Miles Davis - Live in Munich 1987

One Phone Call
Street Scenes
That's What Happened
New Blues
Human Nature
Tutu
Time After Time
Portia

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Interview with Teo Macero - Part two

by Lara Lee

Q. Kraftwerk would also work the same way, they felt like scientists of the studio. Do you know some direct influence in contemporary music of your work? Things that you started.
A. No, I mean I hear some of it from time to time and I hear these records, but it's not the same as when we were doing it, which is a shame, because I think that given one's ability, it would be nice if I had a studio to go to everyday and work at it and create and have some tapes to work from. I mean I do it for myself. I did a concert a couple of years ago where I made the tape myself, and it was quite extraordinary. I played over the tape, I did my part live and the tape was on tape. It worked out very well. But I like to try and work with contemporary composers because these guys have a lot of musical ideas and they can hear sounds and this is what you need. You need to be... like Varese, he could hear everything. A number of other composers can also do that and it's a shame that they don't have the opportunity to get into an environment where they can work at it, not electronics so to speak, but work in real music. I mean in terms of live performers and taking that and seeing what you can do with it.

Now, Miles, I come back to him all the time because I recorded him a lot differently than most people would think. I can't remember how far back, but I recorded him from three different sources. When the microphones first came out attached to the instruments Miles was one of the first to use that. So I take it from the source, from the microphone on the instrument, I'd take it from the real sound into the microphone. Then I would feed another channel into the amplifier and pick it up from the amplifier. So I had three different sources to work from. So you could take those three sources, keep the main source, and then manipulate the other two sources and come up with Bitches Brew. But you need that communication with the other person, engineer and research department. This is where it's coming from. I mean all these electronics are great but if you don't know what the hell to do with them and you're not a good composer you might as well send it back.

Q. Miles said that what makes bad music is bad musicians. At that time people were freaking out blaming synthesizers for bad music.

A. The funny thing is the wa-wa pedal is now becoming more important in terms of the market place. I don't know whether I gave him the pedal, but I got him a pedal, I got him everything he needed for the wa-wa. But he couldn't' manipulate it. He was just learning it. So what I did, I told him "Don't worry about it. We'll fix it." So when I got the tapes out of the studio into the editing room I got a wa-wa pedal. And I wa-wa'ed those things to death so that you... (imitates the sound). I don't think anyone could duplicate those records today. I think he made two records like that.

But I think that's another electronic, the wa-wa pedal and all the sort of electronic effects that you have with the guitars is really marvelous. I have a piece in one of the sessions with the guitar player Reggie Lucas and he played and gave me two different versions. I put those things together, and they're dynamite. I wanted to put that in as part of the new Miles Davis, because it was done at the end of one of his sessions. But they don't want that. I guess they don't want to make any money. Because these thing I know Miles would have done. He was very careful, he would like to try new things. I played with the London Philharmonic on one of my own tapes and it's gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Now this is something I wanted them to do for many years. Now, I had the studio a couple of months ago and I had this trumpet solo that I wrote and that he did for a TV show and I put that with the London Philharmonic. And they refused to put it out. I own all the tapes, and it's gorgeous. We made it all with the London Philharmonic.

Q. He considered nothing wrong, everything was allowed?

A. I found it very fascinating. We had our battles. There were times when he wouldn't speak to me and times I wouldn't speak to him. It's like a husband and wife. There are times when you just like to be left alone. He used to call me at 2 or 3 in the morning and play a tape for half an hour, forty five minutes. And Miles would get on the phone and say, "How do you like that?" I said, "Well, generally the ideas are great. Let's go in and do them." And the next day we would do them some time in the afternoon or the evening.


Q. What about Stockhausen, influential?

A. Stockhausen, to me, didn't include all these sort of electronic effects. I haven't heard much of his music except the early pieces that he did, which was sort of like music concrete. I don't know how you would analyze it but it was good, I mean there's no question about it. But so far as electronics, they used to create electronic effects without electronics. Now you say, "How did you do that?" Probably the same way that he did it, it's by putting certain tonalities together. I did a movie called AT THE END OF THE ROAD and the critics said that this was a great electronic score. This happened to be back in '65. There weren't any electronics at all, except we did have an organ or something like that. But it's the way you put these instruments together to create overtones that creates a sound. Can you imagine if you put all that stuff into different echoes, different delays? It's very fascinating. I mean I used to try everything. When CBS came out with the first 200 LP's, the engineer and I mixed all of them. Producers weren't allowed, I wasn't a producer then, I was a music editor, but we put out 200 of the first stereo LP's, I mean we used limiters, we used sort of like digital delays a little bit. Having one machine go at a 7 1/2 speed of another thing. We did the records and got fantastic reviews. So you see the people really don't care as long as they hear the music. And we, as musicians, we'd know what was important and how it should sound. So we were just adding another little color. With Stockhausen, there was a lot of great music but he hasn't done much in the last ten years that I know of. Has he? Sort of like given up.

Q. So your work was more a process, not predetermined?

A. When you go into the studio you go in and make the product better and you try different things. We'd go in there and we'd listen to the material and say "how can we enhance this? How can we make this better?". Sometimes an engineer would have an idea, I'd have an idea, we'd try it. If it didn't work we'd throw it out and try something else. But, until I got the right kind of sound for some of those records it took quite a while. I mean lots of very painstaking time in trying to get them to really speak for themselves. I mean if you are to go back and listen to some of the early records made without the editing, you'd say, "Is this possible? Is this the way it was?" I mean even my own things, I shudder to think, because I think that we take these things and raise them to another level. And a lot of records today are being made and they're not doing anything with them. I mean they're letting bad songs on them and this and that. Who needs that?

I can't stand mistakes on records. The president of CBS used to say, "it's like putting a couple of words on a Broadway show album." Or the joke: you hear it once you don't want to hear it again. So, the best thing to do is put out pure music. So this is what we try to do. Even with the Broadway shows, which I used to work on. I did 19 or 20 of those and we could create a lot of different sonorities. Sometimes he would like it, sometimes he wanted it purer. But there again, it depends upon one's taste. I was always experimenting, because I thought that this was the way to go. I did overdubs back in the '50's and late '40's. I overdubbed myself. I have one of my records, it's called "Sounds of May" and it won a lot of prizes. It's unlike the music today where you've got 30 minutes of one kind of vamp. It just moves like a composition and that's something that's lacking today.

I mean if electronics is going to help them do anything, maybe it will help them a little bit in organizing their music because it gets pretty boring after ten minutes. I mean, when you hear the bass (imitates sound) and the drums and everything else and nowhere to go. Just a straight, you know, reading in the red, it doesn't make for good music. You have to have some dimension. You have to have some air around it. The rock and roll people all like it very tight, in your face. I tried to tell that to Robert Palmer and I said, "Robert, it would be nice to have a little air around it, I don't need the space, but air." And he finally would add a little echo. I said, "Okay, if that's as far as you're going to go, that's fine." And with him we were doing a lot of electronics, but everything is not a computer. He put it all in the computer first, then called me up and sent a tape over. I listened to it, and with comments, sent it back. Then a couple of weeks later he'd send another one and another one and another. And then I'd go over there to Italy and work with him in the studio. But I said, "It's too late now. The electronic things are so set, there's not much I can do." I mean if I wanted to take it all apart, that's one thing, but he didn't want that. So I said, "Okay you're not going to have an intro and you're not going to have a middle section." Because sometimes they would just start and then you'd need an intro, so where do you pick up the intro? From the inside of the piece or something like that, in order to give it some semblance of order, rather than just this straight computer piece that didn't have a beginning, middle or an end. It was just one piece. It didn't have those sections.

