Showing posts with label jazz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jazz. Show all posts

Tuesday 18 September 2012

Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue [Miles Davis Documentary]




I didn't really get Miles Davis till watching this documentary on his switch to the use of electronic instruments but now I understand him more fully as an uncompromising artist. I'm looking forward to digging around Youtube.

Couple of great quotes from this. One describes Miles style as a boxing methaphor, 'it's all about the final note, jab, jab, jab and then the final note'. The other was the origin of Jazz. Madams in Brothels would tell the piano player to Jazz it up if a customer was taking too long with a hooker upstairs. I think that's brilliant that and far less intrusive than sending one of the girls.

Miles Davis
Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue
British Isle of Wight Festival
August 29, 1970

By the time Miles Davis hit the stage at the British Isle of Wight Festival on August 29, '70, he was fomenting yet another stylistic leap forward, this time with a concept that revolved around extremely loose sketches that were mere starting points for collective improvisation in an aggressively electric context. Unfortunately, he had also alienated much of his core constituency, fans who were more accustomed to the acoustic Miles of the second quintet with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams, the Miles of Kind of Blue and Miles the interpreter of the Great American Songbook. If Bitches Brew was a calling card to a more dense, rock and funk-inflected Miles, the group that followed - saxophonist Gary Bartz, electric bassist Dave Holland, drummer Jack DeJohnette, percussionist Airto Moreira, electric pianist Chick Corea and organist Keith Jarrett - pushed the limits even further, with a thick and, at times, nearly unfathomable chaos that clearly challenged anyone who thought that Miles had "sold out."

Miles' evolving electric approach may have targeted the younger audience that he ultimately acquired, and the music may have relied more on danceable or hypnotic rhythms, but there was no sense of compromise in his music, as the concert footage from the Isle of Wight Festival on the new DVD, Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue clearly attests. This music is as free as anything Miles ever did. Sure, Holland, DeJohnette and Moreira would loosely maintain a semblance of rhythm, but Corea and Jarrett were layering ever-shifting dissonant harmonies for Miles and Bartz to expound upon, making this music challenging, and hardly a concession to anything.

The ever-irascible Stanley Crouch, in one of the many interviews that comprise the documentary surrounding performance footage on the DVD, asserts "That's bullshit, see that was all just part of the Miles Davis myth. Miles Davis was trying to make some money. Miles Davis was so great that to see him grovel before these commercial arenas by the end of his life was really very difficult. So people had to say 'no, no, no, he didn't sell out, he's moving ahead.'" It may be true that Miles was, on one level, motivated by more worldly concerns, but on the evidence of his performance at Isle of Wight it becomes clear that the music he would make from Bitches Brew through to the mid-'70s when he went into temporary retirement was more strongly compelled by a lifetime characteristic of never looking back, always looking forward.

By this time Miles was clearly influenced by artists including Jimi Hendrix and James Brown, but while his trumpet playing would ultimately emulate some of Hendrix's style, including his sharp, staccato attack and wah wah effect, he was still speaking the harmonic language that had been evolving since the second quintet of the mid-'60s. And as the rhythms became more jungle-like, the grooves more hypnotic, the harmonic backdrop more convoluted and outré, Miles would maintain and develop this harmonic conception.

All this points to Miles' 38-minute performance at Isle of Wight in '70, which is the centrepiece of the DVD, and exhumed footage that fans of Miles' electric period will find essential and naysayers may find illuminating. The interviews that surround the performance shed light on Miles the man, the musician, the innovator. Keith Jarrett, who self-admittedly hated the instrument he was playing, nevertheless asserts in one of his somewhat uncharacteristically congenial interview segments, that the Isle of Wight performance was truly a history lesson of jazz, that it had it all. And if one looks at the individual contributions of the players, it becomes clear that Jarrett's comment is spot on.

And while some of Miles' band members talk about how they were thrown into a "sink or swim" scenario with the use of electric instruments — Hancock and Corea in particular - they all, with the exception of Jarrett, not only found new possibilities with these instruments, but would ultimately go on to make them an integral part of what they would do with their own projects. Hancock demonstrates the richness and mystery of the Fender Rhodes electric piano, while Corea illustrates the odd dissonances that become possible when feeding it through a ring modulator.

Wednesday 27 July 2011

Winehouse


It's the Amy Winehouse clip that stands out from all the rest for me. I only fully realised why after reading Sasha Frere Jones in the New Yorker. Amy starts of unsteady, even unfamiliar with the song, and the backing singers are no better. She settles down quickly to a level of capable execution including seldom seen smiles punctuated with more familiar looks of incongruous zoned out distance. 

