Did Miles Davis release any bad albums before 1975?

He's definitely released albums in that period I don't listen to so much.

Miles made a ton of records, so if you look, it's pretty easy to find ones that aren't that gripping.

I guess he did raise the bar pretty high.

I don't know how someone can talk shit about his recording of Porgy & Bess.

Woah Big Fun is kind of hit or miss, but not liking Get Up With It?!?! For "He Loved Him Madly" alone that's one of my favorite Miles records.

yeah, it seems like I'm the only one who hasn't fallen for this record yet

I like both of these pretty well, although I don't rank them quite as high as other shit before (Miles Smiles) or after (Jack Johnson)

Only Miles records I actually pull out these days: Miles Smiles, Workin', and Live Around the World (which is underrated as hell).

Generally because I consider tuneless thrash even worse when played on acoustic instruments than when played on electric ones.

the 60s 2nd classic quintet stuff is the miles that I listen to most these days, ESP, Miles Smiles etc, up til the fusion shit.

Mark, I think that's the trick here - superficially, these kinds of musicians are trained not to make "bad" music. Of course, depending on where you're coming from, you can still claim (as my old trumpet professor did in college) that Miles Davis wasn't any good -- and it's true that by the methods of classical trumpet playing, MD didn't have a good tone, articulation, all the shit classical guys want to hear in good performance. I thought he was crazy, but oh well.

A lot of "critiquing" jazz to me comes down to talking about what happened, like a travelogue, in improvs -- they went here, they did this, it seemed like they disagreed on this point, and then half of them went another way, while the others seemed content to tolerate the rest of the trip. I mean, it's not really a "this is good because x" analysis.

does this make them bad? which ones?

"He made some sort of blah albums for Prestige in the '50s."

name one.

"can't say, haven't heard 'em all. there's probably some stinkers somewhere."

how do you know?

"There are a bunch of oop/lesser known albums and live albums from back in the day that are probably unremarkable."

how do you know? which ones?

"I hate the Gil Evans material, except for Sketches Of Spain."

why?

"and i can't stand the gil evans stuff"

why?

"some of the cool stuff is waaaaaay boring."

which stuff?

No it doesn't, which is a point I made earlier, and I don't know which ones off the top

how do you know?"

the law of averages?

how do you know? which ones?

Because he's been lionized to such an extent that I would think if, I don't know, this album or this one were that hot then they would have been reissued/talked about more. Or maybe I just haven't noticed.

I don't even like his trumpet playing that much, so if the band and the tunes aren't on point then I can think of lots of other straight-ahead I'd listen to before obscure or transitional Miles records.

name one.

There was an early band with Al Cohn that was sorta meh. The first few things he did with Coltrane were not great. Some of the stuff with Milt Jackson is boring. I wouldn't call any of this stuff bad necessarily but kind of blah, sure. Compared to what he would do later, or what you expect from a Miles Presige (ie Walkin' or Bags Groove or whatever).

that's good enough for me! i'll buy it. (i don't think i have it. i like that other record. dr.jackal is great.)

except phil, who is just crazy.

none of which makes it "bad," far from it, but I don't much enjoy listening to a lot of it. "get up with it" has one great side and then there's that ellington tribute which sometimes sounds good and sometimes sounds like I tried to describe above. I don't see any problem with saying it's boring, because sometimes boring yields up the truth about what you as a listener are willing to follow along with. I find a lot of coltrane boring--"love supreme" for example--but in a dynamic way, and then there's the usual hackneyed fallback position of "foreground becomes background" and so forth, which is itself, as a strategy for dealing with this kind of music, boring bad bullshit.

OTM - this is my favorite Miles of all.

-- Jordan (jordan...), November 16th, 2006.

Without double checking, I'm pretty sure Wayne Shorter wrote Footprints and Eddie Harris wrote Freedom Jazz Dance (the original version of which is badass, btw, you should get it! Billy Higgins on drums!)

Actually, Wayne Shorter wrote a lot of my favorite *Miles* tunes. But anyone who doesn't think Miles wrote melodies never listened to his solos.

