Guy Berger

Scott, not sure we're really disagreeing that much. The only thing I am getting at is that these guys played a lot of live gigs and, based on the recorded evidence from 1963 through 1967, did so at an extremely high level pretty much all the time. Within that context, what made the 2/12/64 concert special was not that these guys played a lot better than they usually did on this specific night, but that it was the only opportunity for many listeners to hear them in action. Maybe if Columbia had recorded & released the May 1966 Portland concert or the November 1967 Paris concert to a broad audience, those would be the concerts we'd all be swooning over.

If someone said this, they are incorrect. For what it's worth, while this is an excellent concert, I do wonder whether its reputation is at least in part exaggerated due to the fact that it had almost no competition for listeners' ears from other live recordings with this rhythm section for a decade. Maybe if the Plugged Nickel or later recordings had been released in real time... I don't know, but I personally doubt it. The tension and aggression they played with due to the money situation is quite noticeable. And it is still fascinating to hear how cohesively two rather disparate sources, meaning Coleman vs. Ron/Herbie/Tony played together. Kinda reminds me a lot of the Coltrane Quartet in '65. You just felt as though both bands had reached their apotheosis at those points, and could simply go no further. I have listened to every (or nearly every) live recording with this rhythm section. I don't dispute that they felt what they felt on this evening, but their playing here doesn't strike me as unusual in terms of aggression/tension. Can you give specific examples of compositions played at this concert and on other live recordings from 1964-1967 that are played with more aggression/tension here?

I actually think the 1959 San Francisco recording is somewhat overrated, as is the "Know What I Mean" album with Bill Evans. My faves with Cannonball (besides Somethin' Else) are Cannonball in Europe, Fiddler on the Roof, and Money in the Pocket. My opinion is Cannonball's bands got better once Yusef Lateef joined - there was some grit added to all that sweetness.

If someone said this, they are incorrect. For what it's worth, while this is an excellent concert, I do wonder whether its reputation is at least in part exaggerated due to the fact that it had almost no competition for listeners' ears from other live recordings with this rhythm section for a decade. Maybe if the Plugged Nickel or later recordings had been released in real time...

Agreed - the early Verve stuff is essential.

Loving this right now (or rather, disc 1; haven't listened to disc 2). Listening to the solo album on Tzadik and Pi trilogy is a 2014 resolution.

Putin's Russia gives me the creeps.

Well of course, but you could also flip that statement and say that you can never read an article about Miles without it mentioning all of major, major artists that got their starts in his combos over the years. That is certainly an essential aspect of Miles' oeuvre that has propelled him to such legendary stature. For what it's worth, I have never thought of Herbie or any of those guys simply as Miles' sidemen, and I really haven't at all gotten that impression over the years. I realize that your experience may be different. I am guessing that a fairly large percentage of the universe that's familiar with Herbie Hancock does not know that he played with Miles Davis.

My experience with them has always been positive, and I tend to favor them when I order on Amazon Marketplace. But I'll add that I've never ordered anything complicated.

There's a pretty good chance that this is not the most sexist/chauvinist post on this board... But it's still sexist/chauvinist. Seems like something the Simpsons comic book guy would say.

It's funny - I didn't become "aware" of him until fairly late in his career - and then retrospectively realized he was in a ton of movies I'd seen ("The Big Lebowski"! "Scent of a Woman"!). Great actor, never mailed it in.

Steve Grossman is among my least favorite 1970-75 Miles saxophonists, but I second this - he sounded a lot better on the April and June stuff that was not officially released. Haven't listed to this stuff for a while.. but my memory of it is that I was disappointed by Grossman....so I am wondering if I should get this box when I have much of this material live with a better version of the band. Do I have it wrong? Well, I've already offered my lukewarm semi-defense of Grossman on these recordings. But besides that, Miles and the rhythm section are red hot. Let me also add that - assuming "better version of the band" refers to the March 1970 gigs with Wayne - the group's sound did change pretty quickly during this period, becoming less free-jazzy and more groove-oriented. Less than six months separate the March Fillmore gigs and the Isle of Wight gig, and the gap between March and the first Cellar Door band recordings is less than right months. This stuff isn't redundant from a stylistic standpoint.

