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dave liebman; when miles came calling


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You see! I know you see - I read what you write, certainly some fresh aie here and there - I am much alone sometimes (lonely new yorker?? I duuno - I live in Jersey...and am from Boston originally)

Yes - I believe one day that a certain amount of *this* music as people like Ken Vandermark or Joe Morris has refereed to it will garner some more notice, but I think my point may be that it is available now and all it takes is a bit of time and patience from a few more listeners.

I was around the net in those days of the David S Ware quartet and there *was* quite a bit of discussion as there was about Joe Maneri or Thomas Chapin and many others - there was more of an enthusiam to discuss the music and the scene was certainly more well attended than today - point is the deififcation of the dead lions saps the current vibrant music of it's strength - never have I see so much panting over anotyher fine Miles bootleg recording from the late 60's - I know we never heard it and the music is wonderful - but is it all that to hear 6 discs and never hear Avram Fefer or Steve Swell or Layfayette Gilchrist or the Tony Malaby's Novela, for jah's sake?!?!

I dunno about anybody else but you ever hear that band LIVE? I did - twice - first time pretty damn good - had to hold onto my you know what to keep from getting blown through the roof!!! Is Kris Davis a genius (she arranges this stuff and plays the baddest ass silent piano since John Tilbury until it is like Schlippenbach might have entered the world even if she might not touch a key for 8 minutes ) well is she that good? yes pretty damn special pianist/composer/arranger....

YES - just like any of the other greats -s he just happens to live today....

ever want to see and HEAR that band?!?!? - you would think that even if they came to your town, many listeners be holed up listenin' to old re-issues or another version of Gingerbread Boy....not that there is anything wrong with that....

I only saw Ware once, in a duo with Rashied Ali. I didn't really think they were connecting, but I was a lot younger then and may not have picked up on some things. Never saw the quartet w/ Shipp & Parker live. But I have seen Shipp a number of times (always staggering) and Parker (variable) many times as well. Yeah, these are all fantastic musician names you're bringing up, but the notion of a working band as such - like the Ware Quartet, or Miles' units - is quite different now. We see "projects" and different aggregations, not so much so-and-so group's stand at a club every night for a month or even a week (with a few exceptions). In spite of this, there ARE bands that record and play, just not with as much regularity as used to be the case/well before my time.

Pulled a boner move and missed Steve Swell last night at the Stone (mostly because these days funds are tight) but hope to catch him in a couple weeks. That's one place where I feel you can really see the music in a conducive environment, free from jabbering idiots and sexy servers.

(yes on Kris Davis - she's tremendous to watch and recordings don't do her palette justice, which is surprising I guess considering the amount of technology purportedly available to capture this music to the tiniest nuance)

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It is kind of cool to be able to decide especially for those who live in the City or in Brooklyn if they want ot walk or take a subway in the spur of the moment to see some musician or band who/that is really wonderous really up close and personal.

I like the comment about the mid possibly wandering in a listening room rather or as compared to seeing/hearing musicians from a close distance - I used to listen to MUCH more music at home back in the 90's through the early 00's and I often became more entranced through the continuing experience of listening to massive amounts of improvised music.

Today - my life is different and maybe the visceral experince of seeing, hearing and feeling BassDrumBone, for example, from close up is something that has a larger effect on me than ever. Plus I think, for example with that trio, there was a blues that was played SO softly that even with today's recording qualities and the possibility to hear things on a recording that we have not been able to hear until the last X amount of years, there is nothing like hearing Ray Anderson live when he is generating those whispery tones not unlike hearing Joe McPhee on pocket trumpet live and in person.

see funny thing is to me going down the street to see Ray Anderson in that trio (with Helias and Hemingway) is like seeing the great dead lions - and mayeb it does take some time to reflect - but DAMN - Special Detail was recorded 23 years ago - and is there any discussion of this record, let alone Demon Chaser???

I know there WAS much discussion about Ware's Go See The World - maybe because it was on Columbia - it seems that the jazz aficianado yes maybe done't want to be critical as they are too close - we all know that - why I don't collect friendships or autographs...go forbid Malaby has an off night on December 22nd - will I write it up - hell yeah and tell him what I thought, too...when I go to the next show...

fwiw - looks like NOV 24th be cleared to see the Liebman Quintet - my wife's family knows I like this music stuff quite a bit - and then how does one explain the difference between Jim Black on the best stereo in one's listening room to hearing and feeling *that* drummer in an intimate space??