This isn't true by any definition

(personally I never need to hear KOB again as long as I live, sorry Geir)

tune: a succession of notes forming a distinctive sequence; "she was humming an air from Beethoven"
the perception of pleasant arrangements of musical notes
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

In music, a melody is a series of linear events or a succession, not a simultaneity as in a chord. However, this succession must contain change of some kind and be perceived as a single entity (possibly gestalt) to be called a melody. Most specifically this includes patterns of changing pitches and durations, while most generally it includes any interacting patterns of changing events or quality. ...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody

Melodia Ruiz Gutiérrez (born 1991), better known in the Spanish music world as Melody, is a singer from Spain who is a native of Sevilla. Some close relatives used to belong to a music group named Los Grillos.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melody_(singer)

In general, a succession of musical tones. It represents the linear or horizontal aspect of music.
www.classic99.com/terms1b.htm

specifically, the topmost line or voice.
www.humboldt1.com/~jazz/glossary.html

tune; for instrumental music, an arrangement of notes typically comprising at least two strains, each of which is repeated.
memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/hrgloss.html

The tune of the music.
cinderella.nycopera.com/glossary.php

the musical organisation of sounds in time
www.waikato.ac.nz/film/handbook/glossary.html

A logical succession of musical pitches arranged in a rhythmic pattern.
ci.kern.org/VAPA/stories/storyReader$108

A parade of notes, one following the other meaningfully.
www.bluebookofpianos.com/glossary.htm

A single line of notes that move upward, move downward, or repeat.
www.bsokids.com/kids/sound_off/music_dictionary.asp

succession of tones forming a musical line of individual expression
members.aol.com/wowchrisa/glossary.html

An arrangement of single notes in a musically expressive succession.
simplythebest.net/music/glossary/music_glossary_m.html

A succession of pitches and durations (note lengths) arranged to create a tune.
www.brottmusic.com/educationmain/Glossary%20of%20Music%20Jargon.htm

Back to Top a term that refers to specific tunes or categories of tunes within a chant system, eg, a "Solovetsk Monastery melody" or the "Greek chant troparion melody in the 1st Tone" (see also chant)
www.orthodoxpsalm.org/resources/glossary/k-o.html

a planned succession of pitches; the tune
www.learner.org/channel/workshops/artsineveryclassroom/p1popups/vocabulary.html

a succession of musical tones of different pitch and different duration.
www.cbasyracuse.org/musicpage/page0037.htm

(1) The aspect of music having to do with the succession of single notes in a coherent arrangement; (2) a particular succession of such notes (also referred to as tune, theme, or voice).
bumblebeemusic.com/glossary/m.html

A succesion of notes that form a linear, recognizeable, musical unit. Secondary notes to the melody are called the accompaniment.
laura.soydesign.net/music/glossary.html

The hummable tune that usually sticks in your brain after you listen to a piece. Often, it is the main theme.
www.a2so.com/education/curriculum04/curriculum_materials/termseight.html

the horizontal dimension in music, where the vertical dimension arises from the harmony
www.cgsmusic.net/Classical%20Guitar%20Sheet%20Music%20Dictionary/Classical%20Guitar%20Dictionary%20M.htm

I mean, if you say it has to be 'composed' then i agree; improvisation IS composition w/ less revision

-- Geir Hongro (geirhon...), November 16th, 2006.

WTF is "precomposed"? You compose it before you compose it? The man thought of something and then he played it - it's not like he was wiggling his fingers. If he wrote down the same notes instead of playing them on a trumpet, how would that be different?

*then there's the usual hackneyed fallback position of "foreground becomes background" and so forth, which is itself, as a strategy for dealing with this kind of music, boring bad bullshit.

Does this mean what I think its supposed to mean? I'm not sure what it means.*

naw, you got it. it means that writing about jazz or any music in this way is evading the real question. sometimes the "background" of a miles record is the thing, not what miles and wayne are playing. in general, listen to the drummer when you listen to jazz and you won't go wrong.

xps

For instance, the actual melody of "Someday My Prince Will Come" is the one featured in the "Snow White" movie by Disney. The start of Miles Davis' version is still rather close to the original, which makes the beginning the most melodic moment of his version.

so to someone who understands and listens to classical music -- geir does neither -- precomposition actually means improvisation

in other words, exactly what miles is doing when he ISN'T ststing the disney tune

Geir, I had no idea you were such a meme.

