Guy Berger

Second on Tingen being worth a read. Pluses: 1) He did his homework with interviews of musicians and other primary sources. 2) He is open-minded to this music and gives the 80s comeback era a fair shake. 3) He understands the music enough to talk about it, as Jim says above. Minuses: 1) Tingen comes from a rock background, which is important for this kind of book, but since he is talking about "fusion" music (in the literal sense), more knowledge of jazz would have been useful. 2) He has an annoying tendency to interject his own spiritual beliefs. This is irritating and disruptive. Quibbles: 3) He views the 73-75 band as the zenith of the electric period and this perspective colors his writing. 4) Excessive focus on official recordings. 5) He badmouths "Mademoiselle Mabry" and "Pharoah's Dance"!!!! I would generally steer clear of the Chambers book's discussion of the electric period - the guy is 95% clueless on this music. Guy

Listening to Anniversary for the first time... amazing.

I wish most bootlegs sounded this good. I agree it's the sound is a little "dry" but I'll settle for being able to hear all the instruments clearly! Guy

This isn't really news - the retirement period has been discussed in many MD biographies.

I listened to this performance again recently (I have it in ROIO form) and found Miles's playing to be underwhelming and unremarkable.

Jonathan - THANK YOU. Guy

There are almost twenty recordings of this group.

It's a great performance without a doubt - as is the concert recorded the following day. The last recordings on which there is significant representation of material Miles recorded with the 50s and 60s quintets.

I also think the intensity of responses in this thread is a little "strong" for my tastes (maybe triggered by the effusive FT article). The guy made some positive contributions to jazz history (and I am not a huge fan of his "aesthetic"). The bad stuff is mostly water under the bridge. He wasn't the worst, he wasn't the best.

The first time I heard this was after freshman year in college, when I told a jazz fan friend of mine that I was into fusion (=I'd heard Brand X's Product after really getting into Genesis). It sounded like noisy gibberish to me. I eventually picked up the album and it was a struggle. In a Silent Way did, however, make sense, and after spending some time with that and the 60s quintet material I ended up liking the album a lot. The opening of "Pharaoh's Dance" still gives me goosebumps. I connected with this album before I learned to appreciate the 50s quintet, for what it's worth.

Are any of these guys in print (or readily available) on CD? Seems like a good project for Mosaic.

For what it's worth, my favorite foreign beers are those produced by Samuel Smith. (Much better than those made by his American cousin, Mr. Adams.)

I always got the vibe that PBR-mania was a hipster, irony-rich "so bad it's good" phenomenon rather than any genuine appreciation of its taste. But nobody can account for taste... Guy

I'm guessing this ranks each country's macrobrews, and since American macrobrews are probably the most widely distributed, the result is not particularly surprising. I'll take Dogfish 90 minute IPA over almost every foreign beer I've ever tasted. Guy

I'll be picking this up. I'm guessing they focused on the Newport show (rather than, say, the July Antibes performances or the better-sounding Europe shows from the fall) because it's among the least-circulated by collectors. Isle of Wight is nice. The unit sounds better than they did at the Fillmore East in June, though not nearly as good as the Cellar Door band. Guy

Happy Hanukah, folks.

There's a Motian-Bley duets CD, "Notes", that was released in the 80s or 90s on Soul Note. The two have also collaborated on numerous other albums (with other musicians in the lineup) so it could be from one of those.

RIP, Enrico Palazzo (The opening scene of the first "Naked Gun" is among the funniest cinematic sequences I have ever seen... brilliantly lampooned on Family Guy.)

Sadly, the scan I underwent today in SFO was far less racy than Fox News and Matt Drudge had led me to expect! Guy

That album...you talk about an iron fist in a velvet glove, this is it. Nothing "easy" going on here...sort of an unheralded masterpiece, I think. Yes... great album! Jimmy reminds me of Sonny Rollins on one of the tracks, but that could be just because he's playing tenor over bare-bones rhythm. What other pre-Fusion/Thesis albums do you guys recommend? Guy

Let's hear it for manufactured outrage!

I don't see the difference, a bootleg is a bootleg and the rule here is "no linking bootlegs", period. No exceptions. There's nothing zealous about it. Yes... but someone reading this thread can pretty quickly go to amazon, do a search and get it anyway. Aside from imposing a miniscule cost on the reader, delinking achieves little. Furthermore, one of the main reasons for preventing links to bootlegs - protecting the owners of this site - is not germane here. Anyway, either way, not really a big deal. Guy

At the risk of getting too arcane, are you sure that it's a Rhodes electric piano at that point and not the Wurlitzer (or any other model)? Or were you using Rhodes as the generic for "electric piano" such as Kleenex for "tissue" or Scotch Tape for "cellophane tape"? Miles was using the Fender Rhodes on the road during this period. Guy That seems like a tenuous line being applied here. Who's to say this is an illegal bootleg? The original link was to Amazon. It shows it as an import from the label Ais. It's even being offered with Free Super Saver Shipping. I'm sure if Amazon was aware it was selling illegal goods, it would shut the page down, no? Nothing tenuous here. It is a bootleg. Miles was under contract with Columbia at the time, and the rights are now owned by Sony. I don't know why CDs with unauthorized material are being sold by Amazon, but the fact that CDs like this set are being offered with Free Super Saver Shipping doesn't say anything about the legality of the items. While I am sympathetic to the general rule of "no bootleg links" on this board, this seems to be an overly zealous application of that rule. That said, I think most people can figure out from this discussion how to search amazon for the recording in question. Not to mention all the other wonderful ways to acquire it, many of which do not involve paying $$$ to bootleggers. Guy

The 11/5/69 date has two sets. During "Bitches Brew" at the beginning of the 1st set, the electric piano breaks down. Chick eventually comes back with the acoustic piano for the piano solo of that tune. Then, they play post-bop material for the remainder of the set - "Paraphernalia", "Nefertiti", "Masqualero". By the 2nd set the electric piano is working again. I've only listened to the 7/27/69 date once and don't remember it that well.

I would disagree... the fall material is the best, the band got better collectively over time. However, the Blue Coronet stuff is probably more likely to appeal to fans of straight-ahead jazz. To my recollection the best-sounding of the early lost quintet gigs (before the Antibes concerts in July) is from the Village Gate, in April or May. The starter kit I would recommend for this lineup: Both Antibes concerts (July 25th and 26th) Rome (October 27th) Rotterdam (November 9th)