So we had to make an ending. But you're limited as to what you can do. Like, for instance, the Japanese, on this thing called 16-30, which is a big machine. You make your masters onto it and you can edit onto it and it's fine. But they're doing it backwards because I had said to them for 12 to 15 years, "You've got to add something to this equipment. You cannot make a splice like this and echo one side. You have to echo the second side. It just will not carry over." Now that should be a simple thing for the Japanese to figure out, how to make that echo go over. So, what you have to do, is take it out of the digital before that, put it into the analog, and put it back into the digital, if you want to do it correctly. That takes a lot of time and it should be a simple thing. . Not that I'm an electronic wizard, I'm not.

Q. What about Herbie Hancock, he was a gadget fanatic?

A. I didn't know too much about his electronics. I imagine he is, he's probably got every piece of equipment ever invented. I don't know if he uses it like he should. But once you have all that stuff, unless you had somebody there to prod you, you'd have a tendency not to use it. Or, you use it and you're not thinking about something else. Now, we did this movie with Chick Corea in his studio out in California. It was a movie called VIRUS, and there were a few things that we wanted him to record. He did it all with a synthesizer. And it's a great track. I was there, he was there, and he improvised. He took the basic melody and it was really quite beautiful. But the other three tracks that we didn't use for the movie are dynamite. I've been trying to get those out since 1972, or something like that. But Chick had a great sense of how to plug things in. But then you get the critics who say, "Oh, he's back to electronic music again. This guy is doing this and it's not like the acoustic instruments like piano." It's a different touch. Anybody could be the performer on electronic instruments because it's all the same. Even though you push keys, you might have a different way of pushing them. But with acoustic music there is a difference. But with electronic, to me there's no difference. I couldn't tell one from another. Who the player was... I've done so many of them, bass and other instruments. But anyway, I just like to play.


Q. You said Miles didn't use a synthesizer but in his biography he talks about using electronic instruments to go further?

A. Well, of course. And if you notice in his performances, this came up last year at a clinic out in Minnesota: the critic got up and said, "I've discovered something, that Miles is doing the same thing in concert as he does in the record. I can hear the similarity". But the guy, the critic, I didn't want to embarrass him. I said, "Look, all those sounds that you hear on the record and that are dove-tailing are done in the editing room. And what Miles did, if you hear his concerts, he goes from one tune to the other". Maybe with a little vamp. And that's exactly what we were doing in the days when I was working on Miles' records. So therefore there's editing all over again. And these people today, I just don't know, they can't get the concept because we're taking these records as gospel truth, but at the same token, it's these guys over here who put it all together. It's like a great painter, great artist or whatever. You're able to see and say, "Look, I don't like it because...", maybe because Miles didn't have any endings, might have been some cases like that, I'm sure there were. So you take the end out not even a bar and a half and you hear (sound). And that's exciting. And this is what he did in concerts for the last ten years, maybe fifteen, I don't know.

Q. What about the purists?

A. There are too many of them around. The purists don't have a place on this earth. I mean if you want to be a purist, you buy yourself a computer and just let it happen and do nothing else. I think the purists, they're all right for some things. For archival kind of things. But I think that when you're a purist, you want all the mistakes. I can't stand them, I mean I wouldn't like it. I wouldn't like listening to a record with mistakes in it. I mean I had a couple of records the other day, I listened to them and it's nothing. I can't even go back to play it again. I mean the purists have a way. They don't want the echo. And then with Miles, getting back to that big question, there's no echo, there's no limiting, there's outtakes and everything else. I think it's unfair for the artists. The purists have got a place, but not where the artists should be. I mean, they can't inhibit the artist, can't stifle them. You got to let them go. You've got to let them be creative.

Q. With the electronic revolution, purists thought it was the death of music, instead of its rebirth.

A. I think so. I mean there's a lot of things to be said about the revolution. But there again, you got to go back to basics too, you got to go back to music. And a lot of the young players don't have that giant stature, like a Duke Ellington, like a Miles, like a Basey. They have no concept.

Q. How much do you know about the youth culture's techno music. Miles said it came from funk?

A. I'm not so sure what he meant by that. Funk came out of that? I don't think so. I'd probably disagree with Miles on that because funk has been around a long time. Look at Lionel Hampton. That band and Duke's band used to play that back 20 or 30 years ago. You'd call that funky. I have some records of Duke's that are fantastic. They got that funk. If you mean playing one chord for twenty minutes, that's funk, and then they have the 2 and 4. The only trouble with a lot of that music is it doesn't swing. And this is what I objected to with Miles' later records. Because they're sort of blocked in. He goes 2 and 4 done with a computer. And you cannot make music that way and put it on a clip track. And this is how they made a couple of those records and I think that that's wrong. I mean you can't really make funky records. I think funky records have to be done as a whole, live. I mean you need that fluid, that movement. Funky music has been around for a long time. I consider Dixieland pretty funky. I love Dixieland. Love banjos too, got a lot of banjo music. And you hear the difference. I mean you put the record on and compare it to records today, sure there's a difference, but it's uplifting, where the beat is not click track. But when you get the click track and the rock and roll things and those kinds of things, to me it's debilitating. You listen to ten records one after another and you'll see what I mean. You get worn out.

Now, you take the big bands, Woodie Herman, Duke and Basie Fletcher Henderson, and you listen to that and boy, you want to get up and dance, you want to get up, you want to move. It makes you feel good, because it's human. I don't know. I sometimes think I'm talking to the wind when I talk to these executives at record companies. They don't understand what I'm talking about. Of course they don't know what it is to be in the studio to hear Basey and Ellington together for the first time. Do you know that record? Oh, that became a giant record. I don't know if it went gold. Basie wanted to put the bands together, intermixable. I said no, you can't do that Imagine, the producer telling Basey. I said, "Bill, I'm going to put Duke on the left and you on the right and whoever's song that we're playing will be in the center. Your rhythm section will play your songs and Duke's rhythm section will play their songs." So in the middle of one of the numbers there's a drum solo by Basey and I had all these boxes and things, because we had so many microphones. Then the drummer from Duke's band jumped up on his set of drums and we opened up all the pods (from the mixing board) very quickly and boy, the battle between the two drummers... It's just one of those spontaneous things that happened once in a lifetime. You know, the studio is a place to experiment. The studio is a place to perform. The studio is a place to create new kinds of images and solos and unusual events. I mean I've done a lot of dates where we start off with one thing and end up with 20 better. So I'm saying you've got to be there and you got to encourage the guys. You got to work at it every minute. I mean I do. I don't know about everybody else.

Q. You think that the combination of human-machine is to have the machine work with you?

A. But you got to be human, I mean you can be difficult. I'm not easy, in the studio, because I can't afford to be. I mean, if I wanted to be pussy footsy... Like Brubeck wanted to do one time, he wanted to have his sons play in the band with all the great musicians. And I said,"This is not a training program. We're trying to make a hit single." Oh, but these guys, "my kids will play..." . I say, "Dave, they can't possibly play up to the level of these other guys. They're going to drag them down." He insisted, so I walked out and told him to go to hell.


Q. What are the interesting cross pollination's of technology and music?

A. There's a lot of that going on. A lot of cross pollination going on. But there again, it gets back to music. You can have all of this stuff and if you're not equipped to handle it musically, it just sounds like a dull piece for five or ten minutes. But everybody now is on the kick of acoustics. They want it just to be an acoustical record, nothing edited. I'm saying, that's a terrible way to go. But they want to go that way, they do it. Whatever, I've always believed in taking things from classical. I'm a classical composer and jazz composer and arranger. I take things from the classics and I manipulate them into the jazz format, and vice versa. Because I don't do anything that I don't like to do. And I do a lot of things that maybe another composer wouldn't have anything to do with. Like with doing Big Band arrangements, I'll do that. But a small band, banjo music, music boxes are different. I got records, four or five music boxes and 11 banjo records out there.