Kinda like rememebering when Cecil go real intense for about 8 to 10 minutes, I think, at Tonic those many years ago - and it what is was to try to convey what the room felt like that night...I can keep trying....

Always a Pleasure

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You can't FORCE people to discuss what you want them to discuss. Getting angry about that fact does nobody any good. I get what you're saying, Steve, but the implications in some of it are downright insulting. I have thousands of jazz recordings, and while I do my fair share of revering the forefathers of the music, I also do my fair share of supporting contemporary musicians. As a matter of fact, I'd say that a full 1/3 to 1/2 of my collection is composed of recordings made after 1975. Given that "jazz" is almost 100 years old at this point, I'd say that such a ratio is commensurate with the ratio of the number of years since 1975 to the number of years since 1917. I value all "good" music (however I deem it to be rated as such), but there's no escaping the overall importance to and influence on current day practitioners that musicians such as Miles, Bird, Monk, etc. wield, and will continue to wield.

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thanks for the response, JETman - I think it is something that has irritated me for quite some time but I am certainly not an angry person these days and I ofetn may come accross as insulting but that is probably to make a point as living in this area, there are many jaded music listeners and a few years back, I was on my way to being one of those taking for granted who is playing live these days wallowing in the past that was gone and that I missed.

peace and blessings

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What Miles albums are considered the best with Liebman?

Can no one recommend an album?

He's only on one official Columbia album - On The Corner (and one cut, briefly, on Get Up With It, which is a killer album, but not really reflective of the music Miles made when Liebman was in the touring band). On The Corner is a landmark in music for reasons having nothing to do with Liebman. Not everybody likes it, though!

There's some bootlegs, though, that showcase him better, particularly the 6/19/73 Tokyo show that was released as Black Satin:

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That one's a pretty amazing set, period.

But truthfully, I don't know that Liebman really hit on his own voice in any context until sometimes in the 80s, a time that saw him drop tenor altogether and focus on soprano in a conscious move to get away from the Trane thing. I know a lot of people who dig his 70s work, but I don't really hear the "core" to it myself. I do think he found it, though, even if I appreciate it a lot more than I love it.

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What Miles albums are considered the best with Liebman?

His best work with Davis was live. Of the official releases, he's heard best on the 1973 Montreux live show. Unfortunately, that's part of a 20 CD box. He has some nice moments on Dark Magus, despite sharing the stage with Azar Lawrence for the second half.

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What Miles albums are considered the best with Liebman?

Can no one recommend an album?

I like Liebman better with Elveen on the Lighthouse albums. His work with Miles is often seen as musical masturbation, which is the way I've heard him describe it.

Oh yeah - the 7/11/73 Olympia/Paris show has been officially released, although not by Columbia. That's pretty good too.

http://www.amazon.co...3/dp/B00004RJJQ

47924.jpg

If you look in the lower left corner of the left panel, you'll note that Trema is Sony product. I know it's not Columbia, but still...

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He's only on one official Columbia album - On The Corner (and one cut, briefly, on Get Up With It, which is a killer album, but not really reflective of the music Miles made when Liebman was in the touring band). On The Corner is a landmark in music for reasons having nothing to do with Liebman. Not everybody likes it, though!

There's some bootlegs, though, that showcase him better, particularly the 6/19/73 Tokyo show that was released as Black Satin:

He's actually on two cuts on Get Up With It — "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo" — but he only plays flute on both.

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He has some nice moments on Dark Magus, despite sharing the stage with Azar Lawrence for the second half.

GARK! Forgot about that one. That's probably the most gonzo electric Miles album there is, too.

He's only on one official Columbia album - On The Corner (and one cut, briefly, on Get Up With It, which is a killer album, but not really reflective of the music Miles made when Liebman was in the touring band). On The Corner is a landmark in music for reasons having nothing to do with Liebman. Not everybody likes it, though!

There's some bootlegs, though, that showcase him better, particularly the 6/19/73 Tokyo show that was released as Black Satin:

He's actually on two cuts on Get Up With It — "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo" — but he only plays flute on both.

He's only on one official Columbia album - On The Corner (and one cut, briefly, on Get Up With It, which is a killer album, but not really reflective of the music Miles made when Liebman was in the touring band). On The Corner is a landmark in music for reasons having nothing to do with Liebman. Not everybody likes it, though!

