PicoBlog

Having dispensed with the marginalia, we get to the flavor!

First of the ‘first great quintet’ albums - Miles + John Coltrane (sax) + Red Garland (piano) + Paul Chambers (bass) + Philly Joe Jones (drums) - and also the safest. Garland/Chambers/Jones lays the finest sound within 20 seconds (of “Just Squeeze Me”), and the album’s best parts tend to be intros — usually Garland and rhythm, though the full-band “Theme” opens on top of the world. Few solos distinguish themselves; Coltrane’s finding footing, ditto engineer Rudy Van Gelder, who’d quickly master an ‘open-room’ intimacy. (You can hear a dog barking on “There Is No Greater Love”, and the problem is that the listener has enough leverage to note it.) All told, it’s very dinner-table; even the three faster numbers - “How Am I to Know?”, “The Theme”, and “S’posin” (which features a sublime two-color lightbulb-flickering from Miles around 1:15) - are rather soft. Miles’ reinventions of specifically light-pop (even kitschy) pseudo-standards would become an integral part of his legacy; still, I swear Chambers plays so blonkily in the back half of “Just Squeeze Me” because he knows they should’ve squelched the take and upped the tempo. Also (and I can’t believe I’m saying this): too much mute!

Last album with Teo Macero, Miles’ George Martin. Miles is far from top form, barely even middle form; his mind’s definitely elsewhere on the bluesy ballad “It Gets Better” — a shame, since the rest of the band get a nifty spare-streets neo-noir soundstage thing going (under the illusion of studio echo). The 19-minute title track is more successful at the same thing - it’s the Miles Davis track most fit for a vaporwave playlist - and “Speak”, despite hideous keyboard blares that threaten to take over, has a mad face-melting bump under its main hook — really catchy! John Scofield appears on guitar there instead of other guy Mike Stern, which is good: Stern is all too close to Joe Satriani, and can’t fill the charge required toward the end of the overlong opener, “Come Get It”. Some of this album sorta-vaguely reminds me of the stuff Miles’ old philosophical rival Ornette Coleman was doing around this same time...except that Ornette had better tunes! Skip the last two tracks outright; “U ‘n’ I” is incredibly dopey, a misfiled jingle, and “Star on Cicely” is straight filler. But download “Speak” and the title track.

A loose, bluesy live one: five long tracks, plus one shortened version. Glaring drawbacks abound. Mike Stern is the most ‘80s rock of all Miles’ guitarists, alternating moment to moment from electrifying pleasure-sprints to trite bar-bound AOR-metal tappery during the longer “Jean Pierre” (mostly triumphant) and the agitated “Fast Track” (not so much). The sax only leaves an impression toward the end of “Jean Pierre”, with tempests around it, and Mino Cinélu really wants us to know he found a splash cymbal. But this “Back Seat Betty”, and especially the 20-minute “My Man’s Gone Now” variations, are superb, and Miles solos lyrically, consistently, for the first album in a decade. Man With the Horn’s studio “Back Seat Betty” was antiseptic; this one starts like…proto-neosoul, an electrified-yet-idiophonic texture, sparking upward right before your ears without announcing its progress until you’re already aflame. “My Man’s Gone Now” feels like premonitions emerging from smog: seemingly contented, but with such jitters surfacing as to fall in and out of strut and finally shaking loose into a funky dance. Ignore “Kix”, and stop “Fast Track” after two minutes — but otherwise, ‘Smile for Miles!’

The first quintet cut four final Prestige albums over two days, May/October 1956: Cookin’, Relaxin’, Workin’, and Steamin’. Steamin’ - last of the stagger, culled mostly from the less-inspired May session - feels tired within that Verbin’ Quadrilogy, but it’s only Miles and Red Garland who feel tapped. Philly Joe Jones gets his longest-ever drum solo, in a flustered-peacock version of “Salt Peanuts” (a three-minute solo that’s only one too long, astonishing for drums this side of Eisenhower); Coltrane brings two of his best solos in the quadrilogy with “Surrey With the Fringe On Top” (though I miss Hammerstein’s lyrics) and “Diane” (a gumball curio, waltzing the porch with white sheets on the air); Paul Chambers, in an otherwise tossed-off version of Monk’s “Well, You Needn’t”, bows a dazzling solo compressing a TV color-splat into one zippy cartoon line. Bummer that so much falls to the tired twosome: Garland often crosses his border between sunny tingle and vapid tinkle, and even Miles’ “Surrey” opening is a highlight more for Richard Rodgers’ exalted melody than for anything Miles does with it. The two soft ballads are okay for an afternoon nap, but you will fall asleep.