OOO NO YOU DI'NT

So the writing itself is not the point here.

Beethoven never heard his 9th Symphony, but we all know what it sounds like, no?

In 1972, Miles Davis released On The Corner. In his autobiography, Miles felt Columbia Records didn't push the album, which added to his frustrations, but it was also a time when Miles learnt more of Stockhausen's concepts of music. He said: "I had always written in a circular way and through Stockhausen I could see that I didn't want to ever play again from eight bars to eight bars, because I never end songs; they just keep going on."

With percussionist Mtume Heath and guitarist Pete Cosey in the lineup, "the band settled down into a deep African thing, a deep African-American groove, with a lot of emphasis on drums and rhythm, and not on individual solos."

Miles added: "I would try exploring one chord with this band, one chord in a tune, trying to get everyone to master these small little simple things like rhythm. We would take a chord and make it work for five minutes with variations, cross rhythms, things like that. Say Al Foster is playing in 4/4, Mtume might be playing in 6/8, or 7/4, and the guitarist might be comping in another time signature, or another rhythm altogether different. That's a lot of intricate shit we were working off this one chord."

For audiences attending this show in London in 1973, they would have thought of Miles playing tracks from On The Corner. But for many, the performance, though fiery, probably sounded more like improvisations and noddlings. Tracks like Turnaroundphrase and Tune In 5, which featured here, would only reach a wider audience with the release of the Dark Magus live album in 1974.

For now, fans can say a word of thanks to saxophonist Dave Liebman who had the presence of mind to put a tape recorder on stage and record the shows.

As valleybird commented on the internet: "This is an excellent stage recording, and so is the performance itself! Click on start, close your eyes if you like, and be on stage with the band! Thanks to Dave Liebman, who I believe is the source of this tape. What you get here is an excellent capture of the stage sound at a Victorian entertainment theater, the Rainbow Theater. The sound of the drums sound natural... There is only low interference of the PA, what you get is their stage amp line, which wasn't so bad for this time. A really interesting recording for audiophiles too.""

mp3-http://www.bigomag.com/MP3/MDrainbow/MDrainbow101.mp3

i love on the corner but miles sure makes it sound dull

and by bad I mean meanly boring and uninspired, and some jazz records even by great musician sometimes are. one of the caracteristic of miles was that he cared very much about recording, about their presentation, even about the cover. that's because he went mad to his record label about Quiet Night, that he didn't like it and it was not to be released (and it's not really bad, otherwise is interesting listening even if not a masterpiece at all)

There are also a lot of boring/uninspired jazz records that sound good (i.e. are record well, have nice textures) and are played well by good musicians. I find a lot of hard bop records to be this way. I tend to get most bored when I hear a well-trained but uncreative blower go through the motions of a set - an up-tempo burner, then a blues, then a ballad, then a mid-tempo standard, etc. It's album-as-demotape. Miles didn't usually fall into this trap and I'm sure it was by design - he always had a concept in mind.

Also wondering why a jazz artist can have this sort of run but a pop artist (maybe?) never has. Is it more difficult to make good pop records than it is to make good jazz records?

In Miles autobio, he says that the album was made because Columbia wanted a Miles Davis Bossa Nova album, which he and Gil promptly phoned in this cash-in effort as requested.

Jazz: ain't it supposed to upend all those, er, Euro ideas of "melody" and "improvising" and all that? You know...

composition: the assembling of musical materials into a new order
improvisation: the instantaneous realization of composition
Cecil Taylor: "What difference does it make? All the listener knows is the sounds he hears."

next!

I know he is, but still -- sometimes what he says is still so WF'ingTF...

At any rate, Miles's solo on "Someday" is every bit as melodic as the melody, so Geir's just wrong there.

Jazz doesn't get quite as encumbered with the demands and delusions of celebrity, I wouldn't think.

What 'Great' Jazz Musicians Do You Just Not 'Get' (and why)?

The live version is fantastic! Kenny Garrett tears the house down.