So I mean, I've delved in all kinds of things. And I can take an element from -- I just did this piece from Shastokovich. He's one of my favorite composers because he could orchestrate, he could develop a thematic idea. I took the harmonic structure of his section and I wrote another piece and I call it "Shasty". And it's rather unusual, rather interesting. I mean, and you hear the juxtaposition like he would have done, but only done in a jazz, swing format. So there is that cross pollination going on all the time. I mean we borrowed from them, they borrowed from us. But there's not enough things that really are happening. To me it seems like everything is standing still at the moment. Spinning our wheels because the record companies don't want to hear it. They want something that's going to make them a lot of money, and you a lot of money. But I think experimentation is the greatest way of making money. It's like investing in the stock market. You got to be experimental. You got to be holding to something, holding to the basics. And I think this is what's wrong with a lot of music today. It just sort of gets up there and just sort of stops. I don't like that.

I mean I have a piece with the London Philharmonic and the Lounge Lizards. They said, "Why did you put the Lounge Lizard with them?" I did it originally with Bernstein and then the group, who are all great jazz musicians. But I didn't want to write them a part but he insisted on me writing the music for them for this particular piece. And I wanted the orchestra but, he put the small group in the balcony. So I said "Okay." He said, "You're going to have to conduct the small group..." because if you look at the score, there are no bar lines. This was in 1951, then I put this jazz group on top of it. And I'm on my knees for three days, conducting the performances at Kennedy Hall -- I've got pictures of all of this -- conducting the band on my knees. And then later on, like five years ago I decided to go to England to record the London Philharmonic and do this piece then I had the Lounge Lizards play a section of it. We did it up in Quebec with the Quebec Symphony. We tore the house down. They said "This is electronic?" Because everything overlaps, nothing is together. I mean, the bar lines you get a little dot, dot, dot and maybe the woodwinds start here. It's a helluva job to conduct this way.

What I did right in the middle of this piece in Quebec, because we had John Lurie playing the sax, I grabbed my sax and the band is still going and I'm playing right with them. We had 8000 people a night for two nights in a row. And we played all the music. They wouldn't let us off. I don't understand that, because hearing the record, you couldn't get two people to go hear a contemporary concert. But we played all new things. Everything was new. Like world premieres of about ten pieces. It was a lot of fun. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. I'm working on a piece now that's going to be done in California, this year. And it's got four elements. It's got a tape, the original symphony tape that I had. It's got a new Big Band section, it's got a marching band, a small little band like a civil war band, and then it's got another tape that goes over the others and features a soloist. So they asked me if I would bring that piece when I come out there to lecture to the kids for a couple of days. So I don't sit still. I'm trying to think of other ways of creating music and it's fascinating to me.

Q. The kids now are all bedroom musicians...

A. Oh the samplers, it's just terrible. The samplers... I mean it's good for some things. But really for creative music you've got to really be doing it live. I have an arranger that I would swear that when he gives me my tape it's done with live instruments because he is so good, so fantastic. There's a guy who could make a lot of money. And he doesn't' live here in New York, but I wish he would get up here because he's terrific. I mean he'd put all these other people to shame because he has a way of creating it so that it's more real. And then what we do, we put maybe a live instrument on top of it. You'll have to hear some of this music.

Miles Davis - Six 1973 Concerts plus...

...one from 1969 and a tune with BB King.

1973-10-24 - sweden (complete show 43:38)
1973-11-15 - paris (complete show 90:02)
1973-11-07 - belgrade (complete show 44:29)
1973-11-01 - berlin (complete show 48:25)
1973-10-17 - boston jazz workshop (58:42)
1973-04-13 - howard university (complete show 89:06)
1969-07-25 - juan-les-pins france (63:54)
bb king w/ miles davis 1973 - blues with miles (06:10)

Go and Get It...

Miles Davis - Live in Hamburg 1990

Kunstinsel, Hamburg, Germany, July30, 1990 (.avi, TVRip)

Miles Davis: Trumpet, Keyboards
Kenny Garrett: Alto Saxophone, Fulte
Joseph "Foley" McCreary: Guitar
Kei Akagi: Keyboards
Richard Patterson: Bass
Ricky Wellman: Drums
Erin Davis: Percussion

Perfect Way
Hannibal
Jo-Jo
The Senate ~ Me & You
In The Night
Human Nature
Time After Time
Full Nelson
Splatch
Tutu
Amandla
Carnival Time

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Miles Davis in Berlin, November 6, 1971

Miles Davis in Berlin November 6, 1971 (.avi)

Miles Davis - Trumpet
Gary Bartz - Soprano & Alto Sax
Keith Jarrett - Keyboards
Michael Henderson - Bass
Ndugu Leon Chancler - Drums
Charles Don Alias - Percussions
James Mtume Foreman - Percussions

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Wilson and Alroy's Records Reviews: Miles Davis

Miles Davis' cultural icon status has overshadowed his music. So it's worth mentioning that he was a masterful trumpet player who explored the instrument's lower register and tended to play slower, more lyrical lines, often deeply melancholy, rather than the showers of high notes of Dizzy Gillespie and his imitators. Davis was at the center of almost every movement in modern jazz (he skipped "free jazz"): early be-bop (he played with Charlie Parker in 1945); the "cool" sound; hard bop; orchestral experimentation; the "modal revolution"; fusion. He also played with most of the key jazz artists of the post-war period (Monk, Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Tony Williams, etc. etc.), and is probably the single artist who best represents the turbulent course jazz has taken.

Directions In Music

Nefertiti (1967)
I'd better listen to this one some more: when I first got it I hadn't developed much of an appreciation for Wayne Shorter, who wrote half the songs here (again, no originals by Davis). In any case, the Williams and Hancock tunes are awesome, and the rhythm section is so inventive you can't get bored for even a second. (DBW)

Miles In The Sky (1968)
The soul and funk influence is beginning to be felt here, with George Benson contributing a lead guitar solo, and the rhythm section coming down out of the stratosphere to lay down more accessible grooves. The tunes concern some of Davis' main issues of the day, with titles like "Stuff" and "Paraphernalia." (DBW)

Filles De Kilimanjaro (1968)
Miles goes electric - piano and bass - with a bunch of really long songs, and it's hit or miss: he said in his autobiography that the Quintet's work had gotten too abstract, and that he wanted to get back to the basics of the blues. If that's so, he's lost me: I find this record about as abstract as any jazz I've ever heard. In fact, I'd better go back and listen to it some more. Carter's last appearance with Davis; "Frelon Brun" and the lengthy "Madamoiselle Mabry" feature Dave Holland and Chick Corea instead of Carter and Hancock. (DBW)
Water Babies (rec. 1967-1968, rel. 1977)
A set of outtakes released during Davis's retirement, three songs recorded during sessions for Nefertiti, and two cut during exploratory sessions for In A Silent Way, with Chick Corea and Dave Holland added on electric piano and bass respectively. It's a weird set because the Nefertiti side has the anything-can-happen combustibility of the Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams quintet ("Capricorn"), and the second side has the mostly absent Miles and endlessly raining electric pianos of the Zawinul-Corea-McLaughlin group ("Two Faced"). The first side isn't up to Quintet standard - the title track is a simple sequence outlined by block chords from Hancock, with unremarkable solos from Davis and Shorter - but the gently unhinged "Sweet Pea" (a tribute to Billy Strayhorn) is a classic, and I like even the later tracks better than most of Davis's fusion, because Williams keeps things from drifting entirely out to sea, and there are recognizable tunes and a minimum of tape manipulation. All the tunes are Shorter's except for "Mr. Tillman Anthony (William Process)"; the 2002 reissue also includes Davis's "Splash" (I believe the same take that's on on the Silent Way Sessions boxed set). (DBW)