Recorded in Osaka a few hours after Agharta’s afternoon, but less engaged even though bassist Michael Henderson (‘the missing link between Larry Graham and Bootsy Collins’ — Simon Reynolds), guitarist Pete Cosey (writhing!), and reed man Sonny Fortune (Miles’ last important sax player) still carry the day. It’s just two 45-minute tracks, playing like all of Miles’ ‘70s doubles as a series of interrupted grooves. The first, “Zimbabwe”, works up a menacing sway within 10 minutes, then drops it and spazzes-out; it’s interesting to hear the infamously clobbering drums from “Rated X” (on Get Up With It) rendered almost digestible there...but the clobbering was more vivid, and “Zimbabwe” sags after the band rush and clutter a great bass groove (derived from Bitches Brew’s “Spanish Key”) that you should get from “Moja” on Dark Magus. Ears perk up at 29:30, though, when Henderson and Cosey bring in Funkadelic’s “Hit It and Quit It” riff (and then wind down into some nice faunal atmospherica.) Second track “Gondwana” overburdens the flute and has a worthless second quarter…but Cosey percolates the third, and there are some bizarro feedback effects in the last three minutes that are worth a curiosity-listen.

This is the speedy half of the same night that gave us My Funny Valentine’s intimate balladry. George Coleman (sax), Herbie Hancock (piano), Ron Carter (bass) and Tony Williams (drums) bring plenty of juice, with the Memphis-bluesy Coleman doing probably his best playing ever — even though he’s about to be replaced by Wayne Shorter to form the ‘second great quintet.’ It’s hard not to measure this one up against Miles Davis In Europe, the other ‘fast’ album from this same lineup; this one’s very fast, and basically I think Herbie soloing this fast tended toward empty scribbling. And Miles…well: sometimes, Miles Davis could dramatically constrict and intensify his enormous melodic gifts. And sometimes, he blustered through great songs with a smashing band behind him, brashly flubby feating more than searching or entertaining — an impression In Europe never gives off. This “So What” is a treat - especially the ending - but “Walkin’” never wows like Europe’s (or the earlier version At Carnegie), nor does “Joshua”. And “Four”, despite Tony’s clattering vigor, is just plain rushed! This album’s very quick, full of flubs, almost ‘light’ in its way — quite enjoyable. And as far as live Miles goes, lower-priority.

Four side-long pieces of coke-pad mood music, spanning lineups from 1969 to 1972. This is where Teo Macero really has to start pulling weight on the production front, sculpting meandering jams into coherent compositions. Big Fun’s rewards are highly sporadic, even simplistic, and come at the expense of a lot of time: in “Great Expectations”, the color-blending of sitar and keyboards feels like an ominous roiling from the harbor depths, but it only sustains imagery for about four minutes, and not until 21:30-25:00 - magically percolating and optimistic! - does the track get it up again. “Lonely Fire” takes 12 minutes to do anything, barely getting off the ground, and I advise skipping the static “Ife” altogether (even if the drums do get bangin’ in the middle). More and better ideas arrive on Miles-Macero’s other 1974 double-LP, Get Up With It, which is of similarly mixed quality yet feels more like an album; its sounds weigh more. Still, “Go Ahead John” makes up for a lot, patiently panning around an urban intersection of troubled and busying energy — Night, Open City. (And “Recollections” joins “Guinnevere” as the prettiest bonus track of Miles’ electric era.)

