Miles' "On the Corner"

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