robertoart

You'll just have to listen to the next one instead. Are You Glad To Be In America. RSJ and Grant Calvin Weston, two for the price of one. The Rough Trade one is a better mix than the Artist's House release though. And it's mastered by the legendary Porky Peckham - Britain's own post-punk Rudy Van-Gelder. Incidentally TOCB has a VanGelder stamp in the dead wax

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.

It's for a good cause, apparently.

Here's an online scan of the booklet for anyone else that might be curious. Including the infamous 'harmolodic guitar clef Any insights welcome. Also this interesting recollection from one of Blood Ulmer's ex-students. It has some good writing about the difference between street musicians and the academy. http://www.myspace.com/theelectricson/blog/495500705

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?

I forgot about this. MTV Miles. Only 6004 views

They both performed at the Rumble In The Jungle concerts in Sep. 1974. Larry Carlton was in the band then. I thought David T Walker replaced him? So maybe it was recorded post Zaire. Maybe the recording was a result of contacts made from that tour perhaps? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BUUs3TNL-g

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

Bloody Scofield 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 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 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

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. And why not, really? Why the hell not? What better victory against/revenge on your enemy than getting through his doors on your terms? Living and dieing on your own terms w/o ever even trying to get through those doors is certainly a viable alternative, as well as an equal victory, but is it better, especially in terms of what can actually be done with it? The culture will be monetized at some point. The question is - who will be "out of the way" when it is? And why will that be - or not be? Well the pejorative tone to Scofield's 'Miles just wanted a hit so bad' comments is that it was all ego at least in regard to that anyway. Nothing musically or culturally altruistic about it. Obviously the bigger picture he had for the music overall had grander ambitions. But you would probably have to hear from those there at the time to get a clearer picture of the truth of this. FFS he even had Robben Ford in the band at one point. It really took him a long time to let go of the 'Fusion guitar player identity' as part of his music.

Possibly because it's Classic in the good sense of the term. It's a kind of holistic music that is more fulfilling than fusion/collage. It's one big thing rather than a series of parts. I doubt that music will have a use by date.

It's certainly It's certainly great that you can be so present on the live music scene. With regard to the lack of topics devoted to 'what's happening in NYC last nite" it would definitely be valuable to read more about that. However, rarely does anything worth reading tend to eventuate from those kinds of discussions. As your posts in this topic indicate - they usually don't move beyond lists of names and an accompanying sloganeering thumbs up. Perhaps on a forum board, people more intimately connected to audiences and scenes, are shy of being too candid, critical and specific of 'in the moment' or emerging players, for various reasons I suppose. Usually it is with a bit of time and recordings/other documentations and considered memories that the most insightful and valuable posts/topics are made. Then again, perhaps something insightful can be squeezed out of the experience of seeing Cecil Taylor at five feet. Was it boring? Why was it boring? Does your mind wander less at five feet than it does 'in the listening room'? But it must be a dandyish existence to have the luxury of thinking, 'gee I really feel like watching Mike Stern play Giant Steps tonight' I wonder if he's playing at a bar near me'.

Why did Chewy get banned?

They've been levelled at the second for a long time now. i don't think that music is going to be re-appraised in the same way that the reputations of the post Bitches Brew albums have been rehabilitated. Unless the Robert Glasper/Bad Plus/ generation are claiming them as antecedents (maybe they are?). I heard Liebman with McCoy Tyner fairly recently in a...um....err....recital/concert hall setting. When he played Blues On The Corner - he lifted it to another level. I definitely felt what I was hearing from his horn was great. Really great.

This appeared on Liebman's facebook page last year. I think there is a thread on the board somewhere. Interesting reading that's for sure. Funny that Liebman felt all at sea in those bands, and tends to play that up in these reminiscences. He was there towards the end of the first Electric period. The music was/had reached its crescendo in terms of where it had evolved from In A Silent Way. I remember reading Miles say that he stopped playing at the end of this era because - 'he was so bored'. Perhaps he was bored because he had realised or found the natural conclusion to his exploration of Black rhythm modalities. Perhaps he'd achieved his aims and had nothing to strive for anymore. In the other archive interview from the The Guardian, from the the time of the Under Arrest album, he seems to be pushing the idea that the second Electric Period had another kind of project in mind - with regard to the elevation of Pop melodies - into an extended improv setting that was still 'creative' and relevant to a contemporary experience. Perhaps it failed (surely it did), because Miles wasn't able to surround himself with the sideman to realise this vision - the way he did all along the way during the first Electric period. "Cedric Lawson on electric organ, Khalil Balakrishna on electric sitar, Al and Badal as I mentioned, Mtume on congas, Reggie Lucas on guitar, with Michael Henderson on bass"... plus Bartz, Cosey et al. these were the kinds of players that realised Miles vision in the end. By the time of the second period, maybe he was too out of touch to find the right kinds of players organically, by being connected to a vibrant 'scene'. When he started the second period he surrounded himself with Music college graduates who had spent their lives trying to unravel Coltrane, (Scofield,Stern,Evans,Miller,Berg etc.) - hardly the kinds of minds and social history that was going to realise a great Black Music Pop Improv project. Scofield, often, (petulantly?), disses Miles as being obsessed with getting a 'hit' record. Maybe he started to find those sideman later on, but possibly the rot had set in by the choices he made early on in the comeback period.

America is a concept, by which we measure our pain.

What they don't know won't hurt them

Yeah, very interesting. How many Indie Rock fans who could afford/have the social opportunities to send a kid to Harvard, were having kids this young - so as to make this all 'believable'. Maybe wait another 10 years and it might all 'fit'.

My link Just thought I'd repost billf's link to the archival Miles Davis interview from The Guardian, that got lost in the board malfunctions. Miles and Richard Cook do their collective best to advocate for Electric Miles Pt.2 I doth think they protest too much.

The vaults must be dried up.

And I'd very publicly like to thank..............

The Larry Coryell records on Vanguard are great. Some classic playing and some other kinda funny 'timepieces'. Roland Prince is a very interesting and highly skillful guitarist with Calypso influences. I have/had his Vanguard Lp's and his sessions with Elvin Jones. I believe he relocated back to the Caribbean. This is one of my favourite guitar recordings ever -

So this is possibly the last time Wes was captured in performance. Fairly significant recording I would think.

It's really fantastic. You have Linda Sharrock's vocals to contend with though. Which you will probably appreciate, especially in regard to your church sermon interests. You can audition a couple of tracks here My link Blind Willie is on this album. One of the most essential guitar recordings in Jazz history. And also Ask The Ages is a masterpiece bookend to Black Woman as well. I need to get a copy of BW again myself. I had this on vinyl for awhile in 1987. It was probably an original, or maybe an Affinity? re-issue.

What does this mean? 'Wally' Traugott - who mastered the Blue Note vinyl in the 90's (from the digital files acccording to info at the Hoffman forums). Stop And Listen - 'Wally', $25 near mint Stop And Listen - ' RVG', $500 near mint it's the monetisation of vinyl