrial funk freak out

"Hornets" from Sextant is basically Hancock trying to do side one of On the Corner.

I have been casting around for other stuff like On the Corner the last few days myself - nothing quite does it, although some things are close. and I am now getting pretty annoyed that I can't find any of Alphonse Mouzon's stuff from the period on the internets

was listening to a couple tracks off Weather Report's Sweetnighter, which comes a little close

maybe stuff like this? rhythms upon rhythms but not the insane cocaineyness of OTC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S10OZqd8DS0

A couple of Alphonse Mouzon's MPS albums, which cover art would indicate are definitely from the mid 70s, are now available on iTunes; don't know if that helps.

Still trying to figure out how I never bought the box.

The Miles era of OTC/Big Fun/Dark Magus/Get Up With It is some of the most wondrous noise ever made, holy fuck!

Wonder if there is any chance they might reissue the box at a price in line with the reissues of the other boxes that came out around the same time. Would love a physical copy but I can't afford $100+
and I think the rest of the boxes are around €15-€25 or at least available for that price.

Yeah, the Complete OTC box is out of print, as is the Cellar Door Sessions 1970 (six CDs' worth of what became the bulk of Live-Evil). I have zero doubt they sold much worse than the acoustic-era boxes.

man bendy's story upthread is really bumming me out now

listening to get up with it right now, in some ways i prefer it. seems murkier and messier and denser than on the corner. such a weird album

this Larry Young album "Lawrence of Newark" was a great suggestion (waaaay upthread) many thx

I like the Fuel stuff too but that Lawrence of Newark is otherworldly.
His work with Lifetime when John Mclaughlin was onboard is great too.

and "love cry want" is a perpetual mind-melter

And Young's good on Jimi's Nine To The Universe---also McLaughlin's Devotion, with Buddy Miles! I've heard that at least one of the CD versions leaves out one of the Devotion LP tracks, but having any of it makes you one lucky cat. Deftly edited jams, tightly loose and more fun than any electric McL.-led sessions I can think of (although Remember Shakti's live collection on Ryko has many espresso acoustico thrills).
I was listening to Miles in the early 70s, but he was putting out so many, each with its own identity, OTC kinda got lost in the crowd. My orbit was more Live-Evil-centric for quite a while there. But! When Ornette formed Prime Time, and No Wave-punk jazz started converging, some of us dug up OTC again, and it was like, "Oh yeah, now I get it..."

OTC seemed radically simple, with some kind of black hole hold, once it drew you in (not that everybody liked every track equally well, but a lot of us got belatedly fascinated with the approach, and its implications).

johnmcL's devotion also has the tune that the fall ripped for "what you need". being more familiar w/ the fall number & hearing the john mcL # later left me awash in a sea of contrary emotions

not very OTC but sublime https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-V7Nxs4M5E

the weirdest thing to me in Get Up With It is Red China Blues when the fairly standard horn arrangement comes in. p odd after all the amorphous free-flowing clangor of all the other tracks.

Thanks for the vid. Get the LP and drastically (but appropriately) different CD of Gil Evans Orchestra's There Comes A Time, with Williams channeling the title track's vocal, among many other heavy things. As psychedelic as 70s Miles.

feel like the first tune is the only one on OTC that doesn't do as much for me. seems harder to grasp. the other ones have that fucking bass groove

so who was the audience for miles' electric stuff in the late 60s and 70s? like the actual audience? i know there's a ton written about old jazz dudes getting bitter about miles' new music and also about miles' intended black and rock audiences not actually signing on as he wanted, but he was still a famous and well-known musician, so who was really digging the kind of music on bitches brew, on the corner, get up with it, etc?

the children, who he was for, iirc

The post-Woodstock rock audience flocked to Bitches Brew, no doubt helped by his dates opening for Neil Young, the Band, Santana, etc.

But if the charts are anything to go by, that audience bolted immediately thereafter; BB hit #35, but his next record (At Fillmore) topped out at #123. He wouldn't crack the top 100 again until 1981 (The Man With The Horn, #53). Herbie and Mahavishnu were killing Miles in the charts (and on the road -- by 1975 or so, Miles was opening for Herbie).

So yeah, other than BB, I have no idea who was digging OtC, GUWI, etc.

I, and several of my friends, had this Columbia records comp in high school because you could buy it for like a dollar. Always thought it was interesting that alongside the rock and pop cuts they included a particularly noisy 3-minute excerpt of "Saturday Miles." Trying to push it to the heads, evidently.

http://rateyourmusic.com/release/comp/various_artists_f2/different_strokes/

lol and a 4-minute edit of Soft Machine's Out-Bloody-Rageous, wtf

That comp was my introduction to Soft Machine, so I have a bit of a soft spot for it. The "Saturday Miles" excerpt baffled the hell out of me.

this album is underrated:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/16/In_Concert_-_Miles_Davis.jpg

It really is. At Fillmore is terrible (though the recent 4CD set that contains the full performances is great).

who was his audience in the late 60s-early 70s The first Fillmore twofer was one of the first jazz albums I heard, soon after it came out: very intriguing, lots of great bursts, and though seeming to lack a center, hell of a periphery. (Same impression while working my way through the box on Spotify.) Lester Bangs' reviews tipped us to skip Bitches Brew:"that Cave of Winds"---John Litweiler called it a sickly sweet, cheap wine buzz( neither of which turned out not to be entirely true, but...). So, as Bangs advised, I went directly to Live-Evil. Still one of my all-time favorites.
As I said upthread:
I was listening to Miles in the early 70s, but he was putting out so many, each with its own identity, OTC kinda got lost in the crowd... But! When Ornette formed Prime Time, and No Wave-punk jazz started converging, some of us dug up OTC again, and it was like, "Oh yeah, now I get it..."
My gang was already into In A Silent Way, Zawinul, Get Up With It, and even the outtakes of Water Babies. Think we all missed Agharta and Pangaea when they first came out, and those late 70s double-LP Japanese imports of Dark Magus and Black Beauty were too expensive to do more than drool over (although I would go on to buy double-CD Japanese imports for $50.00 apiece, in 80s money, and worth every penny).

"neither of which turned out to be entirely true," that is.

Hey, just noticed: The Complete OTC and Cellar Door boxes may be OOP, but they're both on Spotify, whoo-hoo! Also notice that the OTC sessions incl "Red China Blues," later a ringer on Get Up With It, as Οὖτις, noted.

