Miles Davis - "Bitches Brew Live"

Bitches Brew Live is a bit of a misnomer. It is not Miles Davis’ seminal fusion double album played live in its entirety. Davis departed for that great jam in the sky decades before that marketing gimmick grew in popularity. What Bitches Brew Live is are three previously unreleased performances from the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival (clocking in at 24:01) and Davis’ entire 1970 Isle of Wight set, previously only available from Amazon as part of The Complete Columbia Album Collection issued in 2010.

This collection documents the period when Davis was pivoting away from acoustic-based line-ups to electric-laced line-ups, but had yet to make the bold move of adding an electric guitarist to his live line-up. John McLaughlin might’ve joined him in the studio for the In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew sessions that produced Davis’ first two studio albums that featured guitar, but he’s not up there on these stages with Miles. (McLaughlin would never be a member of any of Davis’ touring bands.) In fact, the only thing that’s electric on the Newport stage is Chick Corea’s piano.

The quintet scheduled to appear at the 1969 Newport Jazz Festival is the infamous “Lost Quintet” comprised of Miles Davis, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, keyboardist Chick Corea, bassist Dave Holland, and drummer Jack DeJohnette. This quintet is infamous because they never made a studio album and few live recordings are known to exist, even in bootleg form. You won’t find the “Lost Quintet” here either, as Shorter apparently got lost in traffic and missed the gig.

So what do get is the even rarer “Lost Quartet” playing a tentative ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ (“the first ever professionally recorded live version” according to the liner notes), a shortened ‘Sanctuary’ (as it was really composer Shorter’s vehicle), and a frantic ‘It’s About That Time’. The first two numbers were not yet recorded as the sessions for ‘Sanctuary’ took place on August 20, 1969 and ‘Miles Runs The Voodoo Down’ on August 19, 1969, a few days after the Woodstock festival passed into legend. Despite the apprehension and the absent saxophonist, I prefer the two numbers from what would become Bitches Brew to that of ‘It’s About That Time” released in 1968. Miles’ groups had a tendency to speed up older numbers with even moderate tempos and that’s what happens at Newport as “It’s About That Time’ is aurally unrecognizable. The only attractive thing about ‘It’s About That Time’ is drummer DeJohnette’s dynamic performance. I think it’s fair to say that even for a line-up of stellar musicians, it was difficult to suddenly operate as a quartet and Shorter’s absence affects the performance.

,p> Almost 14 months later we find Miles on the other side of the Atlantic at the Isle of Wight, sandwiched between Tiny Tim and Ten Years After. (Also on the bill that date were Emerson Lake and Palmer; The Doors; The Who; and Sly & The Family Stone. I’d like to see Bonnaroo top that bill.) Miles’ line-up has morphed into a septet: Shorter is replaced by Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett adds more electricity on organ as does Holland who has now taken up an electric bass guitar instead of the acoustic at Newport. The ever inventive Airto Moreira is present on percussion.

This performance was originally issued on vinyl as part of The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies, a triple album that Columbia Records was probably hoping would replicate the sales success of the Woodstock soundtrack released the previous yea, and contained performances culled from the Second Annual Atlanta Pop Festival as well Isle of Wight This album is worth seeking for Ten Years After’s ‘I Can’t Keep From Cryin’ Sometimes’, an Al Kooper composition that clocks in at 19:13, their best recording ever. It also is only place where you’ll get to hear Miles’ producer Teo Macero produce Jimi Hendrix.

Macero was one Columbia’s house producers – and an unsung hero of 20th century music - and he produced all of the performances on The First Great Rock Festivals of the Seventies, including Miles’ ‘Call It Anythin’’, a song you won’t hear on Bitches Brew Live because it is a cut and spliced abstract production of Miles Davis’ set at Isle of Wight. Way back when, this track was my introduction to Miles and his “New Directions in Music” and I spent many an afternoon fingering my way through record bins looking for the studio version. It was only much later that I realized that Macero must’ve called Miles up one day and when asked what to call the edited performance, Miles must’ve rasped into the phone “Call it anythin’ Teo!” and hung up. That’s how I like to imagine it anyway.

What needs to be presented before attempting a description of the Isle of Wight performance is a little stage setting. The Newport Jazz Festival in 1969 was the only year that promoter George Wein allowed rock bands on the bill and Miles spent much of the festival listening to the likes of Led Zeppelin and Sly & The Family Stone. This is important because it partially explains the disparity of the two performances collected on Bitches Brew Live. At Newport Miles wanted his band to rock. By Isle of Wight he know how to make his band rock.

The set begins inauspiciously with Josef Zawinul’s ‘Directions’: seven men cramped in a car: none with the nerve to say they need a map. But running out of gas, they gather around the thumping, ominous, repetitive opening note of ‘Bitches Brew’ and find their way. Miles’ horn shrieks like an electric guitar: he sounds energized by the freedom of this new direction in music for him. The rhythm section imperceptivity gel suntil you feel the presence of the song’s snaky groove. The insidious structure makes it difficult to make it unrecognizable and serves as a better lead in to ‘It’s About That Time’ than ‘Sanctuary’ did at Newport. Airto’s contributions are particularly good; giving the song the percolation it’s missing at Newport. Miles plays few notes of ‘Sanctuary’ and then a propulsive version of ‘Spanish Key’ driven by Dave Holland playing his electric bass in the manner of Michael Henderson who would be Miles’ bassist for the remainder of his fusion period. A very Bitches Brew treatment of ‘The Theme’ ends the set.

Miles music of this period is particularly challenging, but bracing if you can dig it, if I may be permitted to use the vernacular of the period it came from. The closest comparisons are Jackson Pollack’s drip paintings. You either intuitively get it or you don’t. I’ve always loved Miles’ fusion period and consider it the fruition of all that came before. Other jazzmen took the concepts behind Kind Of Blue or E.S.P. and made remarkable work. Nobody surpassed Miles’ electric period of 1968-1975. No other musician has known what to do with that sound. And for that reason, the music Miles plays on Bitches Brew Live is comparable to that of My Bloody Valentine and Neutral Milk Hotel and Pere Ubu: an outpost on a musical frontier that subsequent generations of musicians have yet to venture beyond.