I'd like to hear "Black Satin" right now. But that's no reason for rockbos to sing hosanna to the highest-rhythmic improvisations are hardly the equivalent of a big beat and don't guarantee a good one. A-īecause the tracks are very short, because Miles plays more organ than trumpet and not much of that, and because the improvisations are rhythmic rather than melodic-often on a theme from "It's Your Thing" that I'm not swearing the Isleys (much less Davis) invented-most jazzbos have thrown up their hands at this one. Two of them, "Selim" and "Nem Um Talvez," hark back to the late '50s. "Inamorata" wanders when Gary Bartz isn't making Coltrane noises and ends up with a recitation in which music is equated with "masculinity," but the three other long pieces are usually fascinating and often exciting: "Sivad," which begins fast and funky, then slows down drastically, and finally revs up again "Funky Tonk," Miles's most compelling rhythmic exploration to date and the gospel-tinged "What I Say." The four short pieces are more like impressionistic experiments. ![]() "Yesternow" (side two) is mellower, mood music for a vacation on the moon. On "Right Off" (i.e., side one) John McLaughlin begins by varying a rock riff I'll bet Miles wrote for him over Michael Henderson's blues bass line and Billy Cobham's impressively rockish pulse and then goes on to cut the leader, who's not exactly laying back himself. In which all the flash of Bitches Brew coalesces into one brilliant illumination. Every side does offer at least one treasures-the cool atmospherics that lead off Wednesday, the hard bop in extremis toward the end of Thursday, the way Miles blows sharply lyrical over Jack DeJohnette's rock march and Airto Moreira's jungle sci-fi for the last few minutes of Friday, all the activity surrounding Steve Grossman's solo on Saturday. Comprising four (apparently unedited) twenty-five-minute swatches entitled "Wednesday Miles," "Thursday Miles," etc., it noodles unforgivably-the electric keyboards of Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett on Wednesday provide one of the most aimless patches. Well, it was-and it was also pretty great. A-Īnd I thought Bitches Brew was unfocused. Enormously suggestive, and never less than enjoyable, but not quite compelling. That's probably why I don't return to it as I do to the quieter electric-meets-acoustic of In a Silent Way, although maybe it's just that this one rocks less-three different percussionists replace Tony Williams, whose steady pulse is put aside for the subtle shades of Latin and funk polyrhythm that never gather the requisite fervor. But it's not about any one thing-it's a brilliant wash of ideas, so many ideas that it leaves an unfocused impression. If this historic set is about any one thing it's electric-meets-acoustic: the theme of the twenty-seven-minute title side, in which Miles's horn combines with an electric instrument for a two-note motif that's suddenly resolved after a dozen repetitions in a single echoed trumpet blat, says it all. Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970) ***. ![]()
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