The copies of In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew and Water Babies belonging to my dad (a younger jazz/funk head born in 58) were my introduction to that period of Miles. I've never really asked how he received those albums although he played IASW a lot around the house when I was a kid (along with Sketches of Spain and Kind of Blue) and would later, as I was getting into jazz myself, refer to BB as "pretty out there".

feel like the first tune is the only one on OTC that doesn't do as much for me. seems harder to grasp. the other ones have that fucking bass groove

yea i'm thinking that whole 20 minute piece

"On the Corner; New York Girl; Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another; Vote for Miles" - 20:02

Really? I haven't listened to On The Corner for a number of years, and never before on headphones, but damn the first track is just slaying me at work this morning.

oh lord i'm not saying it's bad. it just seems harder to get a hold of than the other tunes. lots of miles i am just not ready for in a given moment. e.g. feel like i spent a long time trying to feel out the second quintet, which seemed flighty and insubstantial for a while and then the majesty of it came through to me

yeah I can't figure those 2nd quintet albums out at all yet, still waiting for the clouds to part

felt like a gateway track was "footprints" from miles smiles.

I started with Filles de Kilimanjaro and worked my way back. Helped me connect the dots between the quintet albums and in a silent way.

I think I worked my way into the quintet with Nefertiti, then Water Babies, then E.S.P. and Miles Smiles and Sorcerer sort of all at the same time. Filles de Kilimanjaro took a while to work for me, and I still can't really get with Miles in the Sky - it feels like such an awkward, transitional album, like they don't want to play "jazz" anymore but they haven't mastered groove yet, either. But honestly it took years for me to care about the quintet's studio work at all, because the eight-disc Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 box was so insanely fascinating to me - like the sound of a band literally slicing hard bop into shreds with razors.

The Plugged Nickel box was my way in to the 2nd Quintet too, and every time I revisit the studio records, they still fall a little short.

The 1967 Bootleg Series would probably be my pick for the best thingy that Quintet did: they were far more dangerous and risk-taking live than in the studio (though Miles Smiles probably gets closest to their live energy out of all the studio records).

I mean, there's a precariousness on their live dates that simply didn't happen in the studio: when Miles starts "My Funny Valentine" on the live sets, you are literally on the edge of your seat waiting for what (and how and sometimes if) Herbie will enter with. I haven't found any comparable moments on the studio records.

i have yet to listen to filles de kilimanjaro for some reason! good enough reason to listen now

oh hmm I love that Plugged Nickel stuff, that was some of my first Miles, didn't know enough about the various lineups to realize it was the same

i really don't get "filles" & i usually LOVE stuff that i don't get , but "filles sounds" like so much "have we started yet?" / "like this, miles?" / "i'm not really sure what i'm supposed to be doing", which given the date & "transitional" period is understandable, but it surprises me how this compendium was put forward as suitable home listening

erm "filles" sounds... but you guessed that. typo paranoia

"have we started yet?" / "like this, miles?" / "i'm not really sure what i'm supposed to be doing"

It's funny, I don't get that from Filles at all, but I do from Bitches Brew. Not that I don't like BB, but it's my least favorite of all of his records (live or studio) from 1969-1975.

yea speaking of records that are hard to get a handle on. (except for "miles runs the voodoo down", which is spectacular and groovy)

BB to me sounds so stilted. there is some kinda maddening unreleased restraint through that whole album & i kinda fully understand that miles might've wanted that "tension" rendering LARGE, but it doesn't glide or flex or splinter, and y'know i guess, job done miles A+, but it leaves me cold, largely.

I don't want to live in a world where people can call Bitches Brew "stilted."

I'll walk a mile on those stilts.

HOLY FUCK DUDES

i checked out "complete on the corner sessions" from the library, goddamn

can we just acknowledge how awesome it is that this music was finally released?

sad that it's out of print but i am happy there are copies floating around out there in libraries and on the web and on spotify. "chieftain" blew my fucking mind last night

I can't believe that thing is out of print, it's so good

I get how someone could hear BB as "stilted" actually -- although I love the early electric stuff some of it does have a tense, "we're not quite sure how this is supposed to work" quality to it. Not Filles though, that record is perfect.

Anyone heard carlos garnett's solo stuff from this period?

toying with getting a proper copy of this on vinyl. I like the cover and it's this record that's always intrigued me but I've never been able to get my head around. Bit hard to find a copy that isnt' quite pricey though.

There's copies going for around £20 on ebay!

but i'm scared of eBay.

One of the things that initially I found frustrating but now realize sets the tone for the piece is the way it just drops in mid-beat from the get-go.

I find this frustrating too... I assume this is just a necessity of the production method being used?

The longer I listen to this record, the more I think it actually did kill jazz.

There was so much about OTC that was an affront to the jazz scene at the time: the funk, the artwork, the lack of harmonic changes, and repetitiveness, etc. But a lot of that was already going on with other artists and earlier Miles records (to say nothing of modal jazz in the 50s).

I think the biggest offense here was the implication that Miles somehow "wasn't in control" -- in particular, that it was manipulated afterward (and, not insignificantly, by a white man). I don't think you can overestimate how offensive this was to jazz true believers then and now.

I think today we tend to forget what jazz represented in the late-sixties and early-seventies: the extension and expression of a musical language in a live setting, the transmogrification of songs largely written by white men into an idyllic and often very human coalescing of a musical unit.

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own. Even worse, the post-production suggested to jazz musicians dependence and some sort of weakness (as well as probably a lack of masculinity).

I could probably say all of this more crisply if I gave it some more thought. But basically, this was a pretty radical record.

I think the biggest offense here was the implication that Miles somehow "wasn't in control" -- in particular, that it was manipulated afterward (and, not insignificantly, by a white man). I don't think you can overestimate how offensive this was to jazz true believers then and now. ]

this wasn't the first miles record that was compiled and stitched together from various sessions though? iirc bitches brew and the rest of his electric albums were similarly put together?

think today we tend to forget what jazz represented in the late-sixties and early-seventies: the extension and expression of a musical language in a live setting, the transmogrification of songs largely written by white men into an idyllic and often very human coalescing of a musical unit.

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own.

and there were TONS of black jazz musicians writing their own music since as long as jazz music has been around - what makes you think this was largely a white composers/black musicians genre?

I don't get how a record next to nobody paid attention to could kill a genre. At any rate, while OTC is pretty unique sounding, it was not a total break from other trends in jazz at the time, and jazz didn't really die until the 80s, by which point the genre had diversified so widely there were no longer any identifiable signifiers that were uniquely "jazz".