But this does get to the nub of the argument; Miles' '80s albums (and maybe you could argue this for ALL Miles' albums) were blueprints rather than finished records as such, templates for what he'd do with the material on stage.

Once in college I got stoned and put on some 70s McCoy Tyner record on at the wrong speed, and was all "holy shit Al Foster sounds like Billy Cobham on this!"

-- deej.. (clublonel...), November 17th, 2006

I'm in a vocal minority that champions Doo-Bop. Some of his playing on it is very Muzak-y, but about 2/3 of it absolutely kills. Easy Mo-Bee's rhymes are clumsy and leave you wishing Miles had chosen a better rapper to collab with, but the feel is very similar to ish like "Bridging the Gap."

Or think "It Ain't Hard To Tell" with the trumpet soloing instead of looping. And less dynamic production and rhymes.

ABSOLUTELY. I have the six non-vocal tracks on my iPod; it's a killer EP. The first cut, "Fantasy," invents trip-hop.

And as far as the 80s is concerned, I have the following points to make:

1. Decoy: massively underrated.

2. Tutu: an absolute classic. Ice cold computer music with Miles stalking the landscape like the Terminator with all the meat stripped off.

3. Until you hear the 20CD live Montreux box, you will never understand 80s Miles. Those live bands were fucking ferocious.

4. We Want Miles (and it's Japan-only counterpart Miles! Miles! Miles!): the toughest, most stripped-down funk/rock Miles ever played after Jack Johnson.

4. We Want Miles (and it's Japan-only counterpart Miles! Miles! Miles!): the toughest, most stripped-down funk/rock Miles ever played after Jack Johnson.

OTM like off the charts!

-- deej.. (clublonel...), November 17th, 2006.

1) A gradual loss of audience starting in the 60s that I think also precipiated a loss of artistic confidence and a kind of desparate grasping for new ways to succeed commercial

2) The triumph of over-micing, over-separation, gated drums, and a variety of other production techniques that I personally don't like but that in any case are especially non-conducive to good jazz recording

3. Until you hear the 20CD live Montreux box, you will never understand 80s Miles. Those live bands were fucking ferocious.

I would like to hear this, or at least the best couple of tracks. Actually I think Live Around the World has a couple recordings from Montreux?

Miles stopped making jazz records in 1969. This is not in any way a bad thing, but it's a fact you've got to face before you can really hear anything he was doing, from that point on.

It's funny — I remember really not liking this record when I first heard it. Just about every personal collection I ever saw the CD in was positively atrocious — sitting alongside a lot of garbage. Yet, when I dl'd it more recently, I was astonished to discover, yeah — there's an aesthetic thing going on there that's pretty outstanding. Miles's chops at that point are almost beside the point.

That's absolutely true, and you're right that it's the reason his post '69 music still confuses a lot of people. But nobody wants to say it because it sounds to much like the old jazzbos "this isn't music" complaints.

I did write a whole book about this subject, you know...

(Geir's views on this thread are lol-hilarious)

Just Squeeze Me - 10 CD box
2006 Membran Music

Lista Utworów:

