November 2001

From the Inside Out
Archive <& /articles/ftio_archive.tmp &>

By Chris M. Slawecki

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart, the center cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

-- William Butler Yeats, “The Second Coming,” p.1920

Miles Davis Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It’s About That Time (Columbia / Legacy) is the newest chapter in the musical legacy of the mercurial trumpet player and style maker Miles Davis: A previously unreleased recording of the Davis band known as “the lost Quintet” because it was never documented in the recording studio, in concert performance before a “young rock crowd” who most likely came to see the other bands with whom Davis shared this Fillmore East bill, The Steve Miller Blues Band and Neil Young & Crazy Horse.

A Period of Transition: A historical perspective is almost required to appreciate the musical violence of It’s About That Time. Think back to the previous year, to 1969. In both Rock and Jazz – and to a certain extent in Pop and R&B – freedom of expression in the forms of jams and freakouts are becoming coin of the realm. 1969 was the year of Pharoah Sanders’ Karma and of King Crimson’s In The Court of the Crimson King, the year of The Stooges’ first album and of Sly & The Family Stone’s Stand!. All around the world, there was a whole lot o’ yowling going on.

1969 was also the year of Woodstock. Just two days after the smoke cleared from those three days of peace and music and love, Davis and his band entered a Columbia recording studio. Their mission: To attempt to wrench Jazz from its roots in traditional ballads and blues and, in Davis’ clenched fist, to thrust it into the modern language and energy of rock. The fruit of these sessions was merely one of the most defiant and controversial albums in Jazz history, Bitches Brew. At the core of Davis’ band: the rhythm section of bassist Dave Holland and drummer Jack DeJohnette, percussionist Airto Moriera, Chick Corea exclusively on electric piano, and saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Shorter was the remaining thread from Davis’ great 1960s quintet of Shorter, drummer Tony Williams, bassist Ron Carter and pianist Herbie Hancock, with whom Davis recorded such landmark albums as Miles Smiles, Sorcerer, Nefertiti and Miles in the Sky.

With his Brew packaged and in the can, Davis hit the road with Corea, Shorter, Holland, DeJohnette, and Moriera. It’s About That Time features them exercising the material from Bitches Brew just one month before that album would be unleashed on the unsuspecting public. It provides the only recorded documentation of this particular band, which never made it into the studio as a standalone entity. It also documents the last performance as a member of Davis’ group by Shorter, who subsequently joined forces with composer/keyboardist Joe Zawinul to form Weather Report later this same year.

The Sound and Fury: Davis played two sets, each presented on their own CD.

It’s prescient that Davis began each set with a version of “Directions” