Miles Davis - Live from the Montreal Jazz Festival
How bad were the 1980s in music? Not even jazz great Miles Davis could  escape the black hole. The decade that saw synthesizers and slick approaches  ruin pop music somehow caught the master trumpet player's ear and resulted in  one of Davis's poorest periods. Of course, Davis was lucky to even be alive  during the '80s, surviving sickness and drug abuse, and this hour-long  performance, shot during the 1985 Montreal Jazz Festival, shows a performer  looking happy just to be playing. Appearing thin and sickly, Davis and his six-piece fusion outfit run through six tunes, none coming close to the trumpet  player's past experimental achievements. Songs like "One Phone Call" are long,  metallic funk jams that nonetheless give Davis plenty of room to maneuver in  spirited solos, when the rhythm section and keyboards aren't drowning him out.  Davis also reinvents pop hits of the era--ballads like Michael Jackson's "Human  Nature" (fromThriller)  and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," but they come across more like soulless  "smooth jazz." Still, on all of the numbers, if you can block out everything  else and simply focus in on Davis's trumpet, the aging great possessed the  ability to mesmerize, even in his down years. Despite the lack of terrific music  material, this DVD is wonderfully packaged. The Milestones Biographical Time  Line is a great source to introduce beginners to Davis's legacy, while the  extensive liner notes on each individual song performed in Montreal are equally  impressive.--Dave McCoy