Miles was on Blue Note and Prestige until 1956, with Prestige staggering their haul through 1961. This was his first album for Columbia, where he’d remain for 30 years. (His last few were for Daffy Duck.) It’s also the beginning of Miles as image, his star in such matinee ascendance that he was afforded leverage not formerly permitted to an outwardly dark dark-skinned musician. Because of the cover, and the implied promise of nocturnal misterioso (actually only fully present in the opener), this tends to be many’s first pre-Kind of Blue Miles — and I wish it wasn’t, because they’d get further elsewhere. Here’s where the mute becomes Miles’s Thing, shading “‘Round Midnight” peerlessly: never before or again would he best Monk at one of Monk’s own compositions. (Gil Evans’ assistance shouldn’t be overlooked.) Everything thereon, including all three bonus tracks (“Little Melonae” particularly fetching) goes down nicely...but until the band grab hold 1:02 into “Dear Old Stockholm”, never stirringly. Red Garland’s piano, so crisp on Prestige, is under-miked; Cole Porter’s pleasures are significantly (though obviously far from fatally) diminished with a loss of lyrics, and Porter wrote better tunes than Miles’ beloved “All of You”.

If you ignore that “Black Satin” is only five minutes out of 50...ignore that one of the all-time album openings (it just starts, hurling us onto a street swarming with lurid particle movement) is spinning its wheels by 4:00...ignore the derivative second side altogether...then yeah, sure, masterpiece. It’s all rhythmic color: insectival, a wriggling hive. As on Live-Evil, Miles plays through a wah-wah pedal, blurring trumpet with keyboard with guitar even before all the layers of tabla, sleigh bells, sitar, and organ (that Miles can’t play). “Black Satin” really is a stunning piece of acid-funk, though, with one of the eeriest, most bizarrely catchy ‘whistle-round-the-corner’ melodic fragments ever waxed. Lester Bangs: ‘what it is about is what we are becoming: post-human and, concomitantly, technology-obsessed. This is the poison whirring through the wiring of a supersociety which has become a cage, what Max Weber prophesied when he wrote before the First World War of a popular “embracing…mechanized petrifaction, embellishing a sort of convulsive self-importance. [...] “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved.”’

Early proto-hard bop session from 1951, originally issued as the 10-inch ‘albums’ The New Sound and Blue Period, with drums from Art Blakey and saxes from Sonny Rollins and Jackie McLean (wonderful in his debut session). It’s poorly recorded: too much dead murky space in the air. Walter Bishop and Tommy Potter (piano and bass) leave no impression beyond Bishop’s “My Old Flame” intro (a CD bonus), and Rollins has an unpleasantly squeaky reed on the great Harold Arlen’s “It’s Only a Paper Moon”, which is a shame because everyone else delights in that melody. (Rollins seems to be having reed troubles elsewhere, too.) So, this ain’t quite as good as its lineup suggests. But that only means that it’s better than most music. “Bluing” is a fiiiine mellow, Blakey snaps in “Denial” (though too dim), “Out of the Blue” has McLean quoting “A Night in Tunisia”, and despite punchy, earwormy heads - McLean’s title track and Miles’ “Out of the Blue” especially - and mostly-allegretto tempos, the whole thing has a vaguely…opiate slackness to it — and hey, whaddya know: everyone was stoned! The writing falls down, but these are very happy recordings.

The last release of his lifetime, cut in 1985 Copenhagen with composer/arranger Palle Mikkelborg and an electrified horn/reed orchestra, and his best ‘80s album. But for God’s sake, program the thing! There’s some truly intoxicating deep-night atmospherica...shoved up against some of the splattiest mid-‘80s synth hellishness you’ll ever hear. The blaring electronics sound like garbage on “Intro” (seeps-in like Thief, then slaps us with Beverly Hills Cop II), “Orange”, “Red” (cut to ‘John Carpenter action movie’ essentials as “Electric Red”), and “Indigo”. Stick to the other six colors, though, for some foggy neo-noir soundscapery: often foreboding, sometimes lovely, perfect for a twilit highway or a scorched-earth city smog in witching hours. Prophesying the chilly European ambient-techno-jazz of the ‘90s (I bet the KLF studied “Green”’s crickety bass and choral-synth mixture), it’s not just Miles’ achievement - “Yellow” blends oboe, harp, and Joe Zawinul’s “In a Silent Way” drone before tumbling undersea - but he solos beautifully: “White” starts with a wistful doodle for the ages, then gets anxious; “Blue” falls back into the swimming pool for a moment or maybe just forever (if that music box is any indication).