CD1
1. Dig 07:34

2. It's Only A Papermoon 05:24

3. Denial 05:40

4. Bluing 09:56

5. Donna 03:12

6. Yesterdays 03:44

7. Chance It 03:02

8. How Deep Is The Ocean 04:38

9. Dear Old Stockholm 04:12

10. Woody 'N' You

CD2
1. Compulsion 05:49

2. The Serpent's Tooth (Take 1) 07:00

3. The Serpent's Tooth (Take 2) 06:17

4. Tasty Pudding 03:21

5. Floppy 06:01

6. Willie The Wailer 04:26

7. For Adults Only 05:34

8. Ray's Idea 03:44

9. Kelo 03:18

10. Enigma 03:23

11. Tempus Fugit 03:51

12. I Waited For You

CD3
1. C.T.A. 03:34

2. Tune Up 03:51

3. Smooch 03:06

4. Well You Needn't 05:22

5. Take Off 03:40

6. Weirdo 04:43

7. Lazy Susan 04:02

8. It Never Entered My Mind 04:02

9. The Leap 04:31

10. Old Devil Moon 03:23

11. I'll Remember April 07:51

12. Solar

CD4
1. You Don't Know What Love Is 04:22

2. Love Me Or Leave Me 06:57

3. Walkin' 13:26

4. Blue 'N' Boogie 08:18

5. But Not For Me 04:38

6. Airegin 04:59

7. Oleo 05:12

8. Doxy

CD5
1. Bags' Groove 09:22

2. Grren Haze 05:49

3. Easy Living 05:06

4. Nature Boy 06:16

5. Dr. Jackle 08:52

6. Just Squeeze Me 07:27

7. There Is No Greater Love

CD6
1. Bemsha Swing 09:28

2. Swing Spring 10:43

3. The Man I Love 07:57

4. No Line 05:40

5. Vierd Blues 06:52

6. In Your Own Sweet Way 04:35

7. Something I Dreamed Last Night

CD7
1. Salt Peanuts 06:09

2. Surrey With The Fringe On Top 09:06

3. It Never Entered My Mind 05:25

4. Four 07:16

5. In Your Own Sweet Way 05:45

6. If I Were A Bell 08:06

7. You're My Everything

CD8
1. I Could Write A Book 05:08

2. 'Round Midnight 05:56

3. Ah-Leu-Cha 05:51

4. All Of You 07:02

5. Bye Bye Blackbird 07:55

6. Well,You Needn't 06:21

7. Diane

CD9
1. When I Fall In Love 04:25

2. Trane's Blues 08:34

3. Ahmad's Blues 07:27

4. Half Nelson 04:47

5. Oleo 05:52

6. It Could Happen To You 06:30

7. Woody 'N' You

CD10
1. Dear Old Stockholm 07:49

2. Tadd's Delight 04:28

3. Sweet Sue,Just You 03:40

4. My Funny Valentine 05:59

5. Israel 02:16

6. Rouge 03:14

7. Darn That Dream 03:23

8. Odjenar 02:52

9. Hibeck 03:05

10. Yesterdays 02:25

11. Ezz-Thetic 02:52

12. Morpheus 02:22

13. Down

In a way, yes, just like the old "Absolut Musik" ideal of the composers. But, you know, a melody is a very concrete thing too because it sounds in a certain way.

Beethoven never heard his 9th Symphony, but we all know what it sounds like, no?

-- Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, November 16, 2006 6:25 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

you don't

-- mark s (mark s), Thursday, November 16, 2006 6:32 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

love this

totally rethinking my 'what happened to miles is what happened to jazz' stance from upthread .. since i've been exploring lots of disco, R&B and that silly UK term 'boogie' (aka 'black non-rappers in the 80s') i've really seen that a lot of jazz artists crossed over w/ great artistic success ... and did a much better job than Miles did. So I would conclude that Miles just got old.

which isn't to say he couldn't have still been making great music, but that his ambition got the best of him and he started sounding like my dad using rap slang or something

Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.
Bitch's Brew sounds like a shitty Grateful Dead record.

Yeah, whoa, waht?

That's kind of like saying On the Corner sounds like a shitty Kool and the Gang record or something. But way stranger.

Dig is probably the closest he came to making an out-and-out bad album prior to '75. And it's still reasonably tolerable.

Filles de Kilimanjaro is fucking awesome. I listen to that thing all the time.

yes

this thread is great for revealing that Geir doesn't really get melody

"that silly UK term 'boogie' (aka 'black non-rappers in the 80s')"

WTF? boogie is the name given to early 80s post-disco soul/funk you chief...

So where do Baccara fit in there then? It was 1977, wasn't it?

I've always thought his '60s Columbia records lik E.S.P. were real acquired-taste kinda things. I fail to understand how anyone could dismiss his Gil Evans collaborations. Quiet Nights isn't such a great record. I've probably listened to "Calypso Frelimo" as much as any Miles recording--as much as anything I know--as I've listened to, name it. Get Up With It is to my ears inconsistent, full of great ideas. Bitches has too much fucking electric piano on it, except sometimes I really like it--full of great ideas. I find On the Corner inaccessible, but, full of...