Just before the two minute mark Amy steps-up and takes the song somewhere different than previous renditions. She pulls a devil sign of the horns at that moment but let's not read too much into that because as if to prove she has another two gears above every other singer on the planet, Amy ends the song with a voice that works the crowd like a machete in 90's Rwanda. Extraordinary. All in all, about sixty seconds of visibly trying and the audience are instantly won over.

I've no idea why she was so unhappy. I don't think it was just the drink and drugs. Sometimes drink and drugs are brilliant if a person is deeply unhappy. Then they start to contribute to the unhappiness and nobody can remember what started where.

Wednesday 30 May 2007

Listen Discover Share

ScottMacleodLiddle

Hot off the press! CBS have purchased Last.fm. The makers of CSI and David Letterman have shelled out 280 million dollars for the London based music social networking site. I'm a big fan of Last.fm right back from when they were audioscrobbler which was a software addition that listened to what music I played on my computer and then made recommendations. Its become a lot more sophisticated since those days and the website has a bunch of features that are addictive.

My musical holy grail is to construct a radio station that plays random music that jumps from Classical to Intelligent Dance Music (IDM) a bit of Drum and Bass and some Jazz thrown in. I'm constantly feeding Last.fm music to get the balance right which keeps me occupied but there's some other stuff that I really like about this software and website that I want to share.

The killer app is thaty just listening to Last.fm allows me to listen to music that I like. The tastes I have described above are not an easy brief to meet and only Last.fm comes close to giving me that. I think its cool that I can give it a macro taste brief jumping from genre to genre or if I'm in the mood I can listen to early electronic pioneers or some other micro tagging channel. If I have to really concentrate and work hard only intelligent drum & bass works for me but there are a number of moods that Last.fm meets splendidly. The more I know it, the more demanding I get. Its nowhere near listening to a terrestrial frequency radio station where laissez faire listening slips in.

I have friends on Last.fm and I love to be able to find out a little more about them or discover new music if I'm in the mood. I also meet people who come and check me out, are connected to me or I discover completely new folk. Music is a really good indicator and while I can get on with all sorts, the 'taste-o-meter really lets me know if I connect on a deeper bobbing heads level. I have three DJ friends who keep me topped up on the freshest stuff possible. Each of them is a little different and its amazing how their personal radio stations have their own flavour despite us all having highly similar tastes. I have to point towards my chum DJ Stewart from Bangkok who plays electrofrequencies on Monday night at Bed Supperclub along with Saint Vincent. Both are the nicest of people and totally dedicated to their craft. It's not like they are on the other side of the world while I'm in London listening on Last.fm and sometimes I can tell if Stewart's going in a different musical direction like the retro action that seems to be going on recently. The other star is Audiossey from Germany who has a distinctive style that is beginning to approach my top 3 or 4 music DJ's and producers in the world. I met him through Last.fm. There's a few others too that I love including Sushigroove, Russell Davies, Zero Influencer and my latest classical music discovery Chalcemon.

Theres a bunch more too and I listen to them all when I feel that I need to get out of a rut and check out what other friends are into. I also think the recommendation radio station is great although I''m not sure if its based on what Last.fm recommends or if it factors in friends individual recommendations sent to me, which is another feature that I get lots of suggestions from. Either way theres also the 'loved' track function and the 'ban' track button too plus skip if a track seems to be going nowhere.

On top of all that there's a full array of social networking tools like music blogging, shoutouts, tagging, neighbourhood radio, loved tracks radio, history radio and more and this all applies also to other members of Last.fm on the network. I can even listen to friends specialist radio stations that they create. Then there's the widgets, the free downloads, the charts and music events based on my location. I could go on because the site in itself could probably keep me occupied a few hours a day just exploring, but I also like to keep an eye on a few of its competitors to see what's new but the thing I really like most about Last.fm is that it raises a philosphical question which is at the heart of marketing. It makes me ask myself when I know that I don't want to listen to stuff I know, and thus forces me to choose between if I want to listen to what I know I don't know, or if I prefer to listen to stuff I don't know I don't know. If this sounds familiar its another way of expressing Donald Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns which despite its obtuse Yogi Berra nature is in actual fact a stunning example of the business we're in. CBS have gotten this site for peanuts. Its easily worth more than myspace or Youtube in my opinion and I hope it stays that way. Thanks audioscrobbler/Last.fm for a few years of terrific music discovery and like all good radio for being a friend. And here's my latest playlist which is another function I've only just begun to play with.








And here's a hot presentation they did with more stats and facts.