There's some bootlegs, though, that showcase him better, particularly the 6/19/73 Tokyo show that was released as Black Satin:

He's actually on two cuts on Get Up With It — "He Loved Him Madly" and "Calypso Frelimo" — but he only plays flute on both.

Well hell, I pulled out the LP to check the credits before posting that & only saw him listed once...just checked again, and sure enough, there he is, twice.

Maybe I need some glasses like Miles wore on the cover...

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And here's what I don't get - why is Miles Davis "wanting a hit" or having so much ego, or whatever, why are these perceived as negative things, especially when the polar opposites are "being totally unknown" and "have no power to assert over one's own life"?

Think about this - let's say for the sake of argument that, yeah, Miles wanted money, recognition, fame, adulation, stardom, respect, all that, and that he wanted it on as global a scale as he could get it, and he wanted it from playing music that was The Unmistakable Sound Of Miles Davis. First - who would not want him to have that, just automatically shut down at the possibility of it maybe even starting to come true, who would be about that, and why? And then second - who would want him to get some of that but not all of it, you know, you got enough, now stop. Who would want that, and why?

So John Scofield (whose playing I often enjoy, his work with Miles especially) thinks it's silly or vanity or something that Miles wanted a hit. Does John Scofield have it in him to have a true hit and then build a brand to survive past his own demise, a legacy to pass on to both his family and his world? No, I don't think he does, but I also don't think he needs to. But I do think it's wise to notice what people who do have those abilities beyond just playing really well do with them, and Miles...Miles had it in him to keep climbing the world until the world pushed him off (or even thought about trying). It's a game that he played very well right up to the end, and what he left in any manner of regards is significant in areas that John Scofield will never ever have an inkling of considering., that thing being "all about the music" ya' know...when there's so much more to play with, if you have the fire for it.

Bloody Scofield :D

I stood in a semi-full boutique bar for what seemed like an eternity watching him play his boring, over harmonised tunes, only for him to come out for his encore and play a Bflat Blues. Just about one of the best Bflat blues I've ever heard. Made the rest of the night totally worthwhile :D

re-point about having greater success, yes you do make it sound like a best of all possible worlds outcome.

I came across this old interview with Ornette last night. I think it's a famous interview - or at least it was to me when I read it as an impressionable teenager back in the day. The interview talks about Ornette's desires for much the same thing as Miles.

"Denardo now functions as Prime Time's manager, having taken over that slot from - and this is one of my favourite facts in Ornetteology - Sid Bernstein, manager of pop songstress Laura Branigan and the fellow who brought the Beatles and the Bay City Rollers to America"...."The second meeting was at the Moers festival in 1981. There he announced that he had now found the key to the mass audience that with Sid Bernstein's business strength behind him would proceed to unlock the door".

The interviews filled with other interesting asides, including one about the interior life of Blondes :D that echoes something similar I seem to recollect Miles also saying, though I may have mixed that up down the years.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/interviews/ornette-coleman_prime-time-and-motion

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Re: hits, I don't believe that the desire for a "hit" and having a grander musical vision are mutually exclusive. The former seems like a microcosmic distillation of one's approach at a certain moment in time that speaks more broadly.

Yes that's possibly true. Perhaps with the Scofield statement, he was suggesting (and I'm putting words in his mouth here but - so what :) ), that Miles wanted a hit record, and he was prepared to trivialise his music to get one. Certainly if I listen to Star People (as I did in the day when it first appeared), I can't see any potential connection to the mainstream top ten. Later recordings begin to have content less far removed from that outcome though.

I think if Miles had of been working even a decade or so later (when Pop music had completed the move beyond the Michael Jackson moment and into the urban Rap one), it would have been almost certain he would have found a preconceived - or perhaps even an organic collaboration - that would have given him the 'total crossover' hit. But in the Eighties/early Nineties, it's harder to imagine what that would have sounded like. Maybe something like 'Rise' with Miles playing trumpet instead of Herb Alpert :D

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It seems to me like there has already been a fair amount of re-evaluation of the 80s music, especially as more live recordings have circulated. I don't think we will ever see it exalted at the same level as the 70s music for multiple reasons..

The live shows are indeed where so much of this stuff was fully realized...and I don't know that the music was made to be exalted per se...I think Miles had gotten all that out of his system and wanted to challenge the popular culture (which is not the same as Pop Culture) for personal reasons at least as much as he did musical ones - but still on his terms, with his "flavor" still intact by the time it was all said and done.