Jazz is not dead, it just smells funny

*rimshot*

*followed by incessant cymbal tapping*

to expand a little, I'm equating genre "death" to when a genre has passed through the following stages:
1) birth/initial codification. For jazz, this more or less centered around three things: jazz was played on acoustic instruments by ensembles, it incorporated specific room for improvisation into the arrangements, and it had to swing. (You can play this game w other genres too: rap initially centered around funk rhythms, some combination of drum machines/samples/DJing, and rapping, etc.)
2) refinement. every corner of the pre-established elements is explored and expanded upon (big bands, hard bop, modal, etc.)
3) expansion. jazz musicians start to jettison certain elements or swap them out for elements of other genres (swing rhythms abandoned in favor of funk or bossa nova or no rhythm at all, electrification/amplification, all improvisation and no prepared arrangements etc.
4) death. the genre has now expanded to incorporate so many different elements it no longer has anything that can be uniquely pointed to as jazz; the initial elements that defined the genre are either retreated to as a conservative reflex or are abandoned altogether. Often only one lone element will remain (saxophone solos, or in rap's case, the rapped verse) but it's been appropriated and pasted onto other genres as a signifier and not much more.

where does OTC fall in this schema? Somewhere in stage 3, but it was part of many of the other currents already flowing through the genre - electrification/amplification, funk rhythms, afrocentric imagery, really long extended improvisational pieces etc. The editing thing is an interesting point; I'm not sure who else was doing it (Sun Ra I suppose) or how much the audience was even aware that that was what they were hearing. I feel like Macero's role was not really widely known until a lot later...?

iirc, there was a lot of editing on The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, and the master take of "Brilliant Corners" was assembled from multiple takes.

Monk's Columbia albums (also produced by Macero) were pretty heavily edited too, though it mostly consisted of cutting out bass solos and the like.

haha wow I had no idea about the Reggie Lucas-Madonna connection wtf

Dog Latin, you can get this new on vinyl from Amazon for £14.50 from 3rd party sellers

The lack of melody suggested (certainly to white writers) that perhaps black men had less to say musically when they wrote on their own. Even worse, the post-production suggested to jazz musicians dependence and some sort of weakness (as well as probably a lack of masculinity).

this makes no sense in the context of, like, miles' own career, let alone jazz

duke ellington, count basie, billy eckstine, thelonious monk, charles mingus yeah those black jazz guys couldn't write a melody

thanks IAUYW!

just remembered there's a bunch of weird edits/sound effects stuff on Rahsaan Roland Kirk's early 70s work too

xxp

purchased! along with a long overdue copy of the shape of jazz to come

yea Naive Teen Idol i don't want to be a dick but i think you are on some bullshit

cosign

this wasn't the first miles record that was compiled and stitched together from various sessions though? iirc bitches brew and the rest of his electric albums were similarly put together?

I think the difference between On the Corner and In a Silent Way or Bitches Brew or A Tribute to Jack Johnson or Black Saint and the Sinner Lady or Brilliant Corners is that all the latter are edited together in a way that sounds fairly organic, like plausible jazz performance even when Jack Johnson is doing things that would be impossible to do in a live setting like throwing an ambient loop under Miles trumpet (at least given suspension of disbelief), whereas On the Corner is the first to fully throw its artificiality in your face. It doesn't in any way sound like a live jazz performance and I think that's where a lot of the resistance to it came even in spite of some predecessors sharing other radical elements with it.

I don't know if the comparison's often made but My Life In The Bush Ofor Ghosts is taking this exact idea and running with it, but that was a lot later.

And aumgn beat it to the punch by a bit

What Rev said. Chambers dedicates pages to how offensive it was that "In a Silent Way/It's About That Time" begins and ends WITH THE VERY SAME RECORDING. I doubt he'd have even noticed much less criticized it had Miles not recorded OTC and subsequent records a few years later.

I don't get how a record next to nobody paid attention to could kill a genre.

Jazz musicians and critics didn't ignore it. They actively hated it and wondered why someone of Miles' caliber would record it. Witness the lead from this piece:

Within weeks of its release in 1972, Miles Davis's On the Corner had become the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz. "Repetitious crap," wrote one critic. "An insult to the intellect of the people," remarked another. Even the musicians who played on the album were bewildered

When I first discovered this stuff in the 90s, I poured through Downbeats and countless blindfold tests to learn more about it and I honestly don't remember a single positive comment from anyone. The record was toxic.

I think the question you have to ask is:

Why? Why was this record so reviled by the industry (and many of the people who played on it even)?

And I think to begin to understand that you have to remember what jazz *was* by 1972. It was an increasingly intellectual exercise. It was an extremely sophisticated cultural expression. It was an exclusive language that very few people understood. And ... its audience was small and largely comprised of white people, many of whom harbored, shall we say, somewhat complicated ideas about civil rights.

All of these things were the things that Miles Davis HATED about jazz by 1972. Essentially, he hated his audience – and resented what they perceived he was doing up on stage night after night.

So it's not just that the jazz community didn't "understand" OTC. It's also that it represented everything about music that jazz wasn't: simplistic, brutal and for blacks only. It came from one of the foremost practitioners of the genre, who was openly hostile to these self-appointed "guardians" of the music, many of whom were in his own band. And even if the music he was recording didn't ultimately pave the way a new direction for jazz, it made damn clear that there was nowhere else to go.

It killed jazz.

I think the question you have to ask is:

Why? Why was this record so reviled by the industry (and many of the people who played on it even)?

I don't know why I should even care about this, frankly

and again - "killed jazz" in what way? Jazz remained commercially viable and aesthetically distinct for roughly another decade. OTC sold dismally, but subsequent jazz funk releases sold hugely (Herbie Hancock springs to mind).

Re: what rev said- I don't know if the comparison's often made but My Life In The Bush of Ghosts is taking this exact idea and running with it, but that was a lot later.

Dah stupid phone. Sorry for the duplicate post

I think the comparison is even made in the liner notes to the reissue of MLITBOG, isn't it?

Possibly. I just made a play list with cuts from both and they sit well together.

Ok second time around I think I see what NTA is getting at a little more -- jazz was certainly fraught with political and historical meaning for people and records like OTC clashed with what jazz meant to a lot of critics, fans and even musicians, for better or worse. Sort of comparable to the way that Dylan going electric clashed with an entire philosophy about music's relationship to its audience, it wasn't just "oh I'm grumpy and I don't like that harsh sound." Those records clashed with the idea of jazz as intellectual and respectable, and that was important to a lot of people, not least because it had been and still was a struggle to convince people that black people could even make intellectual or respectable music. And I don't mean "respectable" in some kind of caricatured, "I'm playing Autumn Leaves in a tuxedo" kind of way, I mean actually worthy of respect as a serious creative endeavor. You can't quite call the reaction "conservative" because conservatives of the time mostly wouldn't even have taken jazz seriously, but it was conservative relative to the burgeoning psychedelic/hippie/spiritualist culture that was spilling over into fusion records.

It "killed" jazz in the sense that seeing possibly the top figure in jazz deliberately turn his back on what "jazz" meant to them, at a time when jazz was already struggling commercially (yeah shakey actually it was) and slipping in cultural importance weakened people's belief in jazz as a still-viable idea. I think now we can kind of get past all that, especially in an era where you can so easily listen to everything from every era and free it from all that critical baggage, and this makes it hard to remember that jazz used to signify more than just another interesting kind of music to listen to for a lot of its listeners.