The most abstract of the six ‘second great quintet’ albums, and Miles should’ve taken Eric Dolphy more seriously. It came after a longer-than-usual break, and each track was recorded with a bold approach: Miles would take the first solo, and would either stop the take quickly if he wasn’t satisfied, or else keep the track going and use that take no matter what. This has drawbacks on the faster cuts: Wayne Shorter breaks ground as a writer - “Footprints” is one of his major compositions, an all-timer of a bass line within an ever-shifting organism, tweaked and embellished throughout his career - but “Orbits” and “Dolores” are spazzy — not texturally adventurous (like Shorter’s own All Seeing Eye the previous year), and not viscerally intense enough to compensate. (“Orbits” does have a memorably shifty ‘darkening suspicion’ figure at the end of its melodic line, which each member builds their solo from — Herbie not fast enough.) “Circle”, though, is one of the quintet’s most beautiful recordings and features Herbie Hancock’s best solo ever, equally elusive and ravishing — and as glimmering as he is, the sax entrance (2:28) is my favorite Wayne Shorter ‘moment’ (and brings Coltrane’s “Welcome” to mind).

Dark horse of the ‘60s albums. Title befits music: it feels like being stirred in a cauldron. Sometimes boringly un-swinging, sometimes busy without going anywhere, it’s one of those 1967 Outliers: conflicted on the tides; aberrant of the era while accidentally marking the era from a vantage of...mystic strangeness. It even ends with a novelty, 1962’s “Nothing Like You”, which features the first singing on a Miles LP. (The singer? Who else but the spicily contemporaneous Bob Dorough?!?) “Prince of Darkness” has an unusually catchy melody line; “Masqualero”’s dispersing turbulence (like “Eighty-One” that can’t snap) brings a finishing-each-other’s-mutterings quality that gets Ron and Herbie buzzing. The standout is sans Miles, Tony’s first writing credit: the mysterious, poky ballad “Pee Wee”, which Wayne and Herbie shape. Miles takes zero writing credits (a first since 1960), overburdening Wayne: “Limbo” only catches when Herbie goes searching; “Vonetta” plays fine, but I never remember a damn thing about it. Sorcerer interests me more than Miles Smiles: side two is pettifogging, and “Circle” and “Footprints” are better than anything here, but this has no ‘behind glass’ quality; it feels like warm bodies, beads of sweat, murmurs clustering.

A holding-ground ballads album, sleepy but delightful, and it ‘pops’ better than Someday My Prince Will Come (when it needs to). Half the tracks were recorded in L.A. with future Joni Mitchell/Steely Dan/Tom Waits collaborator Victor Feldman on piano — a punchy melodist who definitely picks up the long dozing-off version of “Basin Street Blues” toward its end. But the prizes are the ones recorded in NYC with most of the second quintet (George Coleman still in the Wayne Shorter sax role): the title track is simply one of the catchiest things on a Miles album (and one of Ron Carter’s most impressive endurances); “So Near, So Far” buzzes with Tony Williams-Herbie Hancock interplay, even if Miles almost loses it at several points (the alternate version features a sublime piano intro); and “Joshua” (Feldman’s “So What”). Miles is tired and over-miked on the L.A. sessions, and he could've gone a bit further out on the title track; he lingers in register. But skip the lax “Baby Won’t You Please Come Home” and you’ve got a heavenly teatime, literally bicoastal, swaying from mellow L.A. summer to peppy New York spring.

