aworks :: "new" american classical music

Spanish Key (1970). Miles Davis #HelloItsMe

I'm not one to apologize for lack of blogging but I've been busy with work, family, commuting, and elder care...

Just to end the blogging drought, I'll mention Spanish Key, from Miles Davis' Bitches Brew. Tastefully funky, jazzy, and spacey. Transcription here.

Ok, back to the above activities, and then this weekend, taking the daughter to the Halloween store and more listening to Einstein on the Beach in preparation for the non-recorded version in Berkeley in October. Thrice. 

Walkin' (1954). Miles Davis

Amazon has announced the upcoming release of The Complete Columbia Album Collection -- 70 CDs and 1 DVD representing the entire Columbia Records catalog of Miles Davis for $293.49.

This evening, I happen to have been listening to pre-Columbian Miles but this announcement gets my attention. But when lala has 273 Miles albums available for free streaming, it seems rather indulgent.

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Bitches Brew (1969/70). Miles Davis /vocalese/

Via David L. on lala (website here), it's a vocalese version by Eddie Jefferson of the electronic jazz tune Bitches Brew  This is weird and compelling...

Bitches Brew - Eddie Jefferson

Bitches Brew (1969/70). Miles Davis /that '70s show/

Some good quotes by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan from the excerpt of the new 33 1/3 book on Aja:

• We liked Stevie Wonder, of course
• Those two guys called Seals & Crofts.  They had a very nice way of integrating jazz into their tunes.
• I liked Herbie Hancock’s stuff. I thought Head Hunters was kind of repetitive — those grooves would just go on — but he really knew how to get a nice sound.
• Most of the things that were called jazz rock that I was familiar with were pretty boring.
• And Bitches Brew was essentially just a big trash-out for Miles.  I haven’t really changed my mind about that.  I liked In a Silent Way, but Bitches Brew just sounded kind of funny. It would have made a good soundtrack for a Fat Albert cartoon — but not as good as the Herbie Hancock one they actually had! To me it was just silly, and out of tune, and bad. I couldn’t listen to it. It sounded like [Davis] was shooting for a funk record, and just picked the wrong guys. They didn’t understand how to play funk. They weren’t steady enough.
• You know what I kind of liked?  The Don Ellis big band.

Fagen is wrong on Bitches Brew of course and I didn't realize there were still Seals & Crofts fans. But I've been listening to Don Ellis again.

Deception (1950). Miles Davis /friday pandora 10/

Another web music gadget, this time, a pandora/emusic mashup. Play Pandora tracks and the artist's emusic page is also displayed.

I hadn't tried Pandora for awhile but here are the first set of tracks on my Quick Mix station:

1. Giant Steps. John Coltrane. I like it (obviously) and Steven Rubio happens to mention the album today as he blogs about music in my birth year.
2. No Cigar. Millencolin. New to me.
3. Deception. Miles Davis. I like it.
4. Question Everything. 8Stops7. New to me.
5. The Instantaneous Mobilization of All the Resources in the BURROW and All the Forces of My Body and Soul. Melk The G6-49. New to me and I like it.
6. First Hits. Don Caballero. Sorry, no.
7. The Seven Samurai. Photek. Pandora played it because "it features idm influences, use of modal harmonies, intricate rhythims. a slow moving bass line and extensive studio production. Pandora's right, I like it.
8. Nannou. Aphex Twin. I'm not going to show the album cover here but that picture of Richard D. James is disturbing. The music is good, though, due to its "idm influences, electronica roots, use of modal harmonies, intricate rhythms, and emphasis on instrumental performance."
9. Itsuko. Richard Divine. Via my Four Tet Pandora station, this has the "idm influences, busy beats, off beat style, a unique form, and thickly layered production" you might expect from Four Tet. I'd download this if I hadn't exhausted my emusic quota last week.
10. The Last Year. Stiv Bators. This track bears no relation to the previous nine ("mild rhythmic syncopation, extensive vamping, electric guitar riffs, and many other similarities identified in the music genome project").

Red China Blues (1972). Miles Davis

Author Paul Tingen suggests Miles Davis was fundamentally playing the blues with his sense of tight, precise rhythm and how he squeezed sound out of few notes (like a blues guitarist compared to say John Coltrane's sheets of sound). Napster has an explicit example, Red China Blues, that features Davis as well as a blues harmonica player.

