Wednesday, October 26, 2005

How do folks feel about 70's miles davis? It's taken me years of playing Bitches Brew over and over to really get my head around it and get really into it. The thing that strikes me as most outstanding about those albums--B's Brew, Silent Way, Live Evil, Big Fun, Live at the Filmore, etc--is how spooky they are. Miles plays these sparse, haunting melodies over his band, which is playing some kind of murkey, insistant pulse. The music borrows from rock, but it's much darker than any of the artists who influenced jazz fusion, and really much darker than what fusion became in the mid 70's.

Hey, check out the review of the new Louise Gluck book in Publishers Weekly. I don't know if I'm supposed to say, but I wrote it.

1 comment:

Matthew Thorburn said...

That's the period of Miles's music I haven't found my way into yet. I'm an early-mid-late 50s/early 60s Miles fan. But I need to sit down and give "BB" and the others of that period another listen. It's been years. Where's the best place to start, would you say? "Bitches Brew"?

On a different note, I'd be interested to read your take on, approach to, advice on book reviewing. I suspect others would too. It's an area I have an interest in, but little experience in... Just a thought if you ever find yourself in need of a blogging topic!