The opener, Rodgers and Hart’s “It Never Entered My Mind”, does feel like dinner-tinkle devolvement of “My Funny Valentine”…but it’s oh-so irresistibly pretty. Red Garland’s piano is a leaf being puffed through the streets of a town where everyone fell asleep years ago, and the squeaks at the end are magic. (I can see how Garland quoting “Country Gardens” might go too far for some, though; it’s too far for me.) This “Four” is faster and longer than the one with Art Blakey and Horace Silver, but they’re tickling hotcakes here, and this “Half Nelson” lacks standout solos (outside Philly Joe Jones’ drums) but catches quick. Again it’s fun to hear Coltrane trying to find purchase, or withstand it: he really swings an evening on “Trane’s Blues”. Toward the end of the solos in Dave Brubeck’s “In Your Own Sweet Way”, Coltrane and the rhythm section bring a touch of the reds and tumble — enough that it sounds kinda weird when Miles comes back all neat and shiny. “The Theme” is some charmingly mellowed-out 8PM television music (take #2’s where you wanna be, for Jones); “Ahmad’s Blues” is the same slinkier.

A re-scrambled 10-inch, plus “I’ll Remember April” tacked to the front. As with the 10”, this is interesting for being divided (more roughly in this case, and flipped) by Miles immediately pre- and post-heroin addiction (emphasis on ‘addiction’): one side junk, one side no-junk. As compiled, Blue Haze peaks way-high way-early with its first three tracks — all post-junk. “April” and “Old Devil Moon” are juiced with breeze, marvelous recordings, and though this original “Four” sounds practically genteel compared to the firecrackers of the ‘60s, here you can relish the melody. Through all three sessions, there were titans on deck: Art Blakey (“Moon”!), Horace Silver (“April”!), Max Roach, Charles Mingus, Percy Heath the only constant and “April” the only track with a second horn (brilliant alto sax yeoman Davey Schildrkaut). The junk tracks are Collectors’ Items: Miles loses footing quickly on “Miles Ahead” (not to be confused with the astonishing later composition of the same name), and “Tune Up” doesn’t land. But Benny Carter’s always-charming “When Lights Are Low” has a blissful John Lewis piano intro, and tracks 1-3 are great enough for this to outrank many more-consistently-very-good records.

Miles at his gentlest. This was an uneasy time for him as a leader, faced with a burgeoning avant-garde and the fact that many former sidemen (Coltrane, Silver, Adderley, Rollins) were heading more coherent bands and arguably making better music. Monk and Mingus were still charting paths; Miles seemed unsure whether to adjust to Camelot or linger beyond it. Miles is too airy and reluctant on “Old Folks” (Hank Mobley’s simplistic, but he livens it up), and “Pfrancing” is forced cheer with a bad lip, but the title track (from Snow White!) is resplendent. Sure, praise Coltrane, who there and on the flamenco-waltz “Teo” (going as far-out as a 1961 make-out solo could go) makes his last appearances with Miles. (Ditto Philly Joe Jones on the superb bonus track “Blues No. 2”.) But pianist Wynton Kelly is the MVP: it’s his pedals that deepen “Drad Dog” and color “I Thought About You”; it’s his entrance in the album’s first 40 seconds that lets the record ‘open up’ as something humble-sensuous rather than tired-confused. (Kelly had an easy, shoestring-kite sense about him; check his own 1958 “Strong Man”.)

Miles goes electric, officially: keyboards and bass on his own “Stuff”, plus young George Benson on guitar in Wayne Shorter’s meandering “Paraphernalia”. Basically I don’t think Miles was ever meant to go anywhere near the sound of a clean electric guitar - not to mention that Benson’s a good-not-great player at best - and the album doesn’t quite live up to its cover. But it’s zesty kitchen music, the ‘soul-jazziest’ of all Miles Davis albums. “Stuff”, a stepping stone to In a Silent Way, is quite special, a signal early fusion track that sustains its simmer for all 17 minutes (really): Miles and Wayne play in unison for a long spell, and Herbie Hancock adjusts swimmingly to his speckling new Rhodes — especially toward the end, before Tony Williams gets rowdy in the last three minutes. Tony’s heavier than ever throughout the album, filling most of the space in his own “Black Comedy”, and Wayne does some of his finest studio improv on the barn-y rough-and-tumble grooviness of “Country Son”, which along with “Stuff” is the essential music here. And check out the 27-minute “Circle in the Round”, from these sessions, for proto-Can!