'albums that killed genres' would be an interesting and highly fraught thread. is there an album that 'killed' rock?

K1d 4?

I was going to suggest 'Funeral' for some reason. That whole 'who the fuck are Arcade Fire' thing on Twitter a few years ago certainly rammed home the idea that today's youth generation isn't necessarily interested in rock music as an exciting force for change.

but insofar as musicality and genre picketlining, Kid A's probably a better suggestion.

picket-fencing, not picket-lining

Tho I had forgotten about it until you mention it, apparently this is a thing for me:

Loveless: The Death Knell of Rock?

I even mention Miles in the 70s!

I think there were some significant rock records after Loveless. Although perhaps not many.

But yeah, I can buy the idea that OTC killed jazz figuratively.

Significantly, many of the practitioners of the New Music, who themselves were accused of "killing" "jazz" in the 60s, weren't fans of Miles' electric work.

So let's say jazz as a sep genre (racial codes for retailers and DJs only somewhat aside) began to sheer away from, or find its own place in the pop convergence, the biz maw, with the arrival of bop as a movement. Which was also, with the arrival of WWII's draft, the temp restriction on recording (v-discs aside) and the Musician Union strike, the end of the big band heyday, thus back to small band swing, with Benny Goodman and Charlie Christian jamming hot, fast concise and complex, on the radio even, but not nec; for dancers and frat boys at all. Back from war, maybe some study via the GI Bill, third stream and Birth of the Cool, rise of the educated suburbanites grooving to Take Five, yadda yadda, free jazz upsets the apple cart, then becomes, for fans and those who actually prefer to read or write about it, another niche, another tag, as and as for more of that refined suburban appeal, the Quintet's audience wasn't buying the records or coming to the shows anymore.
So Miles brings jazz back into the pop convergence---not like Bud Shank having a hit with "Michelle" and then sneering at the Beatles, nor like younger jazz musicians, like Gary Burton and Larry Coryell, who grew up listening to and absorbing rock, country etc,--but by being what he is, an older guy who has also listened to and is still absorbing the post-War developments, who gets the pan-genre appetites of the beast they called Rock (absorbing rock 'n'roll, rhythm & blues, other previous hybrids and niches), the post-Woodstock mass bohemian munchies, not just of kids, but of somewhat older people with more educated jaded, maybe middle-aged crazy tastes (bored-ass music junkies in their late 30s and early 40s, like himself, for instance, and remember a lot of the ringleaders of the 60s were not actually kids).
He uses jazz, as previously known as one more element of a syncretic approach--coming from the other side of, say, Music From Big Pink, or Astral Weeks, or Sgt. Pepper's---but also, as he says in his autobio, he was cruising to tapes of Stockhausen and James Brown, speculating about *that* kind of convergence...
Anyway, I've started listening to the OTC box on Spotify, and right off, the uncut master of the title track, 23 minutes and change, is very beautiful, very lyrical, in the conversational cadence of several voices---as with the arrival of Ornette, the controversy seems silly now---except that Miles's melodic electricity does move through a non-programmatic context, it finds/becomes its own context in the context which might be no context 'til he and his crew showed up (also pre-empting dorko bop-prog "fusion" and elevator filigree floatation, as would soon follow).
Speaking of context, this box also includes "He Loved Him Madly" and others I really don't (and prob won't care to) associate with the OTC moment (a reason for the title: it was something on a corner, a transitional moment in the expedition)

Good summary, and just a note about this:

free jazz upsets the apple cart, then becomes, for fans and those who actually prefer to read or write about it, another niche, another tag,

At the time, the new music was accepted -- often grudgingly, but accepted nevertheless -- by the critical establishment as the next significant development after Parker, Gillespie et al. The tone of some Down Beat pieces from the time is, "Yeah, I know this is the new movement in the music, but that doesn't mean I have to like it!" not "This is NOT the new movement in the music!"

<3 u dow, great post

Thanks, guys. Also, using jazz elements in this syncretic approach was not only a trans-genre experiment,it was also a *jazz* move, the kind that keeps becoming and is always necessary, in terms of shaking it up and finding new ways to express, to breathe.

i don't knwo, "albums that killed genres" isn't really an interesting concept to me, just seems kind of music critic armchair theorizing bs. which i guess is what a lot of ILM engages in and can be very interesting sometimes. but "albums that killed genres" doesn't strike me as any more stimulating than those lame "non-rock albums that rock fans love" thread. i mean it's just kind of arbitrary. did "the shape of jazz to come" kill jazz? wynton marsalis? all those cheesy technical fusion records of the 70s that are really bad? why OTC and not bitches brew, for example? it's just kind of a silly thing to engage in because genres come and go and audiences move on to different things. folk music is alive and always has been even though dylan went electric at newport in 65. there are people still singing folksongs and playing banjos and shit everywhere. just the commercial engine behind has long since moved on to other things. doesn't mean that dylan "killed" folk

Tarfumes, you're also reminding me of the flame wars charted in Ben Ratliff's Coltrane: The Story of a Sound. Trane and Miles may have upset some more than outsider Ornette did, because those two were our guys.

Haven't read that yet, but yeah, Trane especially had to deal with a metric ton of bullshit, even before he put together his group with Pharoah, Rashied Ali, and Alice. People were calling Coltrane "anti-jazz" and "hate music" in 1961!

<3 cheesy technical fusion records of the 70s

peace suckas, gonna listen to some Return to Forever now

there are people still singing folksongs and playing banjos and shit everywhere. just the commercial engine behind has long since moved on to other things. doesn't mean that dylan "killed" folk

― marcos, Thursday, September 18, 2014 10:25 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think that's kind of the point though -- not "killed" as a thing that people play and like, but "killed" the sense of a movement with a purpose. I mean folk music in the early 60s was not just a style of music but had a sense of being a movement. Dylan going electric didn't "kill" folk music but certainly dealt a blow to the movement's political aspirations or to a sense of cohesion around a set of ideas that folk music supposedly represented. I wouldn't be overly literal about the idea that an album can "kill" a genre, but it can be a signpost of a major cultural shift for sure.

<3 cheesy technical fusion records of the 70s

otm. grow up

I guess if you analogize musical movements to religions, it's kind of like having your major prophet suddenly come out and commit major heresies. I think it's harder for us now to conceive of the kind of weight these matters had for people at the time because we're very post-political about our music today and every style of music is just another style of music.

I kind of have my thing I get on about in re Dylan going electric though, bc I think it's one of the most misunderstood moments in pop music history, widely thought of as a bunch of crusty purists not liking loud noise or something. I mean, it's sort of that but there's more to it.

not "killed" as a thing that people play and like, but "killed" the sense of a movement with a purpose.

