Miles' "On the Corner"

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*