Symbolic enough that many people still rank it toward the top — of any list. It’s a nonet recording, brass-heavy (trombone! French horn! tuba!), with many Gods afoot. (Gerry Mulligan! Max Roach! Lee Konitz! J.J. Johnson! Kenny Clarke! Al Haig!) 11 short tracks, recorded 1949-50 after Miles left Charlie Parker, most released as singles but - crucial to the legacy - LP-coded in 1957. Good vibes abound, but while I wouldn’t go as far as Stanley Crouch in calling these tracks ‘primers for television writing,’ there’s definitely some received wisdom hereabouts. There’s a cushily un-bluesy ‘light’ sheen; the solos leave few clear voicings; “Godchild” still escapes me. Nearly every single track peaks with its first dozen bars...it’s just that those dozens are some of the most glorious sounds of their epoch. (Vivaldi as jazz!) Sustaining best beyond ~20 seconds are “Move” (Konitz and Roach charging great big hope!), “Moon Dreams” (akin to slow, relaxed wartime big-band swing), and “Boplicity”; Gil Evans arranges the latter two - he of the cloudy harmonic drift, later a key Davis collaborator - and Evans knew more about all that lofty impressionistic polyphony than Mulligan (who wasn’t much of a writer).

For many, his Last Great Album - indubitably his last great album cover(s) - but what’s fascinating is that the masterstrokes aren’t Miles’. The band lords over the leader: they’re acclimatizing to this particular pivot-point, at disco’s first blush — the intermingling of organic groove and ‘post-human’ techno. It’s Miles’ failure, his dejection, that forces the music to take shape into something else; like a train roaring into focus while someone walks away wounded and angry — seeing both, at once. For the first 11 minutes, it's just a heavy churn, less interrupted than the subsidiary Pangaea (recorded later the same Osaka evening). But guitarist Pete Cosey and bassist Michael Henderson push, and by the time Henderson’s slapping, 22 minutes in - scenery leveling-out and shrapneling back - it’s frothed to a killer funk, stirring Sonny Fortune to return way better on soprano than he was on alto 15 minutes earlier. (This “Maiysha” bests the studio version because Fortune gets more room for some of the loveliest jazz flute I’ve ever heard.) The second disc starts dumb-dinosaur, but ends in sorrow — a true bummer comedown. Still, Agharta is a safe entry point into Miles for your average funk or rock fan.

So funky-proggy-rocky, it could’ve been Default Gateway if it were shorter. Four long, four short; skip the longest of both (“Inamorata” + bullshit narration, and “Medley”). Neither “Sivad” nor “What I Say” would’ve lost anything at 10:00 (former should’ve faded with the yelping; latter has a domino dispersal once John McLaughlin starts wheedling: Gary Bartz’s jester-flute, Keith Jarrett’s wedding-clonk, all tailing into drum solos), and “Funky Tonk” is just “What I Say” with vaguer feeling. Jack DeJohnette has early-onset bishbash; some sax is late-night-celebrity-interview. But this is where Miles makes a coloristic breakthrough: playing trumpet through a wah-wah pedal, so that it becomes difficult to distinguish horn from guitar from keyboard. “Sivad” leads with a bobbing Michael Henderson bass groove, then slows to a ‘waking city’ later richened (and spliced less crudely) as Get Up With It’s “Honky Tonk”; “What I Say” is funky kosmische musik: Jarrett can be a snooze or an irritant, but there with Henderson he bubbles with pleasure! The three shortest tracks are eerie sirens, “Little Church” the Miles most fit for Halloween: weird, uncanny harmonic valleys of human and post-human whistle, incrementally hesitating or breaking.