In A Silent Way (1969)
Setting a pattern that would hold for a few years, there are two side-long tracks assembled by Davis and Teo Macero through the miracle of tape-splicing: for example, the last six minutes of the master recording of "Shhh/Peaceful" was moved to the beginning of the released version, and duped again at the end, while most of the early part of the recording was tossed out. Corea and Holland are back, and Joe Zawinul plays electric keyboard on the title track, which was assembled by pasting his incredibly dull composition "In A Silent Way" at the beginning and end of Davis's mellow funk groove "It's About That Time" (which also features some uninspired Shorter soprano soloing). When you consider that four minutes are repeated on one track, and six on the other, there are less than thirty distinct minutes of music on the LP, and what little there is is mostly atmospheric noodling (John McLaughlin spends most of "Shhh" trying to find a decent lick, and failing), so I can't see this as anything close to a classic. On the other hand, Miles does come up with some spirited playing in the latter part of "Shhh," and much of his electric period is even worse. The 4-CD Complete Silent Way Sessions boxed set contains all the unedited recordings, plus a bunch of other unreleased or under-released tracks cut around the same time. (DBW)

Bitches Brew (1969)
All the same weaknesses of the previous record, but much longer, duller and less focused; a double album featuring Zawinul, Corea, Shorter, Holland, McLaughlin, Bennie Maupin (bass clarinet), Larry Young (keys), Harvey Brooks (bass), Jack DeJohnette and Lenny White (drums), Don Aliasand Jumma Santos (percussion). This was a big seller and is supposed to be the seminal classic of jazz-fusion, but to me it's a bunch of tuneless jams that don't have the invention of jazz or the grit of soul or the propulsive kick of rock and roll: just lots of proto-New Age nothingness and electric pianos holding chords. By the way, the 4-CD boxed set Complete Bitches Brew Sessions is mistitled, as the two and a half CDs of outtakes were all recorded months after the actual Brew sessions. (DBW)
Miles' only gold record, and it even hit the Top 40. (JA)

Circle In The Round (rec. 1955-1970, rel. 1979)
A 2-LP set of unreleased material: everything from a 1955 performance of "One Bass Hit" to an early 1970 fusion take on David Crosby's "Guinnevere." The title track is a lengthy (edited to 26 minutes) tune featuring Hancock, Shorter, Carter, Williams and very repetitive fretwork from guitarist Joe Beck. (DBW)

Live At The Fillmore East (rec. 1970, rel. 2001)
Shorter's last live appearance with Davis, recorded on March 7; the material is nearly all from Bitches Brew. The regular working band at this point was Davis, Shorter, Corea, Holland, DeJohnette, and percussionist Airto Moreira. (DBW)

A Tribute To Jack Johnson (1970)
Two side-long tunes, mostly sloppy Sly Stone-inspired funk (one section of "Right Off" is actually "Sing A Simple Song," uncredited). Though this is way below Davis's previous standard, he was still capable of amazing things: the first twelve minutes of "Yesternow" is the dullest pseudo-funk you can imagine (based on James Brown's "Say It Loud - I'm Black And I'm Proud"), but then Miles starts blowing a heartbreaking lyrical line as the groove shifts to "Shhh," "Willie Nelson," and finally a full orchestra playing an unrelated piece. I don't object to cut-and-paste composition as long as the result holds water, and it does here, at least for a few minutes. Overall, though, I'd much rather listen to a real funk band - even a mediocre one - than this bunch of poseurs playing condescending, tepid grooves. Shorter is gone, replaced by Steve Grossman; Michael Henderson makes his first appearance on bass: he would hold the chair for several years. (DBW)

Black Beauty (1970)
Recorded live at the Fillmore East on April 10 with Holland on bass. The set list is mostly from Bitches Brew ("Miles Runs The Voodoo Down"), with "I Fall In Love Too Easily" the one standard, but the album doesn't list the tunes separately, so you'd better listen close. (DBW)

At Fillmore (1970)
Another live double album, this time consisting of brief snippets from four nights of June performances: four pieces of "Bitches Brew" and "It's About That Time," two each of "The Mask" and "Directions," etc. (DBW)

Directions (rec. 1960-1970, rel. 1980)
A rather random collection of unreleased studio material, including some familiar tunes (title track, "Willie Nelson") and some otherwise unheard ("Duran" and "Konda," both recorded in Spring 1970). (DBW)

Live-Evil (1971)
Hey, I finally found a fusion Miles record I like! A double LP - four tracks live, four studio - but since the studio tracks are all short, about 80% of the running time is heavily edited live performances from December 1970. The live band includes McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett and saxophonist Gary Bartz (replacing Grossman), and they sound quite good, with McLaughlin playing heavy lines that avoid funk/rock clichés, Jarrett's busy playing is an improvement over Zawinul's minimalism, and the rhythm section lays down a foundation that's solid but not immobile (Henderson's so much more limber he hardly sounds like the same player). And though I've never heard much about Bartz, I like his soprano playing better than Grossman's or even Shorter's: less ornamentation and more swing ("Funky Tonk"). "Sivad" consists of a fun take on "Directions" spliced together with three excerpts from "Honky Tonk," and the album also has the only readily available version of the Davis hard groove "What I Say," though the band played the tune regularly through the end of 1971. It's a shame this group didn't stick together longer and hasn't been documented better. The studio unit - with Jarrett, Corea and Hancock - shines on the fiery "Gemini/Double Image" and the subtle, drummer-less "Little Church"; "Nem Um Talvez" and "Selim," different takes of the same drab tune by vocalist Hermete Pascoal, are the album's only weakness. (DBW)

On The Corner (1972)
Perhaps the most trying of Davis's supercilious faux funk efforts, and that's saying something. Grating toy percussion (some of it by Alias), moronic two-note bass vamps, almost no trumpet. Yecch. Players include holdovers Hancock, DeJohnette, McLaughlin, Corea, Maupin and new faces Mtume (percussion), Dave Liebman and Carlos Garnett (sax), Lonnie Liston Smith (organ), Harold Ivory Williams (keys), Collin Walcott (sitar), Billy Hart and Paul Buckmaster (cello). Full review coming soon. (DBW)

Big Fun (rec. 1969-1972, rel. 1974)
Outtakes, three of which reappeared on the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions: "Great Expectations," "Orange Lady," and "Lonely Fire." The exceptions are "Go Ahead John," an 28-minute outtake from the Jack Johnson era; and "Ife," a concert staple recorded in June 1972, just after On The Corner. (DBW)

In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall (1973)
A double album with a radically new band: Reggie Lucas (guitar), Khalil Balakrishna (sitar), Cedric Lawson (keys) and Al Foster (drums) join Mtume, Henderson, Garnett and Roy. Just six different compositions, with two versions each of "Sanctuary" and "Right Off," and some material from On The Corner ("Rated X," "Black Satin"). (DBW)

Dark Magus (1974)
Another live double album, but nearly all the tunes are new: there are two takes each of "Turnaroundphrase," "Tune In 5," and "Funk," and "For Dave" would also become a concert favorite. By now Davis had dropped the tabla and sitar and added two more guitarists, Pete Cosey and Dominique Gaumont. (DBW)

Get Up With It (rec. 1972-1974, rel. 1975)
Davis had been releasing live records like mad, and a bunch of studio tracks had piled up, resulting in this double LP. Many of these tunes had already appeared on concert LPs ("Calypso Frelimo"), but there's some fresh stuff like "Red China Blues" (the sole product of a March 1972 session with Bernard Purdie and Cornell Dupree) and the half-hour Ellington tribute "He Loved Him Madly." (DBW)

Agharta (rec. 1975)
Yes, another live double album, recorded in Osaka on the afternoon of February 1, 1975. The Dark Magus band with saxophonist Sonny Fortune in, and Gaumont out. The opening "Prelude" is unlistenable: half an hour of riffless, tuneless jamming, dominated by Cosey's fruitless journeys to the Land Of Wah-Wah. By the time they break out an actual melody on "Maiysha," you've almost forgotten there is such a thing. I'm not saying the emperor has no clothes - the spare middle of "Ife" (mistitled "Interlude") is terrific, with Miles blowing over ghostly chord washes - but he's not exactly overdressed. Full review coming soon. (DBW)

