Miles Davis reissues...

Anyway, funnily enough that's almost become my favorite Miles album of all.

Whereas Silent Way has dropped off a bit over the years. That might have been the first Miles album I really got into, and it kind of bores me now.

That's what I thought too, but after I gave my old copy away, I found out there's music actually cut from BB on the most recent mastering. There's a reason Teo Macero's against them, y'know....

I don't think it has any tracks that weren't on the original tho.

I don't think there's extra tracks on the CD, but if you get the Panthalassa: The Remixes album, the Bill Laswell remix contains aboot 10 minutes of On the Corner material from the original recording sessions that had never been released.

The remasters of his work that I've got are all such a huge improvement in sound quality it almost hurts me to hear the original releases.

This is such a great record. It's so reverent, apart from the occasional subtle soloed horn line, it's all the best parts of _Get Up With It_, _Silent Way_, _On The Corner_ flowed into a coherent album. There was an additional _remixes_ of Panthalassa disc done by a handful of other artists, and that was vile...

I'm scared of the _bitches brew_ remaster, though I am fascinated by the idea of those guys using the improvised mix on the original record as a score... for the reissue they went back ot the original tapes and reexecuted every single crossfade and echo send, i remember one article (gosh I think in Mix) where the engineer was describing how he calculated the accellerando on the tape delay as it moved from .175 ms to .200 ms over a six second curve & the resultant pitch shift... no wonder Teo was mad, they were fucking with the energy on their improvised live mix, direct to master. But I would like to hear it.

One remix of the Panthalassa stuff that was good was Jamie Myerson's jungle version of Rated X. Nice serrated beats and it has this electronic rainforest feel that's quite appropriate.

I agree... it makes up for it in overall flow enough to be an interesting companion piece... I must admit I went in fearing the thing, perhaps that's why I ended up enjoying it so much. I also admit on the remix disc, I didn't give any track more than about 2 minutes of listening time before my ears glazed over, so my judgement on it is a bit closed.

On the Corner is one of the best albums made by anyone, ever. It's in my top 20.

Uh, that's the one I was recommending. The Bill Laswell remix on that disc contains 10 minutes of out-takes from the On the Corner sessions.

On the other hand, in general when I'm exposed to the recent products of Laswell's endless music factory it takes conscious effort to stop throwing up, but that's just me. I've got friends whose opinions I respect who simply love it...

You can also now pick up (as part of a big series of £5.99 single and dbl discs!)) legit French radio broadcasts of Miles shows w/ Coltrane (phenomenal - Coltrane just blazes, and the audience boos!), the more accomodating but still great Sonny Stitt, and a 'Dark Magus'-era seventies freak out (funnily enough, the latter has the least gd sound - not as sharp as similar Sony releases, but still plenty listenable): any of these are more exciting/interesting than the Blackhawk set, imho.

And sorry, but 'On the Corner' is now in danger of becoming one of those ho-hum overrated/underrated albs: it's gd, but no way is it up there w/ 'Live Evil', 'Get Up With It', 'Dark Magus' or 'Agharta', not to mention the more conventionally canonical 'In A Silent Way' and 'Jack Johnson'. I'm hoping that the JJ box set finally gives Sonny Sharrock a proper credit/recognition, and maybe gives US more of his phantom contrib to those sessions.

as mentioned, the Blackhawk box just came out, and the Montreaux box was before that, so the reissue program has been going, except nobody noticed the montreaux box because like 18 of the 20 discs are 80s fusions.
there are two more studio boxes, the jack johnson, and the studio cuts between the two classic quintets (non-coltrane "someday...' and "seven steps to heaven"). I would really love to see a domestic release of the Sam Rivers live dates that exist.

I'm not so sure. The way I see it, current conventional wisdom is that Agharta/Pangaea/Jack Johnson are the pinnacle of the 70s stuff... On the Corner gets a nod because "it influenced hip-hop/jungle/whatever," but no more than that--I base this on things like the Penguin guide, the recent Szwed bio, etc. The people who rave about it tend to be people who don't listen to a lot of jazz.

Personally I think Get Up With It is godly on the basis of He Loved Him Madly and Rated X, but a lot of the other stuff on there isn't of the same quality... Dark Magus I've never really rated as highly as the other 70s live albums, of which Live/Evil is probably the best (and strangely gets the least props of all really!), because it's so damn funky, and stuff like What I Say is just so hardcore... I would say that if anything, Agharta/Pangaea are the ones that are a bit overrated now!

blah blah--I'm such a Miles bore.

What are these single discs?

Also, that upcoming Basie box looks really sweet.

I've tried a few different searches, but can't dig up any specifics on this: got a link handy?

