Miles Davis- Bitches Brew- Heard it for the 1st time today....

Was just gonna suggest this. It's as much as masterpiece of his as Kind of Blue is.

 

great album

 

I'm a huge fan of the entire era. Get all the albums! But Live Evil or On the Corner would be my next pick after Bitches.

 

This contains some of the Lost Quintet stuff people had been clamoring for for years:

 

ok, to keep this thread very much on topic, if one were to want to hear Bitches Brew on CD in the best way possible, which release/pressing would you suggest?

 

But Miles didn't invent Bop either so how come he wasn't an imitator earlier? His electric period is way more unusual than other fusion stuff at the time. Have a listen to Get Up With It. There isn't any bandwagon jumping or anything remotely commercial on it

 

Well, imho...

From the first opening notes of "Right Off" on A Tribute to Jack Johnson (Brash, outspoken, controversial African-American boxer of the 20's) you are in for a treat. True to his subject matter, Miles jabs, ducks, dances, weaves, cajoles, struts, delivers rapid volleys, hits a few knockdowns... A tour de force performance (I don't know what studio trickery might have been involved; Teo Macero was fairly hands-on as a producer), but it just keeps coming and coming at you. Underneath is John McLaughlin at his stripped down best; angular, propulsive, rhythmic like a freight train threatening to fly the tracks, never once getting in the way of the bandleader, no hot dogging, adding a jagged, violent undercurrent; it's another tour de force. You've got Henderson and Cobham as rhythm section, who carry the intro until McLaughlin slashes in, and they bring the funk big time, a roiling ride to the end. Herbie Hancock is at his funkiest too. Words cannot express how much I love this particular track.

Side two, "Yesternow" doesn't have that punch-your-face immediacy about it, being a largely somber rumination. But it is dripping in some of Miles' most soulful playing. However it is a soulful that sounds like it is disoriented and hungover, somewhat edgy beneath a surface that seems calm at first until you notice its subtle restlessness and unease. I do know this one is a Macero splice job, with two parts recorded with different lineups, but I don't really care. Eerie and haunting, and even when it becomes familiar it offers up little surprises. Not as badass as "Right Off" but good stuff,

(I should note that I have never seen the documentary for which these were recorded; the "boxer" allusions in "Right Off" were probably very intentional)


In a Silent Way shouldn't be far behind, and if you went with that first, it's just as good. I'll let someone else rhapsodize about it, but I could...

 

I would get the Complete Session but that might be overkill for somebody new.

 

I don't buy that reading of it. Yeah, he was starting to use rock rhythms and timbres, and later funk rhythms, which were imported from other music styles and genres. But there was no other record in April 1970 that sounded like Bitches Brew. Personally it's not my favorite of that first, more rock-ish Miles electric period -- I like In a Silent Way and Black Beauty much better myself. And I live the later skronky funk style of the bands with Pete Cosey, which I think was yet another change of direction for Miles.

Miles was always a synthesizer of ideas that were in the air. His '48 cool jazz stuff followed Claude Thornhill's band w/ the Gil Evans arrangements and Miles even used Evans and Konitz. His modal jazz period was very much inspired by George Russell. The '60s quintet was as much a Wayne Shorter band as a Miles band. Miles was continually at the cusp of the new thing whether it was bop, cool, hard bop, modal or fusion. But he wasn't alone, and he wasn't usually even the originator of the style. He was one of the originators and a major popularizer of them and he made all-time great, even genre-defining statement in these styles. He was advancing them, not copying them. And I think In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew are very much in that line. Like I said, I don't think much else sounded like Bitches Brew at the time.

 

I would get the Complete Sessions boxes for Brew,Silent, and Jack Johnson. Go big or go home.

 

from an audiohpile's standpoint or a completist's standpoint?

 

Well, they are one of the most important bands of the last 50 years. So there is that.

 

Filles De Kilimanjaro
Get Up With It
In A Silent Way

 

Probably completest. I'm not really a cd guy. The only version I have on disc is the Complete Sessions.

 

the 4CD is really nice to have just to be able to hear everything that went on at the time, but that remix is a bit hard to stomach at times.

 

Yeah, I mostly listen my original record, though I need an upgrade. I am curious if the Mobile Fidelity or Music On Vinyl recent reissues are the remixes. Early pressings are getting to be expensive in good condition.

I did, though, see a Quad version when I was in New York. Would be fun to hear it that way.

 

Well, this is imho too

I answered that thread because I can think of no other American band that has had a more profound influence on American rock music. (I mean, 'who else?' is really how I see it) I was treating the thread as a rock thread, since the OP had provided a poll of rock groups that omitted them. You are dumbfounded I would pick them, but I am equally dumbfounded that they'd be missing on a poll that included a dozen or so names. They aren't necessarily my favorite band, although I gotta admit, I am awfully fond of them and play them right alongside contemporary stuff often. They continue to have a tri-generational influence on contemporary rock music, as they've had since the 60's themselves. It's insane how many indie rock bands sound like the Velvets, and list them as a self-explanatory influence when asked, and this goes all the way back. There were fewer baby-Velvets in the 00's and 10's than in the 80's and 90's, but there's still plenty. In my post, I don't think I used the word "greatest" because I hate those kinds of labels, but maybe I did, I don't know, I have my good posts and bad posts... I was thinking in terms of "most lasting influence/importance".

As to how I can love Miles Davis and Velvet Underground at the same time, I never saw them as contradictory before. They are very different, but not mutually exclusive. I'm sure many people like both. I'm pretty sure even that there are a lot of good writers who like them too...

 

Bitches Brew is a unique and deep experience. Don't be so quick to move to another album.

 

This actually gets at the negative reaction Miles faced with his fusion stuff. There was some idea that genres and certain sounds were mutually exclusive. There is a great video of James Mtume (who plays on On The Corner) taking Stanley Crouch to task for criticizing Miles for changing styles.

 

In a Silent Way, absolutely. It's what he was doing immediately before Bitches Brew and it's a timeless album that you can hear resonate through all sorts of music of the next fifty years. Very different in mood but subtle, groovy and sublime.

All the studio material after that and until his retirement is of considerable interest, and it's actually quite diverse. My favourites are probably Jack Johnson, which is maybe his most straightforward album of the era, and Get Up With It, which collects the best of the unissued material he'd accumulated over the first half of the seventies and is consistently surprising. His eerie half-hour Ellington tribute, 'He Loved Him Madly,' is one of the most extraordinary things he ever did: the atmospherics of In a Silent Way after they've been dragged through the electric / electronic wringer of Bitches Brew and On the Corner.

 

EVERYBODY was criticizing Miles for "selling out" at the time. On the Corner wasn't beloved until the reissue-itis of the 1990s. It was panned upon release and forgotten for decades.

 

I sure wouldn't mind seeing this discussion stay on point.

 

And when musicians began rediscovering it. People wanted to box Miles in so they listened with closed ears.

 

I hated Bitches Brew when it came out but that was forty some years ago I have another set of ears with my age.

 

I hated it too when I first heard some 20 years ago.