Pangaea (rec. 1975)
The evening show of the same day that produced Agharta. Miles visited the studio a few times after this tour, but didn't release anything before hanging up his trumpet for five years. (DBW)

Miles Davis live at Sartory Festsaal, Cologne, November 12, 1971

Miles Davis (tpt)
Gary Bartz (ss, as)
Keith Jarrett (el-p, org)
Michael Henderson (el-b)
Ndugu Leon Chancler (d)
Charles Don Alias (cga, perc)
James Mtume Foreman (cga, perc)

Directions (J. Zawinul)
Honky Tonk (M. Davis)
What I Say (M. Davis) (part)
It's About That Time (M. Davis) (part)
Yesternow (M. Davis)
Funky Tonk (M. Davis) / Sanctuary (W. Shorter-M. Davis)

Westdeutscher Radio (WDR) radio broadcast, including spoken intermission

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The Art of Miles Davis

Miles Davis - Live in London, November 13, 1971

Miles Davis - Live in London, November 13, 1971

Miles Davis - trumpet
Gary Bartz - sax
Keith Jarrett - keyboards
Michael henderson - bass
Ngudu Leon Chancher - drums
Charles Don Alias - percussions
Mtume - percussions

1. Directions (11:15)
2. What I Say (15:24)
3. Sanctuary (3:51)
4. It's About That Time (15:55)
5. Honky Tonk (14:25)
6. Funky Tonk (15:45)
7. Sanctuary (1:35)

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A Tribute to Miles Davis

Wayne Shorter - Tenor and Soprano Sax
Herbie Hancock - Piano
Wallace Roney - Trumpet
Ron Carter - Bass
Tony Williams - Drums
Tribute to Miles Davis Tour
Klaviersommer, Munich, July 19 1992

So What
RJ
Pinocchio
Elegy
All Blues
Desconocido
The Theme

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Miles Davis rare French/Czech documentary

French TV, rare, in Czech language with rare footage scenes

Miles davis live at Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood, August 18, 1970

August 18, 1970
Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood MA

Miles Davis (tpt); Gary Bartz (ss, as); Chick Corea (el-p); Keith Jarrett (org); Dave Holland (b, el-b); Jack De Johnette (d); Airto Moreira (perc)

Directions (J. Zawinul) 9:13
Bitches Brew (M. Davis) 9:34
The Mask (M. Davis) 3:42
It's About That Time (M. Davis) 7:41
Sanctuary (W. Shorter-M. Davis) 1:35
Spanish Key (M. Davis) 5:35
The Theme (M. Davis) 2:07
Miles Runs the Voodoo Down (M. Davis) 3:58
The Theme (M. Davis) 1:01

Rolling Stone Albums Reviews - 1970: Live Evil

Miles Davis

Live Evil

Miles' touted "Fillmore Band" didn't sound much like a band to me. In an area of music where individual virtuosity is the rule rather than the exception, give-and-take between players becomes all important. And only occasionally did the Fillmore crew get down to taking care of business as a unit. There was lots of individual brilliance of course, just like there is lots of individual brilliance on Live-Evil. But this is no collection of isolated geniuses; it's a band, and it's going to take the top of your head clean off.

The band that performs "Sivad," "What I Say." "Funky Tonk," and "Innamorata." which are the extended, "blowing" tracks on the album, is Keith Jarrett, keyboards (he has never sounded better); John McLaughlin, guitar (taking more chances than usual); Gary Bartz, saxophone (occasionally stiff, usually exciting and committed, finally the right reed player for Miles' new conception); Jack DeJohnette, drums (absolutely uncanny, and irreplaceable); and Airto, percussion (his rapport with Miles is telepathic by this time). I've saved the new bassist, Michael Henderson, for last, because he's the only really new member, and because his concept is so different from that of his predecessor. Dave Holland. Henderson plays Fender, and he doesn't play very many notes at all. His solidity, and his simplicity, have reduced the "busy" textures of the ensemble to a point where everything sounds clear, clean, and direct. Everybody is just playing away, there aren't any weak links, and there isn't any congestion to speak of. Miles reacts to this happy situation by playing his ass off, too. Inspiration is catching, especially when everybody listens. For all you technology buffs, Miles has the wah-wah pedal mastered, but he steps up to the open mike very once in a while to remind you that he doesn't need it; he just digs it.

"Little Church," "Nem Um Talvez," and "Selim" are what used to be called "ballads." They feature larger groups but there aren't any solos. Just stunning, bittersweet lines, often voiced by Miles, vocalist Hermeto Pascoal, and either Steve Grossman or Wayne Shorter on saxophone, in unison. Each of these tracks is under four minutes, and they are all things of great beauty.

This sounds like what Miles had in mind when he first got into electric music and freer structures and rock rhythms. He's been refining it in public, but they used to accuse Coltrane of practicing his scales in public. So What. In both cases, practice made perfect.

Bob Palmer, Jan 20, 1972

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Herbie Hancock shares an insider's perspective on the legend of Miles Davis

The late jazz giant Miles Davis famously embraced the rock music of the psychedelic era during his "electric" period, beginning with the groundbreaking double album Bitches Brew (1969). We spoke with keyboardist Herbie Hancock, about the lessons and legacy of his former bandleader.

What, in your opinion, is rock & roll about Miles Davis?

Well, coming from his open jazz perspective -- I learned about openness from Miles. I wouldn't have bothered listening to Cream or Jimi Hendrix. I was totally into jazz and classical music -- that was it. But I noticed Miles listened to everything. And he was the epitome of cool to me. So if Miles listened to everything, it must be cool to listen to everything. I'm sure he heard Tony Williams' Lifetime, which had John McLaughlin in it, and that was probably one of the influences on him doing the record Bitches Brew, which is a kind of cornerstone record creating something totally new out of two different genres. You can't pigeonhole it as jazz or rock -- it doesn't really sound like either one. But it uses elements of both, and it's also very funky.

If rock & roll is as much an attitude about life as it is a musical form, you'd be hard pressed to think of someone who had that attitude more than Miles.

I wouldn't say that's any different than jazz. Jazz musicians had attitudes about the social scene.

I don't mean socially as much as the way you carry yourself -- a brashness.

Cocky? He was that, but a lot of that was show. He was cocky, but he was a very caring individual. That kind of cockiness, that's the part I don't like about rock & roll [laughs]. I mean, at the end of the day, we're all human beings. At the Grammys, you know who the nicest people were? The people who were the biggest stars. Paul McCartney -- sweetheart. A kid in Kanye West's marching-music thing had a trumpet -- Paul went up backstage and grabbed the trumpet from him and started playing a tune.

Did you think that about Miles?

Absolutely. At the time I was very young, and, to me, Miles was mysterious, an enigma. But he was never that way with me, see. There were reasons why he did a lot of the things he did onstage. For example, I rarely saw him bow after a solo, when people were applauding. The reason for that is he felt he'd already thanked them with the thing they were applauding him for. I understand that as a philosophical position to take. I don't take that position, but I understand it.

In his autobiography he wrote that when he first got you and Tony Williams and Ron Carter together in a room at his place, he had you guys rehearsing together, and he was listening to you over the intercom. What was Miles doing -- the dishes?

I understand completely what Miles was doing. He knew that if he were downstairs in his rec room with us, we would've been so intimidated he wouldn't have been able to hear what we could really do. He chose to remove himself without making it obvious. He played a few notes and went "Shit!" and threw his horn on the couch. We didn't see him the rest of the day, but we started going over some tunes with Ron Carter and George Coleman, who had already been in Miles' band. Miles was upstairs listening on the intercom, knowing that would be the only way we'd be comfortable enough to deliver whatever we delivered. Which I think is genius. It shows an understanding of the human spirit.

Do you remember your first meeting with him, where it was and how it came about?

Donald Byrd, trumpet player. Donald called Miles and said, "I want to come over, and I'd like to bring my new piano player with me." I was so nervous I played a ballad. I think I played "My Funny Valentine" or "Stella by Starlight." And when I finished Miles said, "Nice touch." I'll never forget that. I was thrilled. To me, he was like a god.