Actually...not...there's the band returned to the US with Sam Morrison replacing Sonny Fortune. That is starting to evolve into another direction yet, although since it ended the way it did, it could easily be heard as the sound of a band running out of breath. But either way, that stuff shows that when people talked about The Man With The Horn showing Miles picking up where he had left off, that might be truer than many of them realized at the time. Great point. I think for multiple reasons - the lack of widely available recordings when this music first re-entered the jazz consciousness, the agenda of the people who pushed the re-evaluation of this music (when was Greg Tate's article published?) - the "conventional wisdom" was/is that the 1975 and post-1980 music have no continuity between them.

I hope so. That Japan tour yielded some amazing concerts. I suspect they will do the 1971 European tour with Jarrett and Bartz next. October 1970 @ Fillmore West would be my preference. DeJohnette was still on board, and the music was incendiary. Ndudu Leon Chancelor made that 71 Euro tour, and while playing fine, was also by his own admission not quite yet ready to bring it all the way. The Japan tour, yeah, the band was tight as hell by then, some amazing shows indeed. The best recorded that I've heard came out on a boot as Black Satin, from Tokyo 6/19/73 (and w/Liebman still on the band, so it's pre-Fortune), but jeez, that's the best recorded example I've ever heard (including Columbia/Sony albums) of how that band was constantly bouncing off the time back and forth, like an Acid Technicolor Muhammad Ali/James Brown/Miles Davis band. I've really never heard another Miles performance quite like that one in terms of recorded balance between all elements. There were actually two Japan tours, 1973 (which is what Jim is talking about) and 1975 (B Clugston and Kyo are referring to that one). Both have some amazing gigs, some of which I think are better than A+P. They do have different feels as the band's sound evolved over those 18 months.

I like most of the early Beatles stuff A LOT. Please Please Me is a bit hit and miss, but the next four are great, and the non-album tracks from this period are generally fantastic. And I say this as some who thinks Rubber Soul, Revolver and Abbey Road are the pinnacle of their output. However, the fascination with the inferior American LPs is weird to me. I guess nostalgia has a powerful pull.

It's fun to hear this group play these tunes; they tackle them pretty freely. There's an even later recording of "Paraphernalia" from the summer of 1970 once Jarrett joined the band.

Not answering your question, Bertrand, but I don't think Early Minor is in there, unless there are two different compositions with that name. They DID play the tune commonly associated with that title at other gigs around that time.

Botti is very good on the the BLUE album.

Interesting to imagine what would have happened if Miles had gone with this complex composition route in his electric period rather than the long, minimalist vamps. I know what you mean, but I don't think it's as simple as that...check this out: http://www.plosin.com/MilesAhead/CodeMD.html I sorta scoffed when I first read this information (in a bootleg's liner notes, actually, albeit without the larger overview provided here...but with specific references to the music on the recording itself), sounded like retro-fitting to me, but have come around with the hearing of more and more bootlegs. The markers are definitely there, and the effect is one or composition, rather large-scale, actually...not unlike how sonny would play these longass sets that would ramble from one tune into another but ultimately make set into a suite. In Miles' case, it was the other way around, he'd make a suite into a set. Was not contesting that... but for a little bit in late 1968 and early 1969, there was complexity introduced WITHIN compositions that Miles recorded. I also didn't mean "long, minimalist vamps" in a negative way - I like Miles's 1970-75 music a lot.

Interesting to imagine what would have happened if Miles had gone with this complex composition route in his electric period rather than the long, minimalist vamps.

Steve Grossman is among my least favorite 1970-75 Miles saxophonists, but I second this - he sounded a lot better on the April and June stuff that was not officially released.

They should have a deluxe edition that comes with its own lava lamp.

I don't know how representative they were of the entire British Invasion, but Mick Jagger and Brian Jones were both born to middle class families.

For all the talk about "real jazz", the first time I heard Sugar I was struck by how much more straight-ahead it was than some of the later, more commercial BN stuff.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-25684040 i wonder what his favorite album is ABWH or YesWest?