I mean, like E.S.P.. The interplay among the band, e.s.p. Tony Williams, is amazing; I think it's fair to say that a lot of that music just doesn't go anywhere and also, to be fair, it isn't meant to--I don't think. I embrace the aural-wallpaper aspect of jazz (to address "lurking question about jazz fandom" in the orig. question) and Davis really helped pioneer it. For wallpaper, those mid-'60s records are mighty engaging and active. I've always sensed contempt in the way Davis would construct some tinker-toy "theme" and then have his world-class guys run thru it. Contempt can be a useful emotion kept in check so I embrace that too. I suppose Davis also pioneered jazz as a non-teleological enterprise so his fusion stuff is just more of the same, louder, and in most cases far more interesting to me than most of his Williams/Carter/Hancock/Shorter material, altho I've heard live boots that are just amazing, themes dispensed with, pure playing.

While the album Seven Steps to Heaven isn't particularly notable, the way the box set packages it along side all the contemporary live albums ("Miles in Berlin," "Miles in Tokyo," etc.) and a few outtakes makes the case for that era being one of the more interesting eras in his career.

I think tracing the transition from the Coltrane/Adderley front line and the older rhythm section into the Shorter/Hancock/Williams/Carter lineup was not only smart packaging (how else to compile all that miscellaneous early-60's material?), but makes for an interesting listening experience.

Which reminds me, there's been a used copy of the Miles + Coltrane box sitting around at the record store for ages now. I should pick that shit up.

I think it's fair to say that a lot of that music just doesn't go anywhere and also, to be fair, it isn't meant to--I don't think. I embrace the aural-wallpaper aspect of jazz (to address "lurking question about jazz fandom" in the orig. question) and Davis really helped pioneer it. For wallpaper, those mid-'60s records are mighty engaging and active. I've always sensed contempt in the way Davis would construct some tinker-toy "theme" and then have his world-class guys run thru it

This is interesting, but I don't hear it that way at all!

Although I guess most of the deep charts I'm thinking of were Shorter (or Hancock or Williams) tunes, esp. Orbits, Nefertiti, etc.

That said I think the interplay on these records is more engaged and engaging than most of the fusion stuff, and a lot of the earlier straight ahead records.

lol amazing thread

Generally because I consider tuneless thrash even worse when played on acoustic instruments than when played on electric ones.

― Geir Hongro (GeirHong), Thursday, 16 November 2006 18:21 (twelve years ago) Bookmark

i once tried to get geir to go deeper into his notion of good complexity in melody but it turned into a pile-on (!) and i had an off-line fight with a friend!

oh geirpaws

Ha. I assumed the revive would be about this:
https://pitchfork.com/news/miles-davis-lost-album-rubberband-set-for-release/

lotta nonsense about the Second Great Quintet itt

BTE

Also thought the same thing as Jordan

second great quintet is my favourite miles. which hasn't always been the case, and maybe won't be forever.

Miles's questionable records happened only when he'd sober up for a couple days, so there aren't many.

i love "tuneless thrash" as a descriptor of the second great quintet, thanks geir

i found this thread bc i was looking to see if there were any good posts about birth of the cool (very few). nate chinen's pfork review today is great

Miles's questionable records happened only when he'd sober up for a couple days, so there aren't many.

― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Wednesday, June 19, 2019 1:35 PM (twenty-two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

??? at the time of whats widely seen as his creative peak he was clean. His heroin addiction days were the late 40s/ early 50s stuff most ppl are dismissive of (birth of the cool excepted)

??? at the time of whats widely seen as his creative peak he was clean. His heroin addiction days were the late 40s/ early 50s stuff most ppl are dismissive of (birth of the cool excepted)

Miles was a heavy user of one drug or another for almost all his adult life, right up until his death.

