Miles Davis "Lost" 1991 Paris concert

[cliffpeterson]

Has now been found and will be released:

 

https://www.loudersound.com/news/legendary-miles-davis-1991-paris-concert-to-be-released

 

 

Edited August 4, 2021 by cliffpeterson
typo

[HutchFan]

Appears that the year of the concert is 1991, not 1971.

You may want to update the title of the thread, cliff.  

 

In any case, has anyone here heard this music before?  These sorts of all-star extravaganzas can be hit or miss.

But that is a line-up of extraordinary musicians.  No doubt about that.

 

[JSngry]

If this is what I think it is, there's a video of it, and it was on cable one time at one point. Yers, I saw it, and...not sure if "delightful" is the word that comes to mind as much as "sad"? Not bad, sad.

Here's the TV show: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2x7hq7

Miles' talking about if I ever go back, I will die...pretty much accurate. ALWAYS wanted to hear his current iteration, whether or not I "liked" them was hardly the point. And his last "real" band was poppin'!!!!

[JSngry]

Ok, listening to that video (sic) again, the only "sad" thing about is Miles being there, like Pavarotting being here...I mean, this is the purpose of the event, but still...

In both cases, I feel a shame in enjoying the forced disconnects, but, hey, I'm sure I'm not alone. Most of us are never as good as we like to think we are.

[Rooster_Ties]

I ‘acquired’ this as probably a 3rd generation VHS dub back around 1992 or early ‘93. Even back then, I just thought it was “ok”. I mean, it’s still ok (and it really was ok) — but it was “just” ok, ok?

[bertrand]

It was never lost, and I think it was already out in some bootleg form.

The others in this series were CDrs, so screw that.

I have the hour VHS, I thought it was good enough for me. I would buy the CD/DVD if it ever came out officially. But there are tracks I have never heard, like the one with Jackie McLean.

Edited August 3, 2021 by bertrand

[JSngry]

2 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

I ‘acquired’ this as probably a 3rd generation VHS dub back around 1992 or early ‘93. Even back then, I just thought it was “ok”. I mean, it’s still ok (and it really was ok) — but it was “just” ok, ok?

 

[cliffpeterson]

Thanks for catching the typo

 

[Guy Berger]

Is this a legit release?

Haven’t heard this.  If it’s available on Spotify I will listen, otherwise don’t feel a rush to head a bunch of really great musicians getting together and falling well short of their potential.

[medjuck]

I do have what I guess is a bootleg of it.  Also I made a DVD from a VHS of the broadcast which was not the whole concert.  Biggest surprise to me was that they did Watermelon Man.

 

[Rooster_Ties]

1 hour ago, medjuck said:

Biggest surprise to me was that they did Watermelon Man.

Biggest surprise, and biggest letdown too (at least for me).

[medjuck]

3 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Biggest surprise, and biggest letdown too (at least for me).

Don't disagree. 

[mjzee]

Still wondering what's the story with Sleepy Night Records.

[Gheorghe]

I don´t have the DVD but I wondered why this was not the next CD release posthum by Warner Brothers. He was under contract with Warner Brothers, and after his death they released "Miles Around the World" and the other looking back in the past "Montreux with Quincy Jones" with all the Gil Evans stuff. Then, I still wondered how Miles managed to play a little on the old stuff like " Boplicity" and so on. 

Did Miles know that he would die soon ? I thought it was a stroke and such things happen suddenly, when you don´t expect them.....

 

[JSngry]

There were whispers that Miles had contracted AIDS, so yeah, he probably was aware the his time was limited.

[Gheorghe]

17 hours ago, JSngry said:

There were whispers that Miles had contracted AIDS, so yeah, he probably was aware the his time was limited.

I think those rumors were allready in 1988 when he had a bout with pneumony, but Miles himself wrote in his biografy that it was some gossip paper that issued that story and in spring 1989 he made his best album after years, using a playing band again, and he was in very good form when he went on tour after that.....

[sidewinder]

38 minutes ago, Gheorghe said:

I think those rumors were allready in 1988 when he had a bout with pneumony, but Miles himself wrote in his biografy that it was some gossip paper that issued that story and in spring 1989 he made his best album after years, using a playing band again, and he was in very good form when he went on tour after that.....