I am more amenable to this interpretation

peace suckas, gonna listen to some Return to Forever now

― The Reverend, Thursday, 18 September 2014 19:57 (21 minutes ago) Permalink

CHEA

it was already on its deathbed tbf - Miles is probably the only figure who could deal the deathblow (who else was there that was so universally revered/had been around so long? Coltrane was dead, Ellington/Basie already irrelevant, Mingus too combative, Monk had disappeared)

man Sextant really is the only thing that comes remotely close isn't it

feel like most of the other recs and fusion stuff of the era is either too tight or too rock oriented or something, but Sextant has a similar burbling sprawl

Yeah Sextant is a singular record

feel like this gets p close to On the Corner vibes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGaiNH7oGqk

the only (non Miles Davis) album that ever really reminded me of On the Corner was

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrV5bwWrAPc

nah. no horns.

well, it's a totally different thing in a lot of respects - except that it's avant studio concocted funk w/much improv at its base, and straddles many genres (or invents one) over the course of the record. the cool thing about On the Corner is that it ISN'T a Headhunters record, which is a lot more controlled, and indebted to Miles Davis's earlier stuff

some of Lalo Schifrin's early to mid 70s film scores have the On The Corner feel

There's some Eddie Henderson stuff that might come close, although closer to headhunters. I feel like I've heard some other spacey jazz funk/jazzy spacefunk by lesser-known guys that might fit as well

I like Sextant considerably more than On The Corner, fwiw

I'd guess it has already been mentioned on this thread but Larry Young's Lawrence Of Newark is a good one.

Seconding dow's rec upthread of John McLaughlin's Devotion. Larry Young is a strong thread that runs through a lot of these disorienting soundworlds.

I like Lawrence of Newark, but his organ work owes more to idk Les McCann or John Lord or something

McLaughlin solo I can't get with, too "rock"

d'angelo's "1000 deaths" def has an OTC vibe

said this before but the complete OTC sessions is just some of the most incredible music ive ever heard

I know right so why isn't there more of it I want more gimmeeeeeeeeee

I bought this as a teenager in an attempt to to challenge myself, although of course the end goal wasn't to s enjoy On the Corner, but to be able to *tell other people* how much I enjoyed On the Corner.

Anyway I have a lot less patience for this than his other records of the period, but damn "Black Satin" is a masterpiece and catchy as hell.

can't find a youtube of it but man Cosmic Invention's "Ryujin" feels *very* much like an On the Corner outtake

said this before but the complete OTC sessions is just some of the most incredible music ive ever heard

― marcos, Thursday, September 17, 2015 6:25 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Listening to the complete Bitches Brew sessions kind of made me wonder if Teo Macero is overrated.

How so?

The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions is a monumentally mistitled set. It doesn't include the unedited parts that make up the finished pieces, like the IASW box does. Going by the material on the Bitches Brew box, there's no way to know exactly what Macero did or didn't do with what he was given, because we never hear what he was given.

The IASW set, on the other hand, includes the full takes of the pieces that were later edited/spliced/assembled for the LP; hearing those after the unedited takes, you can really see how masterful Macero's editing is.

yea i agree about the ISAW sessions, it is pretty amazing how macero distilled all that music into one seamless, beautiful LP

OTC on the other hand, hearing this music in its fullest on the complete sessions, i really don't think the edited LP is in any way an improvement. tbh now i feel like i am missing out when i play the regular LP., i don't really want to hear it anymore. the music is more powerful imo in its unedited state

/The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions/ is a monumentally mistitled set.

Totally agree, but I'm not sure how that leads one to wonder whether Macero may be overrated.

Which isn't to say he is or isn't. Even with all that has been written on this era, I still think his legacy is less of a "classic or dud" variety and more that he was the guy who somewhat introduced post-production in jazz and used it to add musique concrete elements and Third Stream compositional structure to the, er, brew.

FWIW, re. BB in particular, I'm assuming those unedited tapes simply don't exist.

Totally agree, but I'm not sure how that leads one to wonder whether Macero may be overrated.

Only because we don't have anything to compare the final/edited/spliced BB to in order to gauge exactly what he did/how he did it (which may strengthen or weaken one's view of whether or not he's overrated).

i think it'd be a mistake to label macero the "auteur" of the miles electric years, but i wouldn't downplay his contribution either. like, you hear that 73 set that was released on the latest miles bootleg series and you hear a band that is fully in control of a pretty singular set of dynamics. but some of those dynamics might just be derived in part from macero's more radical editing techniques. not sure if that makes sense... even to me!

Only because we don't have anything to compare the final/edited/spliced BB to in order to gauge exactly what he did/how he did it (which may strengthen or weaken one's view of whether or not he's overrated).

Well, we may not have much to compare it to...but thanks to the likes of Bob Belden and Enrico Palazzo (or whatever that guys name is), we do know where the edits are in tracks like "Pharaoh's Dance." Unlike the brutal jump-cut edits on, say, "Sivad" on Live-Evil or At Fillmore, Macero's editing on Bitches Brew is actually quite subtle – repeating little two-bar passages here and there. There's a whole run-down of this in the box set.

Do we know how Macero's edited version compares to the unedited track? No. But you don't have to hear the original tapes to know that the shape of the track—and the tension that's built—owes at least something to Macero's hand. And, in my view, the way it builds to a climax is one of my favorite things about "Pharaoh's Dance."

I'd also add: Macero may not have batted 1.000 with Miles but his panning and effects work on tracks like "Go Ahead John" is underrated.

michael henderson otm

yup

On the money and in the pocket

Henderson is such a monster, he doesn't get a enough credit.

I actually just listened to this box set for the first time in a while, I think I got a little burnt out of OTC for awhile, god it just sounded amazing all over again...love the Stockhausen Street Funk era, OTC, Get Up, Big Fun, et al...

Also, since I couldn't find a better place to put this the other day:

Sony, please give me a 74-75 live box set, please!

OTC was also weirdly kind of a hit with my 18 month-old

kids definitely respond to a good beat!
and yeah, a 74-75 live set would be welcome ...

I've been listening to scads of bootlegs on Youtube & Agharta & Pangea & Dark Magusbut IT ISN'T ENOUGH.

Seriously, I want to listen to every single scrap of sound this band ever made.

agreed

I am familiar with this impulse, it comes over me a couple times a year

this one is an early 74 fave:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZNIpVT7YvQ

Oh pro-tip! I don't think I've listened to that yet, I've mostly been rolling through '75. God this band was so good!

Also:
kids definitely respond to a good beat!
― tylerw, Tuesday, June 7, 2016 10:35 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

She did this weird side-to-side shuffle/shimmy thing the second the record came on

OTC was also weirdly kind of a hit with my 18 month-old

OTC was also weirdly kind of a hit with my 18 month-old

Haven't played her OTC but was cranking Live Evil the other day and when Miles steps in on What I Say my two-year old said, "Trumpet!"