he was never fully clean from heroin after kicking it (he says as much in the autobio, which is otherwise very dishonest about his drug use - he claims he wasn't addicted to heroin in the late 70s when he took his hiatus), still an occasional user, but wasn't active in his addiction, using every day from when he kicked it in the early 50s by going cold turkey at his parent's place

he kicked heroin in the early 50s & was known for doing a ton of coke in the late 60s but my understanding from most sources is its kind of impossible to be a successful jazz musician & consistently heavy drug user over the multi decade career he had

so he was often sober or thereabouts while making his classic material

He never stopped drinking and smoking, and was a massive cokehead from the 60s/70s on. He was almost never "clean," and he wasn't subtle about it; listen to the first few seconds of the opening track from "You're Under Arrest":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IpaeTAdtac

how is one a casual heroin user lol

you're using a skit on an album as evidence? lol

this is bs romanticizing but ok

xp. lots of people are? kids that take a few percs when partying etc. was a casual opiate user of all kinds in my late 20s

my understanding from most sources is its kind of impossible to be a successful jazz musician & consistently heavy drug user over the multi decade career he had

Ha ha, if anything his career success (and general celebrity) made it easier - at a certain point, people just start handing you drugs. Also, people have all kinds of shit going on that you just don't hear much about - there's a longstanding rumor that most of Cecil Taylor's MacArthur money went straight up his nose, and Brad Mehldau was a junkie for years.

you're using a skit on an album as evidence? lol

I'm just saying he was comfortable joking about this stuff, where a lot of other musicians would have tried to hide it or deny it.

From about 67 onwards he was taking a whole range of opiates to deal with his dodgy hip (partly congenital, partly brought on by his boxing obsession). There was the odd decent album in that period.

to be fair though i mean Miles took an extended break starting in his late forties and even before that when you see the recording dates of a lot of his mid-'70s, it comes from a few years earlier.

There's a lot of evidence that Miles used both coke and to a lesser degree, opiates until his death, and he was almost always fucked up on something.

Ha ha, if anything his career success (and general celebrity) made it easier - at a certain point, people just start handing you drugs. Also, people have all kinds of shit going on that you just don't hear much about - there's a longstanding rumor that most of Cecil Taylor's MacArthur money went straight up his nose, and Brad Mehldau was a junkie for years.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, June 19, 2019 2:13 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im aware that there are drug using musicians lol im just saying that the jokey "lol miles only bad records are when he sobered up for a few days lol lol" shit is probably the opposite of the truth & a romanticization of his drug use which yes happened but was almost inversely heavy compared w the quality of the work he was putting out at a given time

There's a lot of evidence that Miles used both coke and to a lesser degree, opiates until his death, and he was almost always fucked up on something.

― Sassy Boutonnière (ledriver), Wednesday, June 19, 2019 2:21 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there's a lot of evidence of this in the 70s & 80s yes

It's a bit of a myth that an artist can't put out high-quality work when under the influence. Many, many artists have done so. It's simply a matter of practice.

i kind of wish the pitchfork review had gone a little deeper into what was meant by 'the cool' & it treats the racial politics sort of glibly ... ppl widely credited bix beiderbecke w being the kind of proto-cool jazz trumpeter, and Lester Young was a direct influence on Miles in this style iirc

xp i think its a bit of a myth that jazz artists are drug fuelled auteurs ... charlie parker (who was a career-long addict) was notoriously remembered for doing shit like nodding off at the stand & similar

i think the truth that most jazz fans i know realize is that a lot of legends were drug-derailed auteurs. i mean when you consider how much music was lost, even by guys who kicked it in the end...

An addiction isn't "fuel", per se. It's an obstacle, but one that can be overcome to a certain limited extent.

You don't get to be an addict if you don't develop a certain number of coping-while-high skills, even if these skills ultimately prove insufficient for yr life in general.

I would never argue that any musician was fueled by drugs (except Aerosmith, whose creative decline is 100% attributable to sobering up). I think perhaps being fucked up causes certain musicians to push that much harder to express what's in them, and that's why you get breakthroughs made under the influence of drugs. Not because the drugs are inspirational, but because like ledriver says, they're obstacles, and sometimes when you leap over an obstacle you find yourself among the stars.

i think the truth that most jazz fans i know realize is that a lot of legends were drug-derailed auteurs

the stories of parker dealing w his addiction are so sad and terrifying

probably worth taking into account the historically specific social and institutional exclusion of jazz musicians, and the kinds of communities + coping mechanisms that engendered when you talk miles and addiction

then you have undiagnosed ptsd + probably other mental health stuff going on, lots of evidence that he was a very angry guy, but also deeply sensitive and under immense pressure to perform at a very high level

all of which to say i think addiction is correlated with a lot of circumstances that made miles who he was and were essential contexts of his creative process — not fuel, not obstacle, that’s too reductive

I saw 'Round Midnight' a few weeks back, and a lot of that film really hits the sadness of a great artist letting himself be stopped by addiction.