Third of the three Columbia collaborations with arranger Gil Evans. All three albums are important crossovers; true noble bridgings of the jazz-classical divide. Given that the famous “Adagio” from Joaquín Rodrigo’s Concierto de Aranjuez (which, it should be noted, was sort of old-school even when written in 1939) is the closest a lot of people ever get to either classical or jazz music, it’s tempting to push back on this album’s high standing. And I do, a bit: it’s under-rehearsed; it’s a bit pastel; the two shortest tracks might secretly be the best; the orchestra’s quickness-to-blare sometimes verges on corny; the closing “Solea” is far too long for Miles’ scant ideas. But the album is absolutely drunk with yearning, perfect for a falling summer, and a martial quality lurks just under the skim. My favorite part of the “Adagio” is actually the first minute, where castanets and bleeping harp imitate the gently spinning wheels of a bicycle. I just wish listeners would get inspired enough to progress to, say, Manuel de Falla's Siete canciones populares españolas, or (even better) Heitor Villa-Lobos’s Bachianas Brasileiras. (Not Spain, I know. But you get my point.)

The last entirely-acoustic Miles Davis album, recorded in the Summer of Love mere weeks after Sorcerer (and released in short order as well). It’s less turbulent than Sorcerer, but just as anticipatory: everything is rising, the potions are coming. Nefertiti isn’t just ‘sexy’ (as most of Miles’ music is) but sexual: libidinal juices in varying states of agitation. Once again, Miles takes no writing credits, but Wayne Shorter brings his finest batch yet: three of six tracks, all three the standouts. His openers (“Nefertiti” and “Fall”) rise and recede with such rich harmonic tension that they truly do feel like tides: “Nefertiti”, its wind mounting over one beguiling melody line (which gets better the more it repeats); Tony Williams in “Fall”, ‘leaning forward through time’ (and into Ron Carter’s only studio bass solo with Miles). And Herbie’s in the cosmic zone; he and the rhythm section really are painting the spaces between the tunes. Tony’s “Hand Jive” never grabs me (in any take) - it sounds like “Orbits” without the mischief - and Herbie’s “Madness” gets a cool hang-out space but doodles out the window. “Riot” is a neat little bop, though, and Wayne’s “Pinocchio” makes for a magnificent cliffhanger.

What it has is atmosphere: a burbling cauldron, brewing-not-boiling; the unnatural extension of Sorcerer’s relatively optimistic pagan goddess. But…they so want it to boil (as early Mahavishnu Orchestra does): Miles, Chick, John, Wayne et al. wanna be rock stars, but they don’t wanna stop being jazz musicians, so they make sure not to change too much. Airier and more diffuse than its reputation suggests, it’s not a complex crossover; it ‘crossed-over’ by sprawling unthinkingly over ill-defined lines. None of the solos are individually interesting, save a mournful Miles toward the end of “Spanish Key”, and the many-particling percussion that replaces Tony Williams is too subtle (static) to gather potency within the stir. “Pharaoh’s Key” is evocative halfway, “Sanctuary” done better on either side of time. Intimidated? Start with disc 2, skipping “John McLaughlin”: first ”Spanish Key”, which cooks best, then “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down”. And then “Bitches Brew”, where the central idea - an organ chord, pinching irregularly-quicker before setting off a crashing dial-tone scatter - creates a ‘bracing’ effect as it recurs over 27 minutes (too long!). It’s a twitching, teeming place inside — but it stays indoors. His worst best album?

The recording quality is poor enough that people generally ignore this one in favor of the other ‘60s live albums. And indeed, Miles is sometimes shrill and there’s too much empty space. But the players - all of them - snap in the concert’s first half (through the “Someday My Prince Will Come” intro), and it’s a rare opportunity to hear Miles alternating between a small band and an orchestra within the same show: sometimes the Prince band (bluesy Hank Mobley on sax, pleasure-god Wynton Kelly on piano), sometimes the Gil Evans orchestra. Miles’ playing flags in the second half - he had to be talked back onstage after Max Roach disrupted the show in protest; long story - and beyond Ahmad Jamal’s “New Rhumba” the orchestrations don’t illuminate anything new. But the fast opening “So What” is my favorite live version (Kelly is a swingin’ fountain, there and on “Walkin’” especially), Mobley and drummer Jimmy Cobb give “Teo”’s flamenco waltz more punch than they did in studio (despite Coltrane’s absence), bassist Paul Chambers is beyond belief throughout, and it’s interesting to hear the “Concierto de Aranjuez” performed with a softer orchestration — and the bike-wheel at the beginning replicated!

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