No, it was in some jazz magazine I bought a couple years back. There was a big cover story on the recording of the album, then a sidebar on the remastering. It's buried somewhere in my room; I'll see if I can find it. It only was a matter of seconds removed, but still.

I should clarify: I'm not saying the remixes disc is great or even good, but if you love On the Corner you should really try and hear the Laswell track off that album for the extra music.

Can anybody find the complete liner notes to Bitches Brew by Ralph J Gleason (the liner notes by him, not the album!); I'm desperate to out them up on my blog but can't be arsed to transcribe them straight from the LP sleeve.

WHERE IS MY LINER NOTES???

are there no liner notes for the longbox-sized sleeves? i'm not sure where it would fit in the box - but i also wouldn't put it past the record store to rip me off...

that is a serious deal when you think you'd be paying about usd 70 for each (metal spine box) set on ebay or whatever

Don't remember seeing much talk about the Mati Klarwein ltd edition with the double lp of live Miles stuff a snap for €438 odd.
Must get the non ltd edition book though.

& does nobody know anything about the On The Corner box set?

dunno about the on the corner set ... did the seven steps to heaven one ever get cheap-ified either? i would buy both of those if they cost $20 (which I bought the second quintet box for last year).

I don't think OTC sold enough to justify a cheaper reissue. Also, they released as MP3s/on iTunes about a month before the box came out, and for less than half the price, so that likely cut into sales of the physical product.

that might be right, but it seems like the OTC box would be one of the better sellers? felt pretty hyped up at the time. but could be that it didn't sell all that well and they're rethinking the miles reissue approach a la the very nicely affordable "bootleg" set from last year.

I too remember a lot of hype around it, but I also remember it being delayed by a month or two (unless I'm confusing it with the Cellar Door set, which had the hilarious "put a different sticker in the booklet" delay). During said delay/hype, the MP3s were released. iirc, it was also priced higher than other Miles boxes (even those with fewer discs), likely due to it being constructed out of bulletproof titanium.

And speaking of Miles boxes and delays, Volume 2 of the bootleg series is due out in January (pushed back from October).

edit xp: priced higher than other Miles boxes (even those with *more* discs)

box is gorgeous though!

ohhhh what is vol. 2 of the bootleg series?

Three 1969 sets (two July, two November, one on DVD).

...which would equal four.

cool... i've got that juan les pins set. not sure if i've heard the others. great stuff though.

Yeah, I have that one too. Love it. Totally fascinating to hear the electric band doing stuff like "'Round Midnight." I think this is the lineup Miles wrote about in his autobio being pissed that Columbia didn't record.

Definitely buying that bootleg set. Was frankly afraid there would never be a Vol. 2. I like that they're going chronologically - expecting Vol. 3 to maybe cover the 1971 European tour...?

Oh nice, thanks for heads up on that set

hoping the price will come down a little bit --right now it's almost twice as expensive as the 1967 one!

that's true actually, that's weird. wasn't the last one 3CD+1DVD as well? can't recall.

Yeah, vol. 1 was 3CD/1DVD. Amazon usually plays annoying price games with upcoming releases. My guess is that it'll go down by $10-$20 by the time it's actually released.

I endorse that message

Good stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sayOJKN6yuo

What I love about that band is it comprehensively refutes revisionist histories (usually by Stanley Crouch) that have Miles abruptly turning his back on his prior work as soon as a Fender Rhodes entered his field of vision.

Just arrived. Love having a decent copy of the July 26 Antibes, the one I had that was floating around was a terrible audience recording

Very happy with this release. It makes for an interesting comparison with the 'It's About That Time'-release.
Also out is a book on Bitches Brew, I think there are now a Spanish and Italian version available:
http://cache0.bdcdn.net/assets/images/book/medium/9788/4994/9788499420813.jpg

Very interesting phase for Miles. Very poor sound quality though, except for the DVD which both looks and sounds great. Definitely prefer the Fillmore / It's about that time.

What is the complete Plugged Nickel box doing out of print anyway?

Yeah, it's been inexplicably out of print for years. But suddenly, about two years ago, it showed up on Amazon for about a month at its regular ($80-$100) price. Supposedly, a bunch of copies were found in a warehouse somewhere. Those got snapped up pretty quick, though.

was just listening to some of the on the corner sessions -- amazing stuff, feel like you could spend the rest of your life listening to that and never get to the bottom of it.

Listening to the second cut on the box now -- "On the Corner -- Take 4" (which sounds nothing like the master take). This may well be better than anything on the released record.

Not sure where the discussion of the bootleg series is happening, so I'm reviving this guy. . .

I just picked up volumes three and four today and I couldn't stand it, so I skipped straight to the Holland/Corea/DeJohnette quartet stuff on the Newport set and I have to say it goes pretty fucking mightily. One of the funkier 'Miles Runs the Voodoo Down's that I've encountered.