During those years, did you feel you were doing something in the studio that was a little different from the live performances?

We all pushed each other, live and in the studio. But in the studio, we were playing tunes for the first time. When you're on the road with the tunes, you play them over and over. They begin to evolve. You don't usually have that opportunity in the recording studio. Most of the time you walk in and it's all new music. It's fresh, which is cool, because you get the musician's first response to what he's dealing with. Miles always loved that -- the idea of being in the moment.

Do you have a specific favorite memory of playing with him?

One of the most important ones to me -- we were playing, I believe, in Stuttgart, Germany. This might've been in 1965. It was one of those nights when the band was particularly on. I mean, it started with the first note. We were burning. And during the middle of "So What," Wayne Shorter played this great solo, Miles built his solo up to this peak, Tony Williams was firing away on drums, and we had the audience in the palm of our hands. Miles blows up to this peak, and all of a sudden I played this chord that was so . . . wrong [laughs] -- it just came out of nowhere. I thought I'd destroyed the evening. It was horrible, and I was stuck with it, because I played it. Miles took a breath, and played some notes that made my chord right. It was like alchemy -- "How did he do that?"

Did you talk about it later?

I probably did, but he probably gave me some strange answer [laughs]. But after many, many years, I figured out the answer myself. One of the great things about Miles was that when he played, he was not judgmental. If it happens, it was supposed to happen. He tried to figure out a way to make it work. I try to apply that to my music. And when I began practicing Buddhism, it clarified that this concept is not one that's just relegated to music. This is a great lesson for life -- to take circumstances, whatever they are, without judgment, and try to figure out how to make them work.

If you've got lemons, make lemonade.

Right! Exactly. That's the deal. But it takes a lot of wisdom, and a lot of caring to do that.

In the Seventies your own fame and fortune might have surpassed Miles'. At one point he was an opening act for you. How awkward was that?

There was no tension. He was wonderful. He knew I had a really hot record -- the Headhunters thing. He never said anything negative about opening for me. To me, it was a dual bill. It's just that we both couldn't play at the same time, so he went on first.

Is it possible to imagine what Miles might be doing were he alive today?

Miles would always be cutting edge. There was a rumor that was so strong I feel it was more than a rumor, that during the time I was with Miles, he and Hendrix were going to hook up. And before Miles died, he was already starting to do things with rappers. I have a feeling he'd be doing music that combined a lot of different forces -- rap, rock, jazz, but in a very unique, mind-blowing way, with his special touch.

©Copyright 2006 Rolling Stone

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Miles Davis live at Hill Auditorium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, February 21, 1970

Miles Davis (tp)
Wayne Shorter (ts, ss)
John McLaughlin (g)
Chick Corea (p)
Dave Holland (b)
Jack DeJohnette (d)
Airto Moreira (pc)

1 - It's About That Time (nc) (11:25)
2 - I Fall In Love Too Easily (03:55)
3 - Sanctuary (06:38)
4 - Bitches Brew (nc) (13:31)
5 - Masqualero (14:07)
6 - Theme (01:23)
Audience Recording - Flac format

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Bill Laswell: Re-shaping the music of Miles Davis

Tampering with recordings made by a musical legend like Miles Davis would be seen by many as tantamount to sacrilege. But what if you believed, like producer Bill Laswell, that the music in question had never been heard as it should be? Paul Tingen gets the inside story.

Miles Davis is many different things to many different people: 20th century icon, enigma, famous jazz musician, inimitable trumpet soloist, mighty musical innovator. He invented new jazz styles such as 'cool' and 'hardbop' and, together with arranger Gil Evans, pioneered new ways of blending jazz and orchestral music, in works such as Concierto De Aranjuez and Porgy and Bess. In the mid '60s Davis was at the pinnacle of his career, and everybody expected him to live out his days doing more of the same -- playing great jazz music and inventing the odd new jazz style along the way. However, Miles Davis was never one for walking the beaten track, so he did something for which the more elitist layer of the jazz fraternity never forgave him: having just reached his forties he connected with the youth culture of the day and delved into the 'primitive' world of rock music, listening to Sly & The Family Stone, hanging out with Jimi Hendrix, and starting to incorporate electric guitar, electric bass, electric keyboards, rock and funk rhythms, and even drum machines, into his music.

The jazz world was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt -- until the watershed album In A Silent Way (1969), featuring legendary jazz musicians such as Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Chick Corea, Tony Williams and John McLaughlin. The fragile, introverted music on In A Silent Way has been described as the sound of a band walking on eggshells. After this Davis's music became increasingly loud, rock-orientated and weird. Bitches Brew (1970) was in some respects a funkier, more aggressive version of In A Silent Way. It sold like hot cakes to rock fans, and earned him accusations of 'selling out' and 'betrayal' from jazzers.

From this point Davis's path diverged from that of the jazz world. He increasingly went out on a limb, mixing sitars, tablas, African percussion and influences from avant-garde classical composers such as Stockhausen and Messiaen in a wild, experimental cocktail. On The Corner (1972) was basically one long groove, a bizarre exercise in funk, African rhythms and minimalism, while Get Up With It (1974) was an even stranger concoction of ambient, avant-garde, African, blues, calypso, and funk influences. Finally, after the frenetic live recordings Dark Magus (1974) and Agharta (1975), Miles dropped out of sight, both personally and musically. He took a six-year depression- and drug-soaked sabbatical, and abandoned the musical direction he had been pursuing. After his comeback in 1981, he did not pick up where he had left off in 1975, and until his death in 1991 played a hybrid of rock and jazz that was much more approachable and melodic.

MANIPULATION
So the radical experiments of the 1969-1975 period were left to stand on their own, and almost 30 years later the world still hasn't made much sense of them, with the exceptions of In A Silent Way, which was regarded as a classic by jazz fans, and Bitches Brew, which made Davis's name in the rock world. The music was as much an enigma as its maker. Moreover, the impenetrable density of some of the rhythm tracks, the often poor bass sound, and the awkwardness of some of the edits makes one wonder whether his vision had ever been done justice to in the way it was committed to vinyl. It's said that many of Davis's studio records were constructed by heavy tape editing and put together by jazz engineers and producers, which strengthens the impression that somehow, somewhere along the line, something was lost, or was never brought to fruition.

Then, earlier this year, a remarkable CD was released that sheds new light on this most obscure and misunderstood era of Miles Davis's career. This new release subjected some of Davis's music of this period to "reconstruction & mix translation", according to the sleeve notes -- and with astonishing results. Music writer Richard Williams commented in The Guardian that something "genuinely exceptional" happened in this process: "the music sounds more like itself." His colleague, the well-known jazz critic John Fordham, observed that "a tautness and purpose has been brought to hours of exploratory studio time" making it sound "startlingly contemporary."

These are no mean compliments, and they are more than justified. Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974, is an outstanding piece of work. The man behind it is the New York bassist and producer Bill Laswell, himself no stranger to experimentation and breaking down the boundaries of music. He's managed to have artists as diverse as John Lydon, Steve Vai, Ginger Baker, L Shankar and Ryuichi Sakamoto perform on the same record (Album, by Public Image Ltd) or, even more extremely, Whitney Houston, Archie Shepp and Fred Frith (on Material's One Down). He's a pioneer of hip-hop, ambient, avant-funk and world music, and has worked with Herbie Hancock, Brian Eno, Afrika Bambaata, George Clinton, Mick Jagger, Sly & Robbie and Hector Zazou, amongst others. He's the co-founder of the band Material and of the Axiom record label, which is "devoted to challenging the commercial institutions of the music industry through the release of genre-defying records that were meant to forge new pathways in sound, rhythm, samples, beats... and beyond." By all accounts, Laswell is an archetypal musical revolutionary who has the perfect qualifications to re-work old material from that other archetypal revolutionary, on Panthalassa.

