POLLIN' WITH THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET (ILM artist poll #32 voting thread)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/miles1.jpg

No need to try to come up with something clever to get across how important this guy was and is, so straight to the poll details!

* 30 — 30 — 30 — 30 — 30 *
Vote for 30 Miles Davis tracks and put them in 1 to 30 order. Points will be distributed like this:
#1 gets 50 points; #2 gets 47 points;
3:44; 4:31; 5:38; 6:36; 7:34; 8:32; 9:30; 10:29; 11:28; 12:27; 13:26; 14:25; 15:24; 16:23; 17:22; 18:21; 19:20; 20:19; 21:18; 22:17; 23:16; 24:15; 25:14; 26:13; 27:11; 28:9; 29:7; 30:5

Optional side polls:

* ALBUMS ALBUMS ALBUMS *
Vote for up to TEN (10) favorite albums. You can vote for as few as you'd like, but with the size of his discography, I wanted to add a few slots to the albums poll.

* SIDEMEN SIDEMEN SIDEMEN *
I just thought of this one as I was typing vote values: Vote for up to FIVE (5) favorite band members or session players who've played on a Miles record. Airto vs. Badal Roy FITE!

Voting opens right now and ends at midnight Pacific Daylight Time on Friday, March 22nd. And since I'm not staying up until 2 a.m. that night, anything that's in my inbox on Saturday morning will get counted.

Send ballots to wmcrump AT gmail dotcom.

That's it! Happy listening.

Clemenza, to answer your question from the other thread -- no problem with a shorter-than-30 tracks ballot.

Great--I think every poll I've been interested in so far has been somebody I know fairly well, but this time I'll be doing what a lot people say they do, which is to learn.

Have you got a list that shows how many tracks there actually are? I've been waist-deep in Miles since Christmas, yet with all the reworkings and live versions I have absolutely no idea what I'm dealing with here. His is the most intimidating discography imaginable.

Does Gil Evans count as a sideman?

I anticipate a lot of vote-splitting, esp if we're including live stuff and box set tracks/studio outtakes etc

I mean, which version of Right Off am I supposed to vote for, y'know?

Are you counting boxes as albums?

literally the most impossible poll

Gah. I love Miles, but he's one of these guys that you can own 10 albums by -- which I do -- and still be the barest dilettante. Should be fun to try, tho.

Shakey, the only way I can approach this and keep my sanity would be to combine all votes for "Right Off" (or "Directions" or "The Theme", etc) and make notes as I go along when people specify particular performances, and mention them in the results.

My first thought was that Gil Evans should count as a sideman, but that led to "well, should Teo?"

works for me Wmc

Yeah, makes sense.

If Miles were alive and you asked him in person, he'd probably kick you all in the nuts.

If Miles were alive and you asked him in person, he'd probably kick you all in the nuts.

To be fair, he would probably do that whether you asked him anything or not.

And yeah, this poll is very intimidating. I got overwhelmed trying to narrow down my choices for the Neil Young poll last summer and this. . . well, this is a much greater task. To say the least.

Tarfumes, I kinda don't want to count boxes as albums, because that would open up a semi-cheat for someone who doesn't want to choose between the album with "Black Satin" on it and the album with "He Loved Him Madly" on it, since they're both on the Complete On the Corner Sessions box.

Ismael, re: a song list -- I've come across this site on a few previous polls and it's been somewhat handy --

http://www.whosdatedwho.com/tpx_5584/miles-davis/songs

Though there are some immediately apparent errors, like listing "All The Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother" as a Miles Davis song. Beyond that, you're right, the discography is a terror to navigate, and I think I may just let everybody handle it in their own way.

Cool re: boxes.

I guess my problem with that philosophy regarding box sets is that, right now, I can think of two songs that were **only** released on box sets that will definitely make my list.

Will this ultimately count against my ballot, or am I overthinking it?

The songs are certainly fair game to make your tracks ballot! Tracks and albums balloting will be totally separate, so I'm not sure what you mean by counting against your ballot.

Ahh, I getcha now!

I was thinking those tracks, not being released on an initial album, would be tossed out if I voted for them, based on their affiliation with a time period in Miles' career and not an album per se.

Good to know.

(I was overthinking it, in case you hadn't figured that out)

No worries! All tracks -- whether from studio album/live album/box/whatever -- are fair game for tracks ballot, but it kinda wouldn't be kosher to have an albums ballot that consisted of Complete Prestige/Complete Jack Johnson/Complete 2nd Quintet, etc.

Recommended listening: "Circle in the Round," from 12/67, 1st electric guitar (played by Joe Beck).

1st ballot is in!

Listening to the Seven Steps box, and holy shit did that band find their voice quickly. Also, George Coleman reliably killing it. Never got his proper due as a Miles sideman.

Ha, I admit I did a brief "wait, I can't vote for 100 things?" double-take.

Birth of the Cool still counts as an album even though it was a compilation, right?

Would it be ok if I did an albums only ballot? I can't think of his work as 'tracks' other than a few obvious ones.

I just picked out 50 songs for my iPod, so maybe I'll do this one.

The sidelong tracks, like Shhh/Peaceful still counts, right?

Billy -- I didn't anticipate that request, but sure, why not.

Frederik -- yeah!

I can't think of his work as 'tracks' other than a few obvious ones.

I was thinking the same thing, jazz in general -- at least post-1950 jazz -- is so much more an album experience than a song experience. It will be interesting to do a tracks ballot, but it will be with a big implied asterisk that the songs for me mostly exist within the contexts of their albums.

Started my relistening tour today with Bitches Brew. "Pharaoh's Dance" is good morning drive music.

Yes, this is the first poll where albums make more sense to me than tracks. Normally I spend weeks on tracks and seconds on albums; this'll likely be the other way round.

I think some boxes should be countable in the albums list - The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965, The Cellar Door Sessions and The Complete Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk should all count, because they're documents of specific moments rather than gathering up multiple studio sessions. Y/N?

I started to wonder that myself. Ditto the new Bootleg Series sets.

There are still new box sets being issued?! This is the ironman of polls.

Two in the last year:
Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Vol. 1
Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2

Both are 3 CD/1 DVD sets.

I am totally open to "do not vote until you hear THIS" suggestions, because there's plenty of obvious things I haven't heard nevermind the less obvious ones.

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/a572ff127027702aaa16cf16fa6868bd/178416.jpg

dunno how obv or o/wise this one is, but everyone should hear it,imho - live broadcast from Paris in 1960. It was Coltrane's last tour with Miles, and he's already playing p 'out', much to the horror of the audience, who start to get pretty restless (booing etc) during the freer passages. Atmosphere is electric, Miles' playing is v. strong, incredible feeling of tension throughout, sonics are really gd - and the version of 'Bye Bye Blackbird' here is all-time. a keeper!

I think some boxes should be countable in the albums list - The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965, The Cellar Door Sessions and The Complete Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk should all count, because they're documents of specific moments rather than gathering up multiple studio sessions. Y/N?

― 誤訳侮辱, Tuesday, March 12, 2013 9:15 AM (1 hour ago)

This is reasonable and I agree.

Gah. I love Miles, but he's one of these guys that you can own 10 albums by -- which I do -- and still be the barest dilettante. Should be fun to try, tho.

Yeah, I think I have 12 and still feel like I've just dipped a toe. Never heard any of the 16 Prestige/Debut albums that Wikipedia lists, for instance.

Heh, I'm currently on album 46 in my box set and still feel like I shouldn't be here

I wrote an entire book about the dude and I know I'm gonna look at my submitted ballot and go "Fuck, I forgot..."

haha! yeah i keep clicking on this thread and then thinking -- "this is too much to think about right now"

i've had the plugged nickel box for *years* and have barely gotten through it. should give it more time but i'm always thrown off by the bpm's. and yeah, there is just way too much to listen to in ten days

Love the Plugged Nickel box so much. I can definitely see a sizable chunk of the second quintet's recordings going on my ballot. All of it live, though. Never thought their studio recordings measured up.

I used to feel the same way, but one day those albums cracked open for me and now they're some of the most amazing shit I've ever heard. Especially Nefertiti.

Nefertiti is such a strange album

Funnily enough, I've always been blown away by the studio recordings from first listens and have had to work a bit to find my way into the live stuff. (except for Dark Magus, which was O_O from day 1)

The intensity that all the players brought to bear in the studio is impressive. I listened to Bitches Brew the other night and I don't think I've heard any 69/70/71 live shows that match it.

Have you ever seen a live band play with that intensity? How would you go about finding one? [/jazznovice]

when i was doing my 'homework' i didn't really feel like listening to the post-bitches brew electric albums, the live ones (never been way into live-evil, have liked pangaea, agharta, dark magus, but they're kind of featureless to me), so i've mainly been re-listening to GET UP WITH IT, and wondering especially about miles' intentions because of that old invisible jukebox link someone posted recently, where miles is very critical of people not really doing something right with their sounds. obviously miles keeps doing things and trying to do lots of specific things in his electric period, but i've kind of had a tendency to suppose that in the thick of all those live albums he just started laying it out there, letting loose, or something to that effect, at some point. and GET UP WITH IT is obviously an exception to that (obv. ill-considered) thought, since it's got some very specifically chosen differences between the songs.

but for all that i've always wondered what to make of 'red china blues' - wondered if i was even hearing what 'the idea' might involve besides miles' electric guitar mimicry. maybe something in the bassline? it seems like it's a lot more enormous and driving than i imagine a bassline on a similar hard-charging horn-section blues number.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/get-up-with-it-19750410

http://www.headheritage.co.uk/unsung/albumofthemonth/miles-davis-on-the-one

yeah any time i think maybe ilx is a little too fusion and electric focused when it comes to jazz (eg this thread) i think of wynton and stanley and (lol) montgomery burns' jazz and get over it pretty quickly.

Just re-watched the electric Miles bit on Montgomery Burns' Jazz. Wynton talks about Miles feeling "old and out-of-date" after seeing Sly and the Family Stone at the 1969 Newport Festival. Never mind the fact that Miles' set at that very festival was mostly as-yet-unrecorded electric Bitches Brew material (which he'd already been playing for months), or that he'd already recorded and released In A Silent Way. Wynton makes it sound like Miles showed up in a tux playing "Autumn Leaves", got jealous of Sly, and immediately rushed off to buy a Fender Rhodes and some bell-bottoms.

i've been listening to those two albums over and over again for, i don't know, since i was a teenager (iasw) moving on into college (before i really got bb) and together they pretty well epitomize my feeling of how unaccountable music can be, that each one could be its own thing and endlessly fascinating and a source of renewable joy, yet happen one after the other and be so different and thoroughly conceived, AND not like anything else that's ever been made, in the entire history of the world.

that old invisible jukebox link someone posted recently, where miles is very critical of people not really doing something right with their sounds.

I have trouble taking that blindfold test seriously. I mean, for all his talk about Dolphy being "a sad motherfucker," he went and hired two of Dolphy's most distinguished sidemen (Carter and Williams), and two of his admirers (Hancock and Shorter). I think, aside from being generally cranky, Miles was pissed that he hadn't gotten out in front of what was happening in the new music.

sure - he does sound like there was just (always?) gonna be a rift of understanding/appreciation between him and the more dissonant/atonal/free stream of development, for all the noisiness he let into the second quintet and electric records - but i was just thinking about how that was a criterion he seemed to prize more than anything especially dogmatic about how music ought to be played, 'what you do with' your ideas/sounds/abilities

The thing to remember about Get Up With It is that, like Big Fun, it's actually a compilation of material from a bunch of sessions from between 1970 and 1974. The only one-session/one-album studio release Miles put out in the '70s was On the Corner, which is why it's the only one that feels like a solid thing unto itself. Even A Tribute to Jack Johnson combined a session from 1970 with some old stuff from 1969.

how do big fun and get up with it compare auteur/creative-control-wise? for some reason i've never listened to big fun since i always wrote it off as an odds-and-ends thing. but i did somehow think of get up with it as more of a deliberate statement, however different the source sessions are. is that just too oblivious to the facts?

hooray, figured out a problem I was having with the spreadsheet

Voted. Could you please confirm that it was received as there was a mixup with a previous ballot poll?

Hm, I don't know why I was a dick to Bitches' Brew for so long.

Btw, if anyone hasn't seen Mark Prindle's Miles Davis reviews yet, they're pretty classic: http://www.markprindle.com/davis.htm

Sund4r -- got it. For whatever reason, it landed in my spam folder instead of my inbox. But I did retrieve it.

Ah, that's what happened with the Joni Mitchell poll too.

My job has kinda trained me to check there first before assuming it just didn't go through.

Ballot sent. Underinformed and somewhat randomly ordered, but fwiw.

(I know I put Sketches of Spain too high, but I've loved it since I was about 10 or 11. My gateway jazz record.)

Got it!

Reminder for everyone -- the album voting has been changed so you can vote for up to 20 albums if you want. Not required, but available.

has anyone submitted a solely albums ballot or is that just obnoxious? i usually do these things on first impulse + five minutes of looking it over and changing one or two things basis but there's no way i could do that w/ miles (i think i'd have 'he loved him madly' #1 but really i have no idea), whereas an album ballot i could probably whip out.

There have been a couple other albums-only ballots -- wouldn't be obnoxious at all.

good alt-poll question would have been:

a. best second quintet ballad
b. best second quintet jam
c. best second quintet song/composition

(somehow i tend to think of ones like 'circle' and 'footsteps' as being a lot more distinctively composed than some of the stuff on ESP that i enjoy listening to plenty well)

Yeah we should do that sometime. Also best second quintet album cover!

miles in the sky (zoioioioing) = filles (betty o. mabry davis) > e.s.p. (frances davis) > nefertiti > sorcerer (cicely tyson) > miles smiles (zoom of miles davis driver's license shot)

omg i've always wished for this book:

The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68
Keith Waters

ISBN13: 9780195393842
ISBN10: 0195393848

http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/CulturalStudies/AfricanAmericanStudies/~~/dmlldz11c2EmY2k9OTc4MDE5NTM5Mzg0Mg==

- - -

while tripping over that, i was reading about 'time, no changes' as the operating principle for freebop / the second quintet, started mumbling to myself, deleuze, guattari, plateaus, blah blah blah, and to my surprise

http://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/369/

but, fuck if i wanna read a music theorist's phd thesis

voted albums and sidemen (found out that oh i guess i'm a second quintet guy - not sure i would've even figured this out til i wrote it down)

http://www.allmusic.com/album/the-complete-miles-davis-at-montreux-1973-1991-mw0000223905

jurek really goes all in on the 80s music

"Time After Time" is showcased on this set no less than nine times. Each version is truly compelling, of a different length, in a different place in the set, and of varying intensity. But nowhere does Davis express the depths of his soul more completely and nakedly than on the first track of disc four. This is Miles singing a kind of secret song. The lyricism is so harmonically elegant and the emotion in the melodic line and ensuing improvisation is so honest that they are heartbreakingly beautiful. Without exaggeration, listeners had never heard Miles Davis like this before. Here is the bandleader, composer, cultural icon, musician, and human being reduced to the purity of music.

xxp Marcel has a shorter piece (~20 pages) called 'Cosmic Strategies: The Electric Experiments of Miles Davis' in the Deleuze and Music collection, not sure if it's available online anywhere though.

We're at 19 track ballots, 19 album ballots. I know of a couple others still to come, so we'll have enough for results to start rolling Monday.

Looking up Miles Davis on Spotify and finding all sorts of odd titles that I assume are bootlegs. Is anyone familiar with any of these? Any of them good?

They look so dodgy, I just jumped over them to get to the official releases. I am listening to a live "Footprints" from Live Jazz Sessions in Europe though, and it's pretty hot. I do wish there was a way to mark albums "exclude this bullcrap from searches" though.

Voted! I couldn't manage a tracks ballot but did albums and sidemen.

Those off-brand Miles compilations on Spotify are so weird and annoying. They seem to exist for lots of other jazz artists with big catalogs (Ellington, for example). Maybe they rely on creative interpretations of expired international copyrights? I'd like to know more about these bizarro labels. Do they have physical products, or are they purely creatures of the streaming ecosystem?

The sidemen voting has a very close 1-2.

Got 3 more ballots during the night, but nothing from Ismael yet. Everything ok out there?

Ballots that arrive today while I'm entering data will be counted!

Oh sorry, I was going to do it this evening - got 26 tracks picked, need four more. I'm heading home just now, I could probably get you something in about an hour?

1-2 I bet is Tony Williams & Coltrane

No more Deleuzeans!

The other book looks gpod

Done it - could you let me know if you don't get it? Something strange happened when I clicked 'send'.

Got it!

VOTING IS NOW OFFICIALLY CLOSED.

Ismael, sent you a question.

I've responded

Thanks! Appropriate change made.

wmc i forgot to say i brought forward the 70s poll countdown end day to thursday so at least you will get friday all to yourself.

I think since a fair bit of miles turned up in the poll there will be a lot wanting to watch both poll threads. We can try work out some timing so we dont interrupt your rollout the rest of the week if you want. And I will regularly post a reminder to everyone for the miles results thread. Dont want anyone to miss this!

There's no real need for either rollout thread to accomodate the other as far as times of day, is there? We all have modern now-a-go-go brains that can handle lots of stuff happening at once. I'll be starting tomorrow a.m. after the gym -- 10:00 my time, 11:00 east coast.

Sure but some are busy at work and only have time to follow one big fast moving poll thread but if you're sure then its ok. I'll have the miles thread and the 70s poll threads open in 2 tabs anyway so I can follow it. Looking forward to it!

I'll be starting the rollout between 1-2pm UK time. Not sure what that is your time as I think your clocks change nearly a month before ours.

What size rollout will you be doing for albums and tracks? Miles has over 501 tracks ;)

Not sure at the moment; I'll have a better idea of that tonight when I'm through tabulating. They aren't going to be huge numbers.

OK, the numbers are crunched as well as I can crunch them.

There were 25 tracks ballots, with 154 songs receiving votes.
There were 26 albums ballots, with 54 albums receiving votes.
There were 16 sidemen ballots, with 19 people receiving votes.

I think the countdown will be the sidemen, followed by top 30 albums, then top 40 (maybe 50) tracks.

Woo-hoo! Can't wait for the rollout(s)!

There were 26 albums ballots, with 54 albums receiving votes.

Hard to imagine this being topped in any other poll. Dang.

VOTE FOR MILES - ILM artist poll #32, Miles Davis - Results Thread btw

Argh meant to vote in this but forgot.