Agreed 100%. The argument that "it will never undergo the same re-evaluation as the 70s music" is a total straw man, re-evaluation is not a binary choice between "this is commercial garbage" and "this is amazing, innovative, classic music".

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I mean, it's Miles Davis Pop Music. Not a problem in my mind, and it keeps me from looking for something that's not going to be there, and from getting disappointed for there not being that "something" there that's not being put there\, not even.

By the same token, knowing what it's not every going to be - or even try to be - allows me to look at the much of You're Under Arrest as silly, and much of Amandala as downright excellent, and to really, REALLY dig Ricky Wellman as being every bit as perfect for the music he was playing as Philly Joe & Tony (and even Al Foster, although by rights it should be Al Foster-Mtume) were for the music they were playing. #Ain't WHAT you do, etc.

Miles Davis Pop Music. It's a better world where such a notion proved even plausible (and actually executable, and quite often, executed quite well) than a world were such a notion would never even be considered possible, even in one's wildest dreams.

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What Miles albums are considered the best with Liebman?

Can no one recommend an album?

I also like the album "Miles Davis at Stadthalle 1973", recorded in my hometown Vienna. Even if the sound quality is not the best , it´s very good music from a very interesting period. It got live versions of the tunes he had recorded recently (Calypso Frelimo and Ife). I was only a kid then, but I loved the music, so I got that album just as a memory of the "good days" when we could see all those living legends "live". I remember, that even my mother liked Liebman´s flute playing on "Ife".

And, dont forget "Dark Magus" from 1974.

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I was around to hear the same criticisms levelled at the first electric period that are now being levelled at the second. I lived long enough to see them fade as the inevitabilty - and logic - of that music revelaed itself, and I expect to live long enough to see the same thing happen again with the second period

This is an interesting discussion. It seems to me like there has already been a fair amount of re-evaluation of the 80s music, especially as more live recordings have circulated. I don't think we will ever see it exalted at the same level as the 70s music for multiple reasons, but (for example) I would guess its reputation has held up better than that of the music W Marsalis made during the same period.

By the way, "Jean Pierre" was included in the recent Murray-Waldron duets disc. Any other examples of 80s Miles entering the repertoire?

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It seems to me like there has already been a fair amount of re-evaluation of the 80s music, especially as more live recordings have circulated. I don't think we will ever see it exalted at the same level as the 70s music for multiple reasons..

The live shows are indeed where so much of this stuff was fully realized...and I don't know that the music was made to be exalted per se...I think Miles had gotten all that out of his system and wanted to challenge the popular culture (which is not the same as Pop Culture) for personal reasons at least as much as he did musical ones - but still on his terms, with his "flavor" still intact by the time it was all said and done.

Agreed 100%. The argument that "it will never undergo the same re-evaluation as the 70s music" is a total straw man, re-evaluation is not a binary choice between "this is commercial garbage" and "this is amazing, innovative, classic music".

True it's not a binary choice. But I suspect the people who didn't much like the 70's music back in the day, really changed their minds or came to admire it with new found vigour as the decades rolled by. Some might of, but probably not much re-evaluation went on amongst those there at the the time. And most of the On The Corner and after stuff was too ugly (in a good way) to be incorporated into the 'cleaner' Fusion legacy of the rest of the 70's and 80's. It occupied a dark corner until the re-evaluation happened by younger listeners - generations later - who found it had something useful to contribute and enjoy, parallel to the music they were making and listening to for themselves. It just fitted in with the new beginnings of the digital age. I can't see how the 80's Miles would really have the same kind of influence in the future. But I will enjoy looking out for it if it happens.

Yesterday, I had my itunes library playing in the background, and some music came on that I couldn't identify, the synths made me think it must have been some 80's Miles, I was waiting for the trumpet to happen, but it was Ronnie Foster's Cheshire Cat album.

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By the same token, knowing what it's not every going to be - or even try to be - allows me to look at the much of You're Under Arrest as silly, and much of Amandala as downright excellent, and to really, REALLY dig Ricky Wellman as being every bit as perfect for the music he was playing as Philly Joe & Tony (and even Al Foster, although by rights it should be Al Foster-Mtume) were for the music they were playing. #Ain't WHAT you do, etc.

Cheers on that! (And on the rest of the post and your other posts here, too!)

As for Lieb w/Miles, there's also the Montreux set, officially released though only in the huge (but worthwhile) 20CD box.

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