Listened to this yesterday for the I don't know how manyth time, but triple digits for sure. Still hearing sounds for the first time.

when Miles steps in on What I Say my two-year old said, "Trumpet!"

I swear I heard my child "sing along",make a high pitched squeal, along with OTC. Or least, that's what I want to believe.

I listened to the link tyler posted above last night and it is fucking awesome

yeah i love that recording. not sure how big the shaboo inn was, but it's always crazy to imagine that band playing little clubs.

The crowd sounds kind of rowdy, hooting & hollering

Haha thank you internet

Evidence for the date of this recording is confused. The Davis Septet was originally booked for two nights at the Shaboo Inn: January 24-25 (Thursday-Friday). The former owner of the Shaboo recalls that they didn't play on Thursday because Davis's hairdresser wasn't there

lol

classic

checkin out this record today -- has a bunch of the agharta band on it

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=MyBxMcD9-Ns

https://img.discogs.com/BwOYAV2T2UiGx4Ida33V78PMfj0=/fit-in/599x598/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-892202-1169988877.jpeg.jpg

ooh! how has this album never been mentioned before

sweet

what year is that?

1977
https://www.discogs.com/Mtume-Rebirth-Cycle/release/892202
doesn't appear to have ever been reissued?

sounds pretty good, more spiritual jazz action than agharta

this is dope thanks tyler

more spiritual jazz action

idk about this, would need to see evidence of number of spiritual jazz hats to confirm

there are pyramids on the cover that should qualify it

http://coldfrontmag.typepad.com/photos/uncategorized/2008/08/01/mtumepic.jpg
spiritual jazz headband?

Ooh a head band is good cuz it leaves the Spirit Topper (scalp) uncovered, reduces interference.

Seriously though that line up is something else!

Like these folks have all played on some of the best jazz records ever, this is a literally a supergroup! I have never even heard of this record

me neither! here's some info

With credits that read like a who's who of early 1970s jazz, Mtume, then with Miles Davis, produced his third solo album, including one cut with the Miles Davis band sans Miles. This album is full of spirituality, Africanisms, and real jazz. "Umoja" even includes invocations to Obatala, Yemaya, and the other deities of the Yoruba religion/Santeria. Fascinatingly, Mtume and Lucas went on to produce funk, and then disco, and then Madonna, all with a trademark conga plus electric guitar sound. There, I always wanted to include Madonna in this website. (Ian Scott Horst)

Rebirth Cycle is an amazing lineup (see Ian's discog listing at for details) whose African roots are clearly breaking the surface. "Sais" is a sidelong cut initiated by a bass clarinet ostinato and textured with dense percussion and multiple voices (Jean Carn, Dee Dee Bridgewater, Tawatha Agee, damn!) and some absolutely penetrating narration. Also included is "Yebo", an electric cut with the Miles '74 players (Cosey, Foster and Henderson) that's more soul-jazz than what the players might suggest, and this weirdo percussion piece called "Body Sounds". [DW - freeform.org]

Rebirth Cycle, though released in 1977, was actually made in 1974, and the album’s personnel list reads like a veritable who’s-who of the musicians who where working in the more independent jazz scene of the early seventies. Working on this album, you had Dee Dee Bridgewater and Jean Carne on vocals. Strata East players like Cecil McBee and Buster Williams on bass, Stanley Cowell on piano and Jimmy Heath on reeds. This album is also the first introduction to the mighty voice of Tawatha Agee who would remain the co vocalist with the Mtume band right through to the mid eighties.

Musically, Rebirth Cycle is a fusion of afro-centric deep jazz and psychedelic spacey funk. The main piece on here, and the album’s high point, is the side long “Sais” (sigh-us). This 20 plus minute tune starts with the spoken introduction by Senegalese poet Mustapha, explaining the story of “Mystery System of Sais, the Egyptian school of higher learning from which Greek and Western philosophy was developed”. Once the introduction is over one of the most magical and hypnotic musical 20 minutes you could sit through begins. From the slow and haunting bass clarinet solo through crashing waves of vocal chaos plus one almighty guitar solo by Reggie Lucas, all backed by a solid groove that is cut so deep it would be impossible to climb out of, even if you wanted to. There are moments in this piece where the cacophony is such that it feels like you’re consumed in a hypnotic aural cloud, and you find yourself not wanting to come out of it, or at least for the tune not to come to an end. Then the chaos ebbs away, the bass clarinet solo slowly unearths itself from the onslaught of the other instruments and the poetry returns. You then find yourself coming to from this 20 minute musical roller coaster ride, and you cannot help but feel total exhilaration. On Side two of this album the tracks are shorter in length and are much more afro-centric funk in style. The vocal work on this side of the album is truly sublime, whether it is “Yebo” the Oneness Of Juju style groover with magical vocals by Tawatha Agee, the haunting beauty of Jean Carn’s performance on Cabral, or the traditional African nasal style on the closing track “Umoja”. Rebirth Cycle does not contain a weak moment anywhere on the entire recording, and is really worth seeking out a copy.

Damn I can't wait to listen this

just listened to the whole thing it is a great record

Yes but are they all running thru a wah wah pedal?

I dug it but agree it's much airier and loose than OTC/Agharta band

yea definitely, more afro-centric spiritual jazz & less hard otherworldy funk

one of those reviews up there says it was recorded in 74 (but not released til 77), which makes sense, I think.

Holy damn what a surprise relic!

Listening now -- pretty different from the Mtume stuff I'd heard (which is like smooth jazz-funk/boogie)

i feel like i need to buy a hat before i can even listen to this

wasn't it thoreau who advised "beware of any record that makes you want to buy a new hat"?

^^ board desrip

the melody from "Black Satin" will stay in your head for a week after the first time you hear it.

accurate

I tended to prefer the In concert recording from the same era because it didn't have the annoying typewriter instrument that I didn't like.

Would love a physical copy of the box set. Shame it seems to be the one MIles set that didn't get repackaged in that book form at much lower price.
Box set mops up a lot of the more out electric era I think.

Also wish somebody'd reissue that Mtume set mentioned up thread on cd. I think it came out as a ltd edition vinyl over the last couple of years.

Discovered this last year, it's a perfect amalgamation of all the krautrock, funk and ambient stuff I've been listening to lately.

Revive just because.

I can’t believe no one has done anything cutesy like make Funko Pop style dolls out of the figures on the cover.

Would buy

I went looking for a T-shirt with the cover art recently. Supreme made one in 2008, but nobody else has done one since.

I found the "On The Corner" box set to be a bit overwhelming so I cherry-picked the best stuff and it makes a great companion disc:

1. One And One (unedited master) - this is a completely different track!
2. Jabali
3. The Hen
4. Peace
5. Mr. Foster
6. Hip-Skip
7. What They Do

I still have my OTC shirt, and I wish I'd gotten the Jack Johnson and In Concert shirts when they were around. Just yesterday I saw an ad on fb for (presumably bootleg) Miles shirts, and one of them was the OTC cover.

xp

xpost giving that playlist a listen now, thanks! even that smaller selection adds up to an hour and a half, but that's approachable for me. i do get overwhelmed by massive boxsets, so this is nice.

