Miles Davis-Rated X: A serious question...

[dave9199]

I've been listening to Davis's Get Up With It cd, an album I've always liked, and have seen either here or possibly on BNBB a thread about how great the song Rated X is. I would agree...IF I COULD FUCKING HEAR IT!!! WHY THE HELL IS DAVIS'S KEYBOARD SO LOUD?!? Pardon my yelling, but what I'm hearing underneath, sounds REALLY good, but...UGH! THAT FUCKING KEYBOARD!!! So here's my question: Is this song not as annoying on vinyl vs cd? I just read the paragraph in Chambers book Milestones that calls it a great song, but how can nobody mention it's ruined by the level of the keyboard? If it was mixed lower, it'd be fantastic. I freakin' hope it get remixed when it shows up on box #8. Thanks for listening, I always knew I could count on you to be there.

[Guy Berger]

I've been listening to Davis's Get Up With It cd, an album I've always liked, and have seen either here or possibly on BNBB a thread about how great the song Rated X is. I would agree...IF I COULD FUCKING HEAR IT!!! WHY THE HELL IS DAVIS'S KEYBOARD SO LOUD?!? Pardon my yelling, but what I'm hearing underneath, sounds REALLY good, but...UGH! THAT FUCKING KEYBOARD!!! So here's my question: Is this song not as annoying on vinyl vs cd? I just read the paragraph in Chambers book Milestones that calls it a great song, but how can nobody mention it's ruined by the level of the keyboard? If it was mixed lower, it'd be fantastic. I freakin' hope it get remixed when it shows up on box #8. Thanks for listening, I always knew I could count on you to be there.

If you want to hear it without the prominent keyboard parts, pick up Panthalassa. That mix really clears up the rhythm section as well, it sounds muddy as hell on the original. I think the freaky organ part adds something to the tune though there would probably be a happy medium between Teo and Laswell's mixes.

Guy

[Spontooneous]

I'd swear the vinyl mix was different from the CD -- much darker, with the keyboards not as trebly.

But it's been a lot of years since I heard the vinyl, the LP has gotten away, and my memory ain't what it used to be.

[GregK]

I second the Panthalassa recommendation. Everything on that sounds very nice, with lots of space between the instruments. I've always loved how the In a Silent Way material sounds on that too

[Guy Berger]

I second the Panthalassa recommendation. Everything on that sounds very nice, with lots of space between the instruments. I've always loved how the In a Silent Way material sounds on that too

Weird... I thought the In a Silent Way mix was a disgrace. Well, not a disgrace really, but it sucked. There's a reason why the original album was awesome and hence screwing around with it is going to lead to subpar results.

The other stuff is better because I don't think much of Miles's studio work post-Bitches Brew was intended as a finished product, if that makes any sense.

Guy

[GregK]

I've liked every In a Silent Way presentation that I've heard-of course nothing touches the original, but they're all good

[Quincy]

My favorite version is the one that leads off the "Foot Fooler" side of In Concert: Live At The Philharmonic Hall. If the liner notes are to be believed (a bold thing to say in this forum ) Miles stays away from the keyboards. Once Miles comes in to stay (after 3 or so minutes) the whole of disc 1 gets its groove on.

I think I've read some reviews that trash this album. I seem to remember one reviewer was especially upset that it featured an electric sitar. Maybe it's the faces an electric sitar player has to make that upset the reviewer so.

Having put this side on as I'm typing, maybe what I really like about the "Rated X" is how it sets up the "Honky Tonk."

Edited January 22, 2005 by Quincy

[Rooster_Ties]

I second the Panthalassa recommendation.

Me three...

[Guy Berger]

My favorite version is the one that leads off the "Foot Fooler" side of In Concert: Live At The Philharmonic Hall. If the liner notes are to be believed (a bold thing to say in this forum ) Miles stays away from the keyboards. Once Miles comes in to stay (after 3 or so minutes) the whole of disc 1 gets its groove on.