He also points out that modernist Davis, unlike romanticist Louis Armstrong, played the trumpet without vibrato. He also suggests Davis doesn't sound dated because he both included and transcended his influences. As evidence, Miles' surprising take in 1950 on Dixieland music:

I don't like to hear someone put down Dixieland. Those people who say there's no music but bop are just stupid; it just shows how much they don't know.

Get up with it!

Spanish Key (1970). Miles Davis

WORDSANDMUSIC blogs about electric guitar and jazz including the music of Sonny Sharrock, James Blood Ulmer, Larry Young, and also John McLaughlin on Miles Davis' Spanish Key from Bitches Brew:

Chopping guitar reminiscent of Steve Cropper over at Stax in Memphis as well as James Brown's rhythm section, driving drums, bass ostinatos, three electric pianos playing tag, Miles flying over it all beautifully...The recording sound is bursting at the seams with the inter-locking activities and clashing timbres of this band – it must have been hell to mike up, but the raw freshness slaps out at you.

While McLaughlin's playing excites and thrills amidst the hubbub, I can never get enough of Bennie Maupin's bass clarinet improvisations on this track and on this album. I don't know why I have not heard much else by Maupin (other than other Miles Davis albums and The Jewel in the Lotus from 1974). Amazon lists Driving While Black and a new CD Penumbra.

And the Guardian has a list of 50 albums that changed music. Davis' Kind of Blue is included with this quip:

Without this ... no ominous, brooding, atmospheric trumpet behind a million radio plays and TV documentaries.

wikipedia: bitches brew

In a Silent Way (1969). Joe Zawinul

In the past, I've been one to naively pooh-pooh Davis' departure from "pure" acoustic jazz. Now, after listening to this and reminding myself that it was recorded in 1969, I am simply blown away. Fretful Porpentine

After scouring the jazz section, I picked up two Miles Davis CDs, In A Silent Way and Filles De Kilimanjaro. I've been listening to them for the last couple hours...gorgeous, soulful and timeless music! Armen Chakmakian

Now though I wanted to mention that Miles Davis's song In a Silent Way helps me pray. It is very beautiful. ChristopherSly

I keep coming back to [Van] Morrison's ultra-elongated Common One. Often dismissed as dull and indulgent, it's first of his meditational '80s works, and owes much to Miles Davis' In a Silent Way. Jim Walsh

In a Silent Way is a one of kind record that mixed the late-'60s pop and underground movement into the jazz realm. On this record Miles began to hook into the late '60s sounds that flowed from the jam bands in San Francisco. Trevor MacLaren

I'm not a fan of jam bands (except maybe the Allman Brothers' Live at Fillmore East) and yet this is great music.

recent listening: nobody knows the trouble i've seen/albert ayler. mysterious mountain/alan hovhaness/andrew litton. duo for flute and piano/james willey/richard sherman

Take It or Leave It (1969-70). Joe Zawinul /or don't go at all/

This year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies are proving interesting. First, John Lydon of the Sex Pistols officially proclaims his disgust at being honored. And then, the family of Miles Davis squabbles over who gets to represent Miles at the ceremony:

'My sister, we don't even believe she was a Davis,' he [Gregory Davis] told the Daily News. 'We don't even think there will be any Davises accepting that award.'

Take It or Leave It is an outtake from the Bitches Brew album. Paul Tingen in Miles Beyond points out it is actually the middle section of In a Silent Way and calls it "ambient." Re-listening to both, I'll call In a Silent Way poignant.

Time After Time (1983). Cyndi Lauper

Miles Davis recorded the 1980s hit Time After Time by Cyndi Lauper. Ok.

Actually, it does sound ok. I've been listening to all that intense late sixties/early seventies Miles and this is a pleasing alternative.

From Raymond Chowkwanyun's review of the book So What by John Szwek, here's why Davis recorded it:

At the very end of his life he professed an unwavering admiration for Cyndi Lauper's "Time after Time" and it became a staple of his concert performances. But then he had always admired singers and Frank Sinatra had a huge influence on his early playing. He wanted to play like the great singers.

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