1. One And One (unedited master) - this is a completely different track!

Here's some comments I found on the Steve Hoffman forum. I'm still confused:

> Again, don't know what happened here, but this is *not* the unedited master of "One and One", but entire different tune altogether. My notes show that this has been partly released before in
> 1998 on "Panthalassa: The Music of Miles Davis 1969–1974", under the title "What If", mixed by Bill Laswell.

> "One and One" on the original album is really Black Satin.

> The discography lists "Black Satin" as being an overdubbed edit from the "On the Corner" master, while it is obviously an overdubbed edit of the "Helen Butte/Mr.Freedom X" master.

Giving your list a try now. Unlike the other complete sessions sets, I feel like I didn't give this one the attention it deserves because I never got a physical copy.

"One and One" is basically an alternate/dub mix of "Black Satin." Less melodic, more focused on the groove. The long opening track "On the Corner...Vote for Miles" and the long closing track "Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X" are lengthy studio jams sliced up by Macero.

There was a single released, "Molester," which is "Black Satin" chopped into two parts like a James Brown single.

To be clear, “One and One” on the On the Corner LP is indeed a mix of “Black Satin.” “One and One – Unedited Master” on the box is a completely different track, none of which appears on “One and One” or the LP best as I can tell. Unless some of the solos are spliced on to the “Black Satin” groove?

this album has come to rule my life after years of love and affection. I listen to it every day. I listen to it slowed down. I listen to it sped up. I listen to this incredible 1972 Palo Alto show (an attendee says every non-percussion instrument was hooked up to a wah-wah pedal). I love this fucking music so much

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyBUUUj306M

whoa never heard that show, thanks

Thanks, flappy--killer show. OTC era live band is super underrated/under-documented and I haven't explored too much beyond the In Concert album.

Lately I've been obsessed with this boot from January 1974 (Dark Magus band), especially the Ife that opens set 2, early drum machine sputtering in and out of the mix:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTT9pyfVAx0

This Palo Alto show is killer!

They really need to do an In Concert/Dark Magus/Pangaea/Argarta-era live box

the story about New Riders of the Purple Sage playing after Miles is pretty funny and depressing. Lots of fist fights

If you haven't been following it yet, I highly recommend The Heat Warps, a project that is "exploring every available Miles Davis concert recording from 1969 through 1975 in chronological order". It just recently got into 1970, a lot of good material to come.

from the comments on that 1972 Palo Alto show, Eric Golub:

I was at this concert! In fact it was my first Miles Davis concert. On this tour, Miles introduced the new "On The Corner' sound -- but the "On The Corner" record wasn't released until a few weeks later! So we were a little puzzled, if awestruck. My buddy who was sitting next to me made a photo that day; I'm trying to find my copy of it to post! Every non-percussion individual in this band was playing through a wah-wah pedal -- including the soprano sax player (whom we'd never heard of, and who wasn't long in the touring group) and the electric sitarist. It was outdoors on a cool, overcast day. Miles Davis was, incongruously, the opening act; after his set, the New Riders of The Purple Sage performed. The contrast in musical styles and lack of demographic overlap was perhaps the most extreme I've ever experienced, in 50 years of concertizing & attending performances! Miles had his serious car crash just a couple weeks after this as well, and my next Miles Davis concert was spring '73 in Berkeley, in which Miles was on crutches -- and mustachioed as well. Dave Liebman had replaced Carlos Garnett, and I believe the electric sitarist was gone, but not the tabla player Badal Roy.

another comment by someone else:

I was there also, my buddies and I drove up from San Luis Obispo to see the show. It was new music from Miles I had not heard before from his new album "On the Corner" which as you mentioned was released by Columbia weeks later. The stark contrast in mood that Miles set for the audience was punctured by the onset of country-rock/ Grateful Dead influenced Bay Area rock band New Riders of the Purple Sage who definitely was challenged to keep the audience after Miles's departure. I too was disappointed by the fist-fights that punctuated an otherwise pleasant afternoon of Miles and his band. I couldn't understand why violence would take place among such wonderful music and outdoor ampitheater ambiance.

xp

amazing thanks!!

In Concert is so sick, I don’t mind the rough audio quality

I adore it as well. The “Rated X” open alone is worth the proverbial price of admission.

Just discussed this with a friend, I would really like to hear actual sessions from this album (as opposed to other tracks – tho they are generally quite good during this era). There was so much post-production and editing going on with those sessions that supposedly Herbie Hancock heard a track he was on from OTC and didn’t even recognize it. Whether or not that was actually true, I think it would be illuminating to hear, for instance, what the studio take(s) of something like “Rated X” or “He Loved Him Madly” actually sounded like in the studio.

As for the former, I think it was Jack Chambers who first floated that Teo Macero pasted a Miles organ part over a rhythm section from a completely different piece. I’m slightly doubtful of that story as In Concert reveals Miles conducting that track more or less as it appeared on OTC. But, you know, session tapes would clear that up.

Aren't the un-messed with tracks on the "Comnplete On The Corner" box?

yeah, some of them are.

at this point, i honestly wouldn't be surprised if columbia just started releasing all of the unused studio stuff, like they did here.

whoa, wtf, never seen that!

lol Miles / New Riders reminds me of the time I saw William Parker & Hamid Drake open for Akron/Family. Maybe not quite as stark, but the deep, cleansing spiritual vibe and incredible rhythm of the openers was so amazing that I couldn't even stand being in the room for Akron/Family's just ok freakfolk whatever afterwards and had to leave

"only attending for the opener" are some of my favorite show memories, so i always love hearing similar stories.

That Freedom Jazz Dance set is sadly (but maybe not surprisingly) underwhelming. Obviously, being a fly on the wall in a Miles session will never be uninteresting, but there’s nothing approaching a revelation, and it’s the one posthumous release where you think, yeah, Teo Macero was right when he said Miles would never have allowed any of this stuff to be released had he lived.

Yeah, I didn't understand why that was a volume in the Bootleg Series and not a super deluxe edition of the album in question.

That Freedom Jazz Dance set is sadly (but maybe not surprisingly) underwhelming.

honestly, it made me lose interest in the bootleg series to the point that i just now looked and found out that volume six was live stuff with the coltrane-era band and that it has already been available for two years. my reaction? meh.

On April 30th, bought (or at least, paid for) the newly-discovered dead stock (presumably) copies of several of the "metal spine" boxes I missed back in the day, including 'On the Corner' from the official Miles Davis web shop. Now it's just a funny passtime where I periodically check the order summary to verify that the order has been neither cancelled nor status updated (no way, "shipped"). Maybe they'll get around to refunding me the several-hundred dollars or shipping next year...