The opening track of the album sees Laswell compressing the 35 minutes of the original In A Silent Way album into a suite that lasts just 15 minutes, and the improvement is remarkable. He's brought a new, tight structure to the music, composing a totally new piece from totally familiar material. It now has a beginning, a build-up, a middle and an end, instead of starting somewhere arbitrarily and ceasing somewhere equally arbitrarily. The sound of the instruments themselves, often a bit shrill and jarring on the 1969 version, is now beautifully warm, full and clear. The upright bass sounds like an electric bass and there are various new atmospheric drones and pads that add texture and atmosphere. The second track contains material from On The Corner, including two previously unreleased out-takes, and although there is less obvious reconstructing, the new mix brings a new transparency and funkiness to the rhythm section, with the bass brought right up front. Like the third track, which contains material from Get Up With It, it sounds like experimental drum and bass with hip-hop influences, 25 years ahead of its time. Suddenly it all makes sense.

SENSIBILITY
Overall, the sound of Panthalassa is so fresh and contemporary that one wonders whether Miles's '70s music was really this prescient, or whether Laswell has re-interpreted it with the sonic and aesthetic perspective of someone living in the late '90s. So was Laswell trying to bring out the music the way he thought Miles might have wanted it, or did he do a '90s re-interpretation? Via transatlantic telephone Laswell comments: "It was both those things, and more. The first thing to realise about his records from those years is that they are interpretations of original performances. What's on those records does not necessarily correspond to the way things were played. The records were the result of a day's work in the studio, of lots of tape editing and manipulation. They weren't representing a particular performance. From 1969 onwards there was a tremendous amount of tape recording going on. The tapes were rolling, hours and hours of them were being filled, and then producer Tio Macero determined what ended up on the record and how it would sound. Macero is from a classical and jazz background, and I can't imagine someone with a background like that having a clue what to do with the kind of stuff Miles was producing. To me, the music Miles was making at the time had nothing to do with jazz; it will therefore always be controversial from the perspective of jazz people. So one of my prime objectives was to remix and reconstruct Miles's music from a non-jazz perspective."

"When I was putting Panthalassa together, I was trying to imagine how people with a jazz and classical music background would have tried to make sense of this music. And I don't think they got it. It was too new for them. These were people who had been involved in making classic jazz albums like Kind Of Blue, and all of a sudden the music got a lot denser and darker and there were new and weird instruments to deal with. How was all that supposed to sound? There was simply no reference point. Also, I talked a lot with Miles during the '80s, and I was aware that he didn't have a lot of control over the records as they came out. Tio and Columbia determined the results, and in some cases I don't even think that Miles had access to titles, artwork and so on. Tio worked as a producer for Columbia, and his work was to get the job done, get it edited and get it out quickly, because in those days records were coming out very frequently. People were, to a large extent, controlling music for which they didn't have a fitting vision. 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 thing that you hear today in drum and bass and techno. You have to approach that kind of music with more of a rock sensibility. You want to make the bass big and heavy, you want the drums to be powerful and hard-hitting, and in a piece with very dense rhythmic patterns you want clarity, so that you can hear what's being played."
In applying his "rock sensibility", Laswell has managed to bring a staggeringly different perspective to music that has been misunderstood and/or ignored for two to three decades.

FLOW
The name Panthalassa is a reference to the last two albums Miles made before his retirement in 1975. Agharta and Pangaea are both live double albums, and both were recorded on February 1st 1975 (!) in Japan. Agharta is a future Utopian spiritual centre of power, situated somewhere underneath the earth, Pangaea is the primordial continent, and Panthalassa the one primordial ocean. Laswell explains that, despite the reference to the names of these two live albums, he didn't use any material from them, because "live albums are a whole different universe: their timeline is largely linear, and I don't think it would make sense to alter it. There is very little editing in those works: they are what they are, whereas all the studio stuff was extensively manipulated and so does lend itself to a process of re-manipulation. 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 20 years later. But Macero's approach was also often more of 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 make 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."

Some 30 years later Laswell also caught up with Macero, in more than one sense. He explains that the whole point of his "reconstruction & mix translation" process was to apply a similar process to the original master tapes as did Macero -- but from a different perspective. And this influenced both Laswell's working methods and his choice of pieces: "In A Silent Way was the classic transition period for Miles, and I knew that it had been chopped and changed, so I was very curious as to what had really been going on. I was also interested in the slow, melodic, ambient potential of the piece. On The Corner was always the beginning of mutant hip-hop for me. It was a favourite record; I could hear that there had been a lot of editing going on here as well, and I wanted to find out what really happened. The same with Get Up With It, which contained some very radical pieces for the time, such as 'Rated X'. In all these cases I was curious about what I could bring to the music though a continuation of exactly the same process as Tio had applied, and, believe it or not, I used a very similar technique. I didn't want to dump all the information in a computer and then manipulate it in there, so I decided to do it in exactly the same way, transferring material from one tape format to another and then editing everything on analogue half-inch tape, before finally transferring it to a DAT master.

"I wanted to edit on half-inch tape, using razor blades, because I wanted to encounter the same kind of problems, I wanted to arrive in the same areas where one thing automatically leads to another. When you put musical material in Pro Tools or something like that, you're immediately embracing endless options and possibilities. Things can go anywhere. I felt that there was an essence to the music, even in the versions that Tio did; it holds together in a particular form that you don't want to pull apart too much. You don't want to do a complete recondition, but you want to improve the ideas, clean things up and keep the same flow going. But to keep that flow going you have to speak a similar technical language. Just to have a million options will not necessarily produce great results, nor will it produce anything related to what Miles Davis was about during that period. By limiting my options and working with a similar method as when the music was made, I was holding and continuing a flow that was already naturally established in the music. The other aspect of this was that I did not add anything to the material that was on the multitracks. I processed and re-positioned sounds, and used parts from out-takes that have never been heard before on previous releases, but no sounds or instruments were added by me. Everything you hear on Panthalassa comes from the information that is on the multitracks."

MODERNISATION
Taking the process apart from a technical perspective, it emerges that Miles's material arrived at Laswell's loft-located Greenpoint Studios in Brooklyn, New York on "25 or 26" reels of 24-track analogue multitrack tape. These were safety copies made from the original 8- and 16-track tapes, located (with some difficulties apparently) and transferred by producer Bob Belden. At Greenpoint, an old and obscure broadcast model Neve desk, a Studer 24-track tape recorder, an Akai ADAM 12-track digital tape recorder, and a wealth of outboard gear, much of it old and exotic, were the main tools at Laswell's disposal. He explains the process: "I obviously began by making an inventory of what was on the 24-track tapes and choosing which sections I wanted to use. I then started recreating things by transferring material from the 24-track to the Akai 12-track, just as if I was composing music. In part these were straight transfers from multitrack to 12-track. And in part I would isolate a guitar or a horn part, say, and fly these in, either straight and therefore with relatively random timing, or by sampling them with an Akai S1000 and then flying them back in, using a keyboard to trigger the sound. I used some out-takes -- there's some guitar playing on my version of In A Silent Way that was not on the original, and was taken from a different part of the session, and I also took material from the On The Corner sessions, Indian drones from an electric sitar, for example, and flew them into a track like 'He Loved Him Madly' to help create an ambience. Once I'd completed my musical arrangements on the ADAM, I would mix them to a Studer A80 2-track.

