From: chuck@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Mark Andrew Hawling)
Subject: Re: Miles Davis 1970's output
Reply-To: chuck@spectrum.cs.unsw.oz.au (Mark Andrew Hawling)
Organization: none
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 06:39:30 GMT

>
>Chacun a son gout and all that, but I find it hard to get through a side of
>some of those records without wandering off and doing something else. The
>bands are largely collections of mis-matched individuals and Miles didn't
>seem to write anything for them to work around. The Shorter/Hancock/Carter &

Didn't you realize that Miles was mostly relying on improvisation. Not the type of play
the tunes header then solo as volume and intensity rises, then it quitens down and the next person solos to a frenzied intensity and then all join in for the header again. This
is frankly pretty ridiculous but still great music does get played this way. Miles was 
bored of this and saw it for what it was. His structures later were cyclical and open
with complete improvisation coming to the fore. Miles didn't realy write any of Agharta or Pangea ( though themes do appear from Jack Johnson and Maiysha) but just went 1 2 3 4 and
played. This is dangerous but wonderful to witness when it works and painful when it doesn't. His improvisations also weren't working on the techniques other players use to bring
them under some control. An obvious example would be Ornette Coleman who used harmolodics to keep it all together. Miles approached it differently. How he did I'm still not sure.

>Williams quintet did great things with standard & new material (Plugged
>Nickel & Filles de Kilimanjaro, to quote two examples at random). In both
>cases the structure was there, although it took me longer to latch on to what 
>happens on Filles. If I listen to "On the Corner" I can't really discern any
>structure. It starts, wanders about a bit and then stops (or fades). The bass
>players that Miles used between Dave Holland and Marcus Miller (excluding
>those two) seem like automata to me.

There often isn't any structure in the jazz sense which you want. You want that header to
feel nice and safe and to know the confines that the music is being played in. Here your
not that lucky. The music stands by itself. Check out Stockhausen or Cage to get some
of the concepts Miles was using beyond the land of header,solo,solo,header type jazz. This
lack of structure is what really makes it so great. The music doesn't start or end or
have a middle it just exists and what youre hearing is just a moment of it as if it has
been tapped. Indian music has a similiar approach and ideology. Miles' bass players between
then was a Motown bass player. Miles wanted a heavy, funky groove that didn't wallow in
rubato like most jazz (though this is cool too). All music has to have a foundation. Miles
chose funk because he liked James Brown. EVERYONE should like James Brown!. You
obviously don't. Funk related closely to the African rhythms he wanted in his bands at this time and was highly supportive for free improvisation that prevented it getting into the type of "noise" approach someone like Cecil Taylor might use (that is Miles opinion not
mine by the way!). Funk requires repeditive patterns and not excessive walking. Also
Miles could get a heavy rythmic foundation without having a highly limiting harmonic
foundation. If somebody is walking they usually are within a scale of at least six notes.
A funk vamp often will have as little as two or three notes. This allows for more open harmonic freedom.
>
>I can hear the waves of "Don't analyze, accept it" breaking at my door. And
>as for the guy who says that it's all the same 12 notes so what does it
>matter - it matters a lot. He makes sideswipes at jazz people who don't
>accept rock as a *serious* music (that's me, folks), and the jazz-type people
>that Miles had in the early 70's so something matters to him. To anyone who
>says "It's all music" one has to ask "But is it any good?". Musicians have
>some ideal of what is "good" or how could they try to be better? Miles had
>the additional and different curse of needing to change. Actually I think the
>70's were the period when his music changed least.
>
>On a related topic -
>

Hey you can analyze but you got to have the background knowledge to know how to analyse it. You go ahead and analyze it as much as you bloody well like but don't be of the opinion
that "Hey I dig Jazz, I know it all!". Jazz only covers a small amount of the total amount
of music you know. The 12 notes means were all working with the same medium. What we do
with it is up to the individual. This does lead to the question of is it good, what gives
you the right to think youre opinion is absolute. Presuming whether something is good
or not is difficult. It is fine to state opinions but it is better to have them re -assesed
by someone else so that it can broaden your scope. What is dangerous is saying that you
are right and not being prepared to change it when more information comes to hand. Being
able to understand music is about being able to decode it. Thing is that you need to know how to decode it! This requires education and knowledge. Hell I used to bag out reggae
and gamelan music years ago, I realize now that it is no good to bag out stuff because it
only displays ignorance. State opinions so that discussion can occur followed hopefully
by knowledge. So you go analyze Miles 70's music once you know how to. Go listen to
Hendrix, James Brown, Stockhausen, Muddy Waters, Slyand Family Stone, John Cage, African
Music, Indian Music and a bit of jazz and then you too should be able to have some idea of what Miles was on about. Unfortunately we all will probably only have some idea because
probably not even Miles really knew completely what he was doing or even whether it was 'good'.
>Why does everybody go on about Jimi Hendrix? Apart from innovation and the
>trick of dying young, he never seems to me to have any claim to fame. Like
>those Miles records of the 70's, it sounded crass to me then and sounds dated
>now. Personally, I'd recommend an Anton Webern Memorial Prize for Hendrix to
>commemorate inspiring so many dreadful imitators with so little to say.

Why bag someone out for being inspiring to other people. There are always many bad
immitators of any of the greats. So why do people go on about JH. There are several 
reasons. Firstly he was a hell of a musician ie able to create music that speaks. His
music was heartfelt and inspired and powerful. Listen to something like the solo on
Machine Gun from Band of Gypsys. That is a heavy statement that I really don't think
too many players could do because they wouldn't be able to seperate themselves from the
stigma of being correct within there certain chosen idiom. Secondly Hendrix came up with
a sound and vocabulary of usage of that sound that others had toyed with but never been
able to fully realize. This was a sound maybe only realized by people such as Varese with
his music concrete, maybe Coltrane at the end, and some of the blues acts such as Buddy
Guy. This is going beyound the idea of a distorted guitar and is more to do with the
concepts of the sheer size and richness of the sound (Glen Branca could probably explain
this nicely) and to do with using the instrument to create more than just notes that
relate to other notes and chords, but to do with the concepts of playing the sound. 

The idea that Hendrix was a guitarist with great technique is fairly dumb. He was good but
I'd say he had no better technique than people like Wes, or Django, or BB King, but he
was able to use a greater mixture of styles in his blend. So Hendrix style guitar often
consists of those Augmented 9th songs (eg Midnight, Purple Haze) as well as the 
beautiful clean guitar stuff such as Little Wing and Castles Made of Sand. The reason some
of it sounds dated is the only medium that alowed that much freedom was rock music. Jazz
obviously wouldn't and still doesn't because its way too snobby and closed minded. The
60's allowed people to hear music that would otherwise would never have been heard by the
larger audiences. An obvious example was Ravi Shankar (but you probably think indian music
is garbage as well so...). Jazz really doesn't allow as much freedom as it likes to think
it does. Frankly the most open musical form probably these days is heavy metal (not the popop metal on MTV stuff) where they can really get away with some ridiculous stuff. 

So listen to a lot of music ouside jazz because they all reflect on each other and
enhance understanding of each other. The more you listen the less you realize what is really going on and the more you have to listen too.

Mark