As well as the ptsd and trauma and anger that goes into it, yes.

I think what you mean is that addiction wasn't Miles's only obstacle.

what i mean is that it’s more accurate, and imo more interesting, to talk about his addiction as an indeterminate function of a broader constellation of forces and structures within which he pursued his career and created his music

which is another way of saying it’s worth asking why he was an addict in the first place before you start going around proclaiming whether drugs had a beneficial or deleterious effect on his life or career

and in turn i’d say that asking that question opens a lot of unpleasant doors but also leads to lines of inquiry that i think are more humanizing in one’s attempt to understand the life of an artist

nicely said

Brad Mehldau was a junkie for years.

― shared unit of analysis (unperson), Wednesday, June 19, 2019 2:13 PM (three hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Woah ok that is a surprise

agreed xp

By the mid- to late 1990s Mehldau was regarded by some as one of the leading jazz musicians:[1] critic John Fordham described him as "the next great keyboard star of jazz".[24] The appreciation was not universal: some of the pianist's self-penned liner notes and interview comments, which included philosophical musings and complaints about comparisons with pianist Bill Evans, engendered dislike in some, thereby, in critic Nate Chinen's words, "leaving Mehldau with a lingering reputation for pretentiousness and self-indulgence."[9] Many critics did, though, reassess their judgment of his main influences, which previously had often been given as Evans,[13][25] an assessment that was perhaps attributable more to race than to music.[26] Another, non-musical, similarity with Evans that was commented on was Mehldau's struggle with an addiction to heroin during the 1990s, up to 1998.[8][25] Around 1996 he moved to Los Angeles, to try to overcome this drug problem.[27][28] Mehldau later stated that "Once I stopped using heroin, it was like a rush of creativity that had been held in check came out".[29]

xp i think its a bit of a myth that jazz artists are drug fuelled auteurs ... charlie parker (who was a career-long addict) was notoriously remembered for doing shit like nodding off at the stand & similar

― ILX’s bad boy (D-40)

ok but goddamn i love that july 1946 recording of "lover man", i really do

unfortunately being a fucked up human being very often does make for great art

i do also really love the benedetti recordings, made when he was "clean", by which i mean "drunk"

"being a fucked up human being very often does make for great art" is glib imo

https://www.thestranger.com/features/2019/05/08/40131179/miles-davis-doc-birth-of-the-cool-toots-the-horn-of-a-jazz-iconoclast

Miles Davis doc is making the rounds at film fests. It was in Seattle, now showing in DC today and Saturday

It's pretty frustrating that a film on Miles isn't getting the miniseries/multipart treatment. All the complaints about "they left out ____" could easily be solved by a four (or more) hour film.

it is kinda weird that no one's made a huge doc about him. afaik there's just that Isle of Wight/1968 one, right?

There's that -- which for me is far-and-away the best Miles doc -- plus one called The Miles Davis Story, which looks like it originated as a UK tv special. There are brief interesting bits, but it's really thin.

yeah I love that '68, Herbie is the business

'68 doc

i found this thread bc i was looking to see if there were any good posts about birth of the cool

p sure i have one of these in me, i will keep drinking and get back to you maybe

Come on, the best Miles movie is surely that Don Cheadle / Ewan MacGregor buddy-crime-caper thing from a few years ago. Car chases, shoot-outs, what more do you want?

Ugh, I actually watched that thing. My partner, who was vaguely familiar with Miles' career trajectory, asked a few times during the movie, "Wait, did that actually happen?" Depending on the scene, my response was, "No," "Yes, but decades earlier/later," "No, that actually happened to another musician," or "Technically yes, but not remotely like it's being portrayed."

Frustratingly, the direction was solid, and Cheadle's performance was great. I'd rather watch it again than see Whiplash.