"The In A Silent Way sessions were 8-track and came on two reels of 24-track tape. They were recorded with the tapes rolling at a lower speed, which gives you about 30 minutes per reel, and a great deal that was played, especially the central theme of the piece, is not on the original record. Nor is it on the version I did, because it never quite came together in the performance. But surrounding that are sections and phrases that do work, and from which the record is built. On the original album a piece of tape is repeated twice, purely to get enough length to justify an album and have a product. I repeated that section too, but treated the repeat a little differently, by featuring certain instruments that were not audible on the original. The thing to realise is that all those original sessions were recorded really well. They were miked up by professional engineers, everything was done with state-of-the-art equipment for the time, so there is a clear signal on tape. It was easy for me to bring the drums and bass up-front and give them a more dynamic, bigger sound that suits repetitive parts. The bass on In A Silent Way was an upright, and I tried to make it sound more like an electric bass by using effects such as the dbx 120x Subharmonic Synthesizer to enhance or synthesize the bottom end. This is an incredibly cheap box that brings out low end in a kind of synth way that I really like. I also took some bass drone and bowed bass, and looped and processed this and used it in different places to get an ambient or atmospheric texture.

"The drums and bass are pretty static but there is some very fractured playing in the keyboards, and the original In A Silent Way contained some pretty brutal edits. So I tried to build up more of a composed piece with a flow, using that bowed bass as an opener. There were also some loud sounds which we ducked, such as a bottle falling on the piano and some talking that no-one had bothered to edit out 30 years ago. The album On The Corner was basically two basslines with short one- or two-minute pieces being pulled in and out in a very chopped-up way. I've got six reels of that session, and I think a really coherent album could be made, with a flow and a sequence that would bring people into the music. The tracks 'What If' and 'Agharta Prelude Dub' were out-takes from sessions recorded around the time of On The Corner, with John McLaughlin playing some pretty primitive and aggressive guitar on 'What If'. One of my main jobs in remixing and reconstructing the On The Corner sessions was to bring clarity into the rhythm tracks.

"The same went for the rhythm track on 'Rated X'. It's very, very dense, and on vinyl it always sounded unbelievably bad and muddy, with an organ sound taken from some other session pushing everything else into the background. But the rhythm tracks were recorded very well -- it's just how they were EQ'd and balanced at the time. They clearly didn't have a clue how to deal with these dense rhythms, but for today's ears their density and detail makes them sound very modern. I also mixed the organ very low, to make space for the details in the rhythm track. Finally, the version of 'He Loved Him Madly' on the multitracks was even longer than 30 minutes. That track could be a whole CD by itself, but I felt I had to shorten it for this project. I had to think about the overall experience and continuity of hearing all four sections from beginning to end, starting with an ambient idea at the beginning and ending with an ambient idea, while putting more rhythmic information in the middle. The edits I did on 'He Loved Him Madly' were relatively straightforward. Of all the tracks it was least tampered with. We just EQ'd the sounds, brought out the drums and bass more, and used treated organ and sitar parts to create a certain ambience."

DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
Given Laswell's stated aim, that he wanted to use equipment and an editing process similar to that used during the time these recordings were made, the appearance of an Akai ADAM comes as a bit of a surprise. He clarifies that he used the ADAM purely for reasons of convenience and that it didn't alter the basic philosophy with which he made Panthalassa: "I used the ADAM 12-track because I like the sound of that machine. I find that there's something about the way it retains the low end and is not hard at the top. And I find that mixing stuff from the ADAM to the [Studer] A80 gives a really nice warm sound. In general I'm not bothered about whether I use analogue or digital. I really like the sound of analogue for bottom end, and for heavier music noise isn't a problem, because I think that that noise becomes part of the music. But I think digital is great for certain things too. The music you record is much more important than what you record it on. Just because you have new equipment it doesn't mean that you have new music. Having said that, it's true that I have a lot of vintage gear in my studio, and I do find that it translates into a certain sound. It requires a lot more maintenance, but it's worth it."

Since he finished work on Panthalassa, Laswell has moved his Greenpoint Studios to Orange in New Jersey. It's now called Orange Music Studios and features two control rooms, both with vintage Neve desks, Studer 24-tracks and 2-tracks, and all manner of more or less esoteric outboard gear, such as Orban, Massenburg, Pultec, Urei and Summit EQs; ADR, CBS Labs, Demeter, Summit and Urei compressors; AMS, EMT, Eventide, Fairchild, Korg, Lexicon and Roland reverbs. There are also various digital recorders (Akai ADAM, Tascam DA88, DAT), samplers (Akai S3000 and S1000HD) and a Mac computer running Mark Of The Unicorn's Performer, Steinberg's ReCycle and Digidesign Sound Tools software. But the emphasis is on the analogue and esoteric. This clearly has to do with his love of bass sounds, something which he explored to great effect on the Bob Marley ambient dub CD Dreams Of Freedom: "I've been greatly influenced by dub music, which was the music style that initiated the current emphasis on bass. On Dreams Of Freedom I went for a fairly straightforward dub approach, taking out Marley's voice, which is normal, though going for a bit more of an ambient atmosphere than usual. We used all sorts of primitive effects on background vocals and instruments, including guitar effects pedals such as the Echoplex for echo repeats and delays. The old Eventide H910 Harmonizer was also used a lot. But the bass is always centre-stage, and it's interesting to see how our perception of bass has changed over the last 25 years. I've also been influenced in my studio work by hearing bass on PA sound systems, and trying to make the bass sound bigger and bigger all the time."

It's one of the areas in which Laswell is pushing at the boundaries, doing justice to his reputation as a 'radical'. He remarks that it's a "struggle" because it's "not really appreciated in terms of business". This is the very reason why he set up his Axiom label: "I felt there were many things that could be done musically, yet they weren't happening. I wanted to create and release more examples that show things in a different way. It is important to let people know that whatever they've been conditioned to go along with, there are always different ways of doing things. There are a lot of music styles and sounds and influences out there, and it's a matter of networking with innovative people and bringing them together so that music can change. Sadly, the world is also full of people who think that things are a certain way, and I feel it is part of my job to show that that is just not the case. People who create music and art have to continuously evolve and go beyond conventionally held beliefs. Miles Davis was a perfect example of someone who consciously tried to evolve, and by doing that he changed things and confused a great deal of people."

HOW DID HE DO THAT?

How on earth did Laswell manage to lay his hands on material that, despite its uncertain reputation, would still be regarded as sacrosanct by many? Sony/Columbia have always been admirably restrained in exploiting Miles Davis's back catalogue, so how did Laswell persuade them to hand him the old multitrack master tapes? Apparently the first conceptual seeds were sown by former Island Records boss Chris Blackwell, who had the idea for a series of re-interpretations of Bob Marley's music, and invited Laswell to try his hand on the material. The result was Dreams Of Freedom, Ambient Translations Of Bob Marley In Dub (out on Island/Axiom late last year). During the same period, Laswell had extensive discussions with Steve Berkowitz, the A&R manager at Columbia in charge of the re-issues of the Miles Davis catalogue, and convinced him that a lot of experimental music from the late '60s and early '70s "also lends itself to different interpretations. We started with this music from Miles, and there may be more projects to come."

Miles @ 45 rpm

The famous Miles Davis short tracks from "Miles at Isle of Wight" Lp. The tracks were used for 7" promo singles Davis did throughout the 70s'

Great Expectations (2:42)
The Little Blue Frog (2:32)
Molester (Part I) (3:04)
Molester (Part II) (2:10)
Holly-Wuud (2:52)
Big Fun (2:30)

Miles Davis (tp, org)
Dave Liebman (ss, fl)
Reggie Lucas (el-g)
Pete Cosey (el-g, per)
Michael Henderson (el-b)
Al Foster (d) Mtume (per)
Columbia Studios, NYC, July 26, 1973

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© Free Rare Mp3 Music Downloads

Miles' last interview

Miles Davis - Live in Milano, October 11 1964 (Video)

1. All Blues
2. All Of You
3. Joshua

Miles Davis - tp
Wayne Shorter - ts
Herbie Hancock - p
Ron Carter - b
Tony Williams - dr

33 min. b/w divx

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I Remember Miles - Part 1

This is a World Premiere Sneak Preview of the upcoming documentary, I Remember Miles, by internationally known Producer/Director Malcolm W. Adams for Totown Digital Media, a company of Totown Communications Group Japan.