I know it's sadly really not the time for big spending, but for anyone who still desires any of the metal spine 'complete xx' box sets without hunting around on eBay or discogs, they've (somewhat unexpectedly?) popped up on the Miles Davis store: https://www.milesdavisstore.com/store

I was curious as to why they reappeared, so thought the best place to check would be the Steve Hoffman forums and right enough there's a big thread there about the whole thing, with the overriding hypothesis seeming to be that these are new old stock pulled from a find of unsold copies of the ridiculous trumpet case boxset, or original stock that was lost or languishing somewhere.

Saw this bumped on one of the other miles threads, that would be hilarious if they were indeed just breaking up unsold trumpet case sets. definitely feel like I shouldnt be dropping $ on box sets right now but I'm really tempted to treat myself to one of these

the posts about it were on this thread The Unassailable Miles Davis, or, To Know Him Is To Love Him

we have too many miles threads!

the only one I own is the on the corner complete set and it's been warming a shelf in my parents' front room for about a decade

I already have the other ones I wanted, except for On The Corner. But I'm struggling to justify that one right now, since I do already have a lot of overlapping material.

I listened to that once, and remember it (maybe unfairly) as quickly going rando, not in quality, but in relevance to the original OTC LP---most of it is a grab bag of sessions that ended up on other releases, or alternate takes of those: mainly related chronologically, showing how fast he was moving in them days, but we knew that.

I seem to remember it beinginteresting to compare the sessions that the album's tracks came from and the finished product. teo's editing was a huge part of the finished recordings. but wasn't a collection I really wanted to come back to much.

Kicking myself for paying an obscene amount for the On the Corner Sessions box three years ago. "One By One (Unedited Master)" slays just about everything on the original album:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IngbKMO6niQ

Well, bank account didn't need to know that information...

The unedits etc. from OTC are worth hearing, but would have more consistent impact without the irrelevant stuff: like The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, with new remaster of the original release on the final disc. Sooo good.

What irrelevant stuff? My sense was that The Complete Jack Johnson was almost too much of what I had wished The Bitches Brew Sessions had been: so many takes that it became more of an academic exercise than enlightening listening experience. I’ve only heard it on Spotify but by comparison, the OTC stuff seemed varied but pretty consistent.

The On the Corner box is the opposite of tedious in comparison to the Jack Johnson set. At their respective times of release, the Jack Johnson set had more previously unreleased material, but take after take of the same groove makes repeated listening fairly unnecessary. Granted, the previously unissued stuff on there is quite good.

On the Corner is able to replace a lot of the properly released albums, as Miles was just recording in those days without any real destination in sight; Macero was the one actually assembling the proper albums.

If I had to pick a favorite between the two, it would be the On the Corner set fairly easily. Sure, most Miles diehards already know the majority of the material, but that doesn't make it any less great.

Now if you wanna talk about some serious Miles jams in boxset form, The Cellar Door Sessions is 100% great for its duration.

Even if I enjoyed the OTC box more---which may happen yet, if I ever get a chance to re-visit---don't think it would replace the original, Macero-edited releases. That's what I like about The Complete JJ: you get the unedits and the edit for original LP. Yeah, prob wouldn't listen to all of the former again, but they're good basis for playlists. Cellar Door ditto.

The Bootleg Series Vol. 4 (the complete gigs that were edited down for Miles Davis At Fillmore) > The Cellar Door Sessions (the complete gigs that were edited down for Live-Evil)

Cellar Door and the Fillmore sets are such a great period. Between those two boxsets, that's a good chunk of the live repertoire documented for an entire year.

Also, surely you meant volume three. Volume four was the Newport stuff that was all over the place.

I did mean 3. And the fucked up part is, I literally walked to my shelf to make sure before typing that post.

xps the actual Bitches Brew sessions (alternate/unedited takes as in the Jack Johnson box) can be heard here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84QDf5vCOgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=84QDf5vCOgU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCPmcz4mSZI

Yikes, sorry that should have been 3 different vids. But you get the idea

lol wonder when they're going to do a "deluxe" reissue of the box set with those.

20 disc vinyl reissue msrp $999.99

(but seriously, these are cool to hear)

Oh didn't mean to imply that I *only* alts and outs from the gestation of and with previous relatively normie-length release. MId-70s 2-LPBig Fun is a sufficiently cohesive, pleasing sandwich of outs from various sessions; the extended CD is even better.
Uncommonly good wiki entry on this (among other things, note observant, extended quote of unperson):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Fun_(Miles_Davis_album

*only* "want," that is.

that I ^only* "want reissues to include" alts etc., damn, sorry.