Friday 24 July 2015

Miles Davis At Newport 1955-1975: The Bootleg Series Vol. 4


Yesterday's dead, man. - Miles Davis (1973)

What about yesternow? Eh? Miles fucking Davis - not more Miles Davis - we got the studio albums, the bootleg live sets, the complete album sessions, the live albums and all those clips on YouTube - enough Miles Davis...

Yesterday was dead in His head when Stephen Davis interviewed him for The Real Paper in 1973 - dead - right? Of course, the man who never looked back, hated cliché, kept moving until his ageing chops/brain couldn't keep up with the times, but tried - tragic, to me, who believes he should have stayed retired from '75, not that when The Man With The Horn rode back into town in '81 he sounded awful, just...the albums get worse, a  painful decline - and it pains me to say that though I'm only echoing what a lot of fans feel, except for the Revive Late Miles contrary squad who, to prove how ahead of everyone they are, stake claims for those 80s albums, big claims, because they've been on the internet for too long and, brain-fuddled, they need to 'outwit' every other ordinary Miles Davis fan in order to feel better about themselves...

In '85 He played a pimp in a Miami Vice episode called 'Junk Love'. 30 years earlier, after five years on junk, He turned up at the Newport Jazz Festival to play with Monk, Gerry Mulligan, Zoot Sims and co, a sort of all-star pick-up band, if you will, only to complain, legend has it, that Monk played the wrong chords on 'Round Midnight - the nerve of this guy! The set makes up the first half of Disc One. Context: this comp spans 20 years and you can hear how dead yesterday was by the time you get to the end - the yesterday of  'Round Midnight, Hackensack and Now's The Time (the irony!), now was the time then, but no more. Now was the be-bop inferno Miles got baptised in ten years earlier (45) when he got with Charlie Parker - that was the time. Not Newport in '55 on stage with West Coast players doing yesterday's music - it must have killed him inside, in there where the seeds of something altogether more amazing might already have been starting to grow. He'd been post-bopping for Prestige and Blue Note; not my favourite Miles Davis things but no-one can say they're bad records...suffice to say my reaction to a lot of them is, like his horn sometimes, muted.

So three years later He returns to Newport with a band, a proper band, his band, which included Coltrane and Cannonball Adderley who, as you probably know, had the chops to blow away at least some of the Bird Is Dead blues; a fine player. And Coltrane. The irony of the Prestige years is that Yesterday still seemed to hang around, meaning the band played a lot of standards and show tunes, even - it wasn't the Miles Davis we think of now, not the ever-progressing fast-forward change, change, evolving Miles Davis. Only Coltrane, to these ears, is signalling things to come in some of his playing at Newport. Only he is pushing, searching - the start of the search that never ended can be heard. Me, I'm all excited about the future, the appearance, on this comp, of the second great band in '66...

Disc Two...Gingerbread Boy...BOOM! Tony Williams carpet bombs the stage and Miles Davis is ablaze, is blowing the walls down as if out to prove something, perhaps the boy behind the kit is lighting fires up his backside...something...Wayne Shorter...and Herbie Hancock, around the 6min mark, seems to dicate that they glide into a mid-tempo walking bluesy mode for a while before he ignites the whole thing again...this band...they take All Blues, that mainstay of new Cool and boot it right up the backside...hyper-fast...impossibly fast...again, Davis is on it - BANG! They charge through, then walk...then charge again! This gets me hyped, gets me high...Shorter's solo on RJ, spiralling on and on and almost as if to lose control but never doing so...Hancock's pretty, complex, melodic, smart, quick-witted...oh to be as good on these keys as he was on his. The second set here, from '67, is even more intense, dynamic, in-yer-face...Footprints on your face, or, actually, in your ears...the classic tune gone all spiky...Hancock's playing behind Davis's solo - phew - take a breath, deep breath...So What, like All Blues, played mad fast, manic fast, so fast you wonder how Ron Carter can even keep that famous bas line in tact...they totally rip it up. But look what's coming...

Disc Three, it's 1969 OK?...really...Chick Corea almost sounding...what...soulful? as Miles Runs The Voodoo Down...Yesterday is well and truly dead and here's a broadcast from The Future that only Miles Davis would really know although a lot of Fusioneers tried....but didn't get close...here He is sounding angry, as if spitting/blowing down all the critics - yes! I think of Hopper as the photojournalist describing Kurtz, for some reason...'You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind.' Why would music journalist/critic and so-called fans want to kill Miles Davis just because he was wa-a-a-y ahead of those who couldn't hear? 'Why? Because they told you he was crazy?' It's About That Time...it was...for when you listen to Jack DeJohnette and Dave Holland alone, they know it's time, they know time and become masters of time, even though DeJohnette packs it, he knows he going back to base and just where it is, like Holland...double time, Funk time...excuse me, I need a break for my brain is truly about to explode...

Turnaroundphrase...1973...christ...a wha-wha...what? An electric fuzz-tone blizzard of noise, predicting Noise, predicting chaos, being chaos, predicting Metal, thrashing metal, metallic Fusion - insane - who can keep up? Who can hang on in hear, at the eye of the storm - hang on to nothing, there's no centre, melody, harmony, Yesterday isn't just gone, it's burnt to cinders behind the thrust of this supersonic jet, left for nothing - sound barrier? SMASH!

Where am I? 1973? '75? I'm lost in time...it seems irrelevant...1971', go back...Directions...have you heard anything as funky that wasn't by Miles Davis? I mean...funky...but...funky butt Out There, In There...Michael Henderson's bass here and on Bitches Brew...for starters...for endings, actually, for although I could talk for hours, if I had the energy...but here's a calm place, comparatively...Directions...Miles Davis was all about directions...where would he go next? Into oblivion, retirement, tired or what? Writing about and listening to this stuff is exhausting, never mind playing it; thinking it...and directing the band...the band that, on Disc 4, dig into a spaced-out place where Funky Tonk, for instance, melts the clock, your mind, the core of what was called The One - some holy hybrid of Sly/Bootsy, even Su Ra's Lanquidity - the space-time continuum...Yesternow and forever because it's beyond fashion, fads, and musical trends despite being a product not of the times but of His mind at the time and those he conducted, taught, bullied, coached, re-modelled and re-made in his own imagined sound. 

That's What I Say about Miles Davis at Newport. Over and out.



1 comment:

  1. Ok, so in the course of reading this post I went from not especially bothered, to pretty interested, to scurrying off to find my debit card. Note to self - don't visit Include Me Out when you're trying to be good with money. Excellent review.

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