The Jan 1990 concert performance in Toronto Massey Hall was very good, so I agree with the comment about the form. Miles seemed enthusiastic and keen to blow.

Wasn’t it that rubbish National Enquirer rag that had the ‘rumours’?

Edited August 8, 2021 by sidewinder

[Guy Berger]

On 8/7/2021 at 8:30 AM, JSngry said:

There were whispers that Miles had contracted AIDS, so yeah, he probably was aware the his time was limited.

Do you mean that you think he had HIV/AIDS, or that he was clearly in ill and deteriorating health (with the rumors as an outgrowth of that)?

[JSngry]

Both, kinda. Miles led a wild life.

[Gheorghe]

Yes, a wild life. But after his comeback he cut everything out, I thought. Didn´t smoke, didn´t drink, did health food and so on, that´s what I have read. He had changed his live after a mild stroke and after they found out that he has diabetes, no ? 

I read the book by Jo Gelber and it seems that he wasn´t hanging out anymore, Only in the hotel room or so....

[JSngry]

You don't avoid AIDS just because you stop doing stuff. It doesn't work like that.

Did Miles have it and not want it revealed because of the stigmas involved (would the Macho Miles thing have stood up to the revelations that he was a macho bisexual? I've heard too many stories from too many places to not believe that he was...)? I don't know. Did he not have it at all? I don't know that either. But I would not be surprised one way or the other, and in all honesty, if I was to bet,, it would be that the "cleaning up" stuff was because he was scared of something, possibly several things. He knew what all kinds of shit he had been doing more than anybody.

[mjzee]

There's an intriguing but ambiguous reference to this topic in the updated introduction to Jack Chambers' "Milestones" biography (1998 edition):  

"In January 1989, a few months before executing the will, Davis had been hospitalized in Santa Monica, California.  Hospital stays were habitual for him in these years, but his confinement in Santa Monica was thrown into high relief by a tabloid report that Davis was suffering from AIDS and would probably never leave the hospital alive. The Star (February 21, 1989) cited unidentified sources - no surprise there - but implied that Cicely Tyson was one of them.  It made sense.  Tyson had filed for divorce from Davis exactly a year earlier, and the settlement negotiations were endless and acrimonious.  Davis did eventually leave the hospital, despite the Star's prediction, and resumed his career.  He shrugged off the allegations about AIDS, but he confirmed Tyson's role in spreading the rumors.  One exchange on the subject, in an interview with Jennifer Lee in Spin (December 1991), included this dialogue:

"LEE: Miles, I want to ask you a sensitive question.

"DAVIS: What?

"LEE: Do you have AIDS?

"DAVIS: Why are you asking me?

"LEE: Well, it's a heavy rumor about you - and what if I wanted to sleep with you someday?

"DAVIS: My ex-wife started that rumor.  She called up women and told them.

"In the end, the official causes of death were pneumonia, stroke, and respiratory failure.  The AIDS virus was not cited in medical announcements."

What I find intriguing is it seems that Davis didn't directly answer yes or no.

[JSngry]

She called up women and told them.

Which if true - if true - would have been the responsible thing to do.

Miles died in 1991, 30 years ago. Whole different world then, in so many ways.

None of this is relevant except why was Miles suddenly revisiting all his old music after pretty going out of his way to do anything but that...because he knew he was going to die soon, that would be my strongest supposition. No other reason makes sense to me.

 

[jlhoots]

Unless there's an autopsy report or an AIDS test, I don't think any of us actually know (or need to).

[Gheorghe]

One thing that made me sad somehow in his last year was the way how they almost made a parody of his old self. Dressed with too much strident colours like a paradise bird, wide trousers that made him look very very short, and that hair wave that made him look like a poodle. 
When he did Avery Fisher Hall in ´81 he still looked like the "old Miles"...... 

But the positive things were my memories especially in lat 1989 when they played the material from "Amandla", which is more jazzy stuff and more real music that before, when it was like music you listen on headphones . And there were better musicians, especially that japanese keyboard player Kei Akagi, very very fine, not like the keyboarders before, who stayed in the background and made only the sythy-soundes and pushed all them buttons and so.....