Oh shit, have you not gotten yours? I have a friend that got a bunch of them. I didn’t pop for OTC yet but am still thinking about it.

As for outtakes, I don’t know about that Freedom Jazz Dance Bootleg Series set, but a bunch of the Bitches Brew outtakes that hit YT a few years back were pretty revelatory:

https://youtu.be/84QDf5vCOgU

I didn’t pop for OTC yet but am still thinking about it.

It doesn't seem to be listed anymore, I get a "Product currently not available." for it. Most others are still there though.

honestly, it made me lose interest in the bootleg series to the point that i just now looked and found out that volume six was live stuff with the coltrane-era band and that it has already been available for two years. my reaction? meh.

― Totally different head. Totally. (Austin), Tuesday, July 21, 2020 9:39 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

The first three sets (1967 and 1969 live stuff with DVDs, the Fillmore box) were so great. Then there was that stupid Newport set, about half of which was previously-released, followed by Freedom Jazz Dance. No wonder people stopped caring about future releases. But the 1960 box with Coltrane is brilliant.

The freedom jazz dance set does not make for fun listening imo. I was surprised at how much I did not enjoy this glimpse behind the curtain as it were.

After reading Miles' autobio, where he mentioned that the band seemed frustrated that they never played the stuff they were recording at gigs, I too felt that it was a real missed opportunity. For all his pushing his musicians, he seemed to feel that playing the standard repertoire every night was the safer bet.

the band seemed frustrated that they never played the stuff they were recording at gigs

"Footprints," "Gingerbread Boy," "Masqualero," "Riot," and "Agitation" were all regularly played in 1967 (though those five might've been the only contemporary pieces they performed live).

That said, the band stretched out waaayyy more on the live standards than they did on the studio recordings of new pieces. The Plugged Nickel performances of warhorses like "Walkin'" or "Four" are much more daring than anything on E.S.P. or Miles Smiles.

The Palo Alto show is fucking great & noisy & weird!

They really need to do an In Concert/Dark Magus/Pangaea/Argarta-era live box

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, July 20, 2020 12:34 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

This, though considering Sony/Columbia still hasn't managed to issue Pangaea or Argarta as properly mastered CDs in the domestic US, I am not holding my breath

That said, the band stretched out waaayyy more on the live standards than they did on the studio recordings of new pieces.

yeah, i mean, that stuff is well-nigh unrecognizable a lot of the time.

I actually enjoyed that Freedom Jazz Dance set, but I think I like hearing bands rehearse and uncut session recordings more than other people. it's definitely the bootleg series i return to the least. The Newport set was kind of a lame concept but it does have plenty of killer stuff on it.

Thanks for the recs on the live versions of of the Shorter-penned material. I've never had the Plugged Nickel set, but clearly I need to dig into it via streaming. Masqualero is a favorite of mine so I'm eager to check that out.

If you haven't been following it yet, I highly recommend The Heat Warps, a project that is "exploring every available Miles Davis concert recording from 1969 through 1975 in chronological order". It just recently got into 1970, a lot of good material to come.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, July 20, 2020 1:55 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've been catching up on the shows posted on The Heat Warps, currently flipping out over this footage of the On the Corner band from NYC, January 1973 (afaik the only circulating footage of this line-up). From the mega-rare 1974 documentary Prince of Darkness. It feels beamed in from another dimension--washed-out 16mm film with occasional trippy kaleidoscope effects; Miles higher than a kite with trademark big sunglasses, afro, and rare mustache; dark, manic voodoo funk.

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BfHOtKDcHU

Fifty years old as of Tuesday. Still sounds incredible to these ears. One of my bigger Miles related disappointments remains missing out on the complete sessions box. You'd think there would be good money in his estate keeping those boxes in print, even if later versions forego the fancy box like the original version.

it’s definitely a weird time for CDs in general

listened to this record driving home late last night — an optimal experience! still sounds so dense and dangerous and weird.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Fe1ENe-aMAAOOOY?format=jpg&name=small

xpost - Oh definitely, but it seems to me like bigger box sets like this still seem to sell rather well, at least for legacy artists like this.

I wrote about it for my weekly email newsletter.

Fantastic article, you highlighted a lot of the little details that have enthralled me. And the story about the car crash, damn!

yeah that was great, thanks

50 years ago this eve, Miles began a 6-night stay at Marvelous Marv's in Denver, CO - a venue that would become Ebbet's Field the following year.

"On the Corner" was released during the residency and though no tapes circulate, all accounts suggest the band boogied hard. 1/4 pic.twitter.com/Z3peVj2C9N

— Jeremy Erwin (@theheatwarps) October 10, 2022

hink he means "legendary"? Milesologists think it did happen:

In a 2020 interview, Mtume spoke of a mythical 3-hour set the band played during this run, with Miles collapsing in the elevator post-gig (that portion begins around 12-minutes in). 2/4https://t.co/bbNgxBeTjA

— Jeremy Erwin (@theheatwarps) October 10, 2022

also from that thread:

Yep. Here’s the full lineup:

Miles Davis (trumpet)⁰Carlos Garnett (soprano sax)⁰Reggie Lucas (guitar)⁰Khalil Balakrishna (electric sitar)⁰Cedric Lawson (organ)⁰Michael Henderson (electric bass)⁰Al Foster (drums)⁰Mtume (conga, percussion)⁰Badal Roy (tabla)

— Jeremy Erwin (@theheatwarps) October 10, 2022

super good, unperson. thanks!

I don't remember a lot of the box having much to do with the album or sessions for it---mainly an unnecessary reminder of how fast he was moving in those days---but worth hearing, sure, as long as you're not expecting any OTC revelations.

I wrote about it for my weekly email newsletter.

― but also fuck you (unperson), Thursday, October 13, 2022 11:24 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Fantastic article, you highlighted a lot of the little details that have enthralled me. And the story about the car crash, damn!

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Thursday, October 13, 2022 2:22 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

until Robocop verifies it happened, i can't believe it.

Speaking of how fast Miles was moving, as awesome as the Dark Magus/Agartha two-guitar thing was, I'm a big fan of the rather less-documented OTC-era version of this band. AFAIK, In Concert at the Philharmonic is among the only real documents where we hear what On the Corner might've sounded like live. The version of "Rated X" that kicks off the record--with its ever-so-slow build and introduction of different elements and the bass groove not entering until about six minutes in--has always felt to me more like a proper extension than its studio counterpart (which is insane and amazing).

I believe I've seen clips of a video of this band, but, yeah, if there's some three hour bootleg of this lineup kicking around, sign me the fuck up.

https://theheatwarps.com/category/1972/

for your live electric miles needs