Yeah, and the part where Michael Henderson finally locks into the groove... awesome. If you can somehow get a hold of a bootleg from Paul's Mall around the same time, the music is actually much better than the Philharmonic Hall gig.

The big minus to me about this band (which, I'll agree, gets trashed unfairly sometimes) is that aside from Miles there aren't any really interesting soloists, just interesting textures.

Guy

[mjzee]

I always liked "Rated X." I've only heard it on vinyl. It sounds mysterious, with the organ on top and murk underneath...and then it just stops, as if the background tape keeps getting shut off and on. Also, there's a lot of rhythm going on, but no beat. I think the Chambers book calls this musique concrete and points to the influence of Stockhausen, and I can see that. It's fun, but there's certainly more than enough music on the album if you'd prefer to ignore this track.

[Guy Berger]

I always liked "Rated X." I've only heard it on vinyl. It sounds mysterious, with the organ on top and murk underneath...and then it just stops, as if the background tape keeps getting shut off and on. Also, there's a lot of rhythm going on, but no beat. I think the Chambers book calls this musique concrete and points to the influence of Stockhausen, and I can see that. It's fun, but there's certainly more than enough music on the album if you'd prefer to ignore this track.

Paul Tingen talks about this a lot in Miles Beyond (pp. 139-142):

[bill] Laswell's ambition was to reinterpret Miles's music from 1969 to 1972 via a late-twentieth-century musical perspective, using cut-and-paste post-production techniques similar to those [Teo] Macero had used. "Macero and the other people who worked on these records were from a classical and jazz background," explained Laswell.  "And I can't imagine people with a background like that having a clue of what to do with the kind of stuff Miles was producing.  The music Miles was making at the time had nothing to do with jazz, and there was no reference for it.  On the Corner was the beginning of mutant hip-hop for me, and I think it was too new for them.  I don't think they got it.  How was it supposed to sound?  So one of my prime objectives was to re-mix and re-construct Miles's music from a non-jazz perspective."

"People were to a large extent controlling music for which they didn't have a fitting vision," Laswell elaborated.  "Miles's music was dealing with repetitive rhythms and repetitive bass lines, the same things that you would hear being developed at the time in rock and funk and R&B and reggae, and the same things that you hear today in drum'n'bass and techno.  You have to approach that kind of music with a different sensibility, with more of a rock sensibility.  You want to make the bass big and heavy, the drums poewrful and hard-hitting, and in a piece with very dense rhythmic patterns you want clarity so that you can hear what's being played.  Macero's editing and cut-and-paste methods were in some respects quite innovative and pioneering, and the remix culture caught up with them some twenty years later.  But saldy Macero's approach was also often a kind of shuffling process, trying to construct something that could be put out as a record.  It wasn't really comparable to the way people now use recording studios and technology creatively to create new music.  The studio wasn't used as an instrument.  It was more a matter of intuitively trying to determine a result, fairly quickly, and in some cases fairly sloppily.  It could have been done better."

Laswell's criticisms of Macero's work have been ill received in some quarters.  Paul Buckmaster was one of the many who sprang to Macero's defense, stating, with reason, "Macero is very creative.  He was probably a jazz guy at heart, and he was dealing with music that nobody had a reference for.  But he still went out there and experimented.  Maybe he didn't get it 100 percent right, but for the time it was amazing...

The differences between Laswell's and Macero's approaches [on Panthalassa and Get Up With It] are most extreme on the track "Rated X," recorded on September 6, 1972, with Miles, [keyboardist Cedric] Lawson, [electric sitarist Khalil] Balakrishna, [tabla player Badal] Roy, [Michael] Henderson, [Al] Foster, Mtume, and guitarist Reggie Lucas.  Included on Get Up With It, "Rated X" is Miles's first-ever track on which he does not play trumpet.  It was wholly constructed in the editing room by Macero, who culled Miles's Yamaha YC45 organ playing from another session and pasted it over the dense rhythm.  Dominating by the ear-wrenching, dissonant, and overbearing organ clusters, the impenetrable, muffled rhythm section pounds away relentlessly for almost seven minutes.  In an echo of Buckmaster's on-off ideas for On the Corner, the rhythm section is occasionally cut out by the mixer, leaving the organ to fend for itself.

"On vinyl 'Rated X' always sounded very, very dense and unbelievably bad and muddy, with the organ sound pushing everything else in the background," Laswell said.  "But the rhythm tracks were recorded very well.  It's just how they were equalized and balanced in the mix that was the problem.  They clearly didn't have a clue how to deal with these dense rhythms.  But for today's ears the density and detail of those rhythm tracks make them sound very modern.  In my version I mixed the organ very low to make space for the details in the rhythm track."

Laswell's mix opens up a deep sonic space for a unique and fascinating rhythm universe in which Lucas's rhythm guitar and Balakrishna's electric sitar can be heard complementing each other.  "The transcendence and essence of the music in this peice emerged with compelling relevance for contemporary times," remarked Stuart Nicholson.  Although improved almost beyond recognition, the rhythm remains abrasive and unrelenting.

[doubleM]

Guy, ....Is that "Paul's Mall" boot called "Call it What it Is"? If so, I have a burn of it, and could share. I bought that disc in a used store for $9 and sold it on ebay for $213. That's one happening disc.

[Guy Berger]

Guy, ....Is that "Paul's Mall" boot called "Call it What it Is"? If so, I have a burn of it, and could share. I bought that disc in a used store for $9 and sold it on ebay for $213. That's one happening disc.

I don't think so... Losin's website says the disc you are talking about is this one, from a year later (the Lucas/Cosey/Liebman band).

Guy

[doubleM]

Thanks!

[SNWOLF]

I love Rated X. I've got no idea how the vinyl version sounded, darker, more muddy, more resonant more - whatever. I've got the Panthalassa version, and I like it, but I find the greater balance and sound saturation almost TOO nice, too well-behaved. And Laswell's attempts at sonic origami on Silent Way don't work at all, in my opinion. There's a very intimate, strange and ethereal atmosphere generated by the original In a Silent Way and Laswell neither manages to recapture that langorous feeling or transfigure it into his own peculiar vision. The rest of the remix album, however, has splashes of genuine inspiration and sonic majesty - he does Miles proud.

But the version of Rated X that I first heard on CD. I love it. It has this sinister darkness percolating away underneath with a menacingly claustrophobic funk rhythm that drops out precipitously as Miles Davis, perversely, leans on the organ and generates dissonance of magnificent, willful nastiness. He just being a prick. And yet, aesthetically, it's evil and it works. If any track in the seventies could convey cocaine agitation and grandiosity sliding towards dark psychosis, this is the track. It makes Sly and the Family Stone sound like the Smurfs.

[sidewinder]

I've got a vinyl 'Rated X' and the sound is very dark, quite sinister. Scared the living shit out of me when I first heard it ! Think Hammer movie backing tracks and this is it.

The version on 'Panthalassa' is great also. Love this disk - came out also on a limited vinyl pressing which is my fave..

[JSngry]

I bought GET UP WITH IT on the day it was released, and "Rated X" was an immediate favorite. Dark, sinister, and pervese, yes, but hell, it IS called "Rated X", right?

I've never "upgraded" to the CD version of the album, so I don't know what it sounds like, but I do have PANTHALASSA, and I found the version there to be interesting but ultimately supplimental.

[sidewinder]

Must have bought my copy within weeks of its UK release - I'm pretty sure I picked up a copy of 'Big Fun' on the same day. These were two of the first jazz LPs I ever bought and they are still in near-mint nick ! 'Rated X' certainly stood out on first listening, up to that point I had never heard anything like it. I detect the possible influence of Paul Buckmaster in the use of repetition, plus obviously the dark afro influence that Miles was going through at the time.

Well, there's only on thing to do with the weather crap outside. After the current Mingus masterpiece that's being spun here ('Let My Children Hear Music') that copy of 'Get Up With It' is goin on the turntable and the volume will be cranked up to max as Miles advises in the LP notes of this era..

Edited January 22, 2005 by sidewinder

[JSngry]

The big minus to me about this band (which, I'll agree, gets trashed unfairly sometimes) is that aside from Miles there aren't any really interesting soloists, just interesting textures.

I'll posit that having interesting soloists was not what that band and thatmusic was all about anyway. It was very much a group music, with the intent being to create a collective rhythmic organism, with overt soloing serving as an ornament, not as the tree.

The best example I've heard of this is on this bootleg:

Recorded in such a way that allows you to hear the inside of the music, rather than just the collective mass of it, you can really get a handle on just how interactive this music really was, and how Miles was directing it all through his playing. Very intircate, very mobile, and built from the bottom up. The people who complained about Henderson just playing vamps over and over were completely missing the point.

Of all the releases from this band/period I've heard, this one gives what I think is the truest picture of how this music really functioned. Hopefully, it will someday see "official" release.

[dave9199]

Thanks for all the responses. I bought the Laswell album from Amazon. There are a lot of cheap new copies there. I think I'm upset because it sounds like I'd be one of my favorites and I can't hear it. Does anyone else detect the eventual 80's direction in the 2nd song from Get Up With It? I thought it interesting as I don't own any of his post 1975 work, but the song, which I like, seems radio friendly. In Chambers book he says that this song along with Red China Blues was issued as an edited single at the time. Interesting too as Red China Blues Chambers feels is a pandering song, looking for a new audience. I bet Columbia eventually does a box #9 of his 1981-85 stuff which will suck as my collection will not be complete.

Ironic sidenote to Bill Laswell: the only album produced by him that I have is The Ramones: Brain Drain (1989, last one with Dee Dee). While the songs are really good, fans slight the album because of the mix. The drums are mixed way too loud.

[sidewinder]

'Maiysha' presumably. Sure - it hints towards a lighter, more MOR side and Al Foster was putting down the same groove as on the second part of this number when I heard Miles in 1982.

A harder version of 'Maiysha' is on the 'Agharta' recording - this is the superior version to my ears and Sonny Fortune's flute playing is just wonderful on this.

Edited January 22, 2005 by sidewinder

[sidewinder]

Anyone noticed the stylistic similarities between 'Rated X' and Sun Ra's 'Disco 3000'?

[JSngry]

Does anyone else detect the eventual 80's direction in the 2nd song from Get Up With It?

"Maiysha"?

Yeah, that's a GREAT tune, especially before it goes into the vamp. That's one where Teo's production is killer, I think. I ain't never heard no triangle sound like that in real life! But it also made for a great live piece as well.

I also think that the revisionist attitude about Teo's production work, that it was inadequate and that he didn't "get" the music, is wrong. I dig where Lasswell and others are coming from, but like all hindsight, it's bound to be 20/20. I think that Teo did great work with those albums, and if today's ears want to hear a different perspective out of those tracks, that's cool to. But the music was almost as much of a "construct" as a pop record, so any number of choices could and were made. By and large, I find it very hard to fault Teo's choices, and I say this as somebody who listened to this music, and listened intensely/intently, as it was released.

What Laswell (and to some extent, Belden) has done for is added a different perspective to the music, not changed it. If that's their intent (and I know that it is Belden's), then I'm cool with it. But if he's going to go around saying that "Teo got it wrong", then I couldn't disagree more.

[jazzbo]

Yeah I couldn't disagree more either. Like you I got Get Up With It as soon as I could and I really have grooved to this double disc ever since. It really has in a way CORRUPTED me.

I actually have two cd reissues from Japan, one lp facimile released just prior to the DSD version, and a jewelcase version of the DSD remaster. The nonDSD sounds a lot like the lps do, maybe a little brighter and more clarity. I spin that one the most.

[Guy Berger]

It makes Sly and the Family Stone sound like the Smurfs.

I haven't watched the Smurfs for a long time. Isn't there some sort of "Evil Smurf"? Or maybe we should rename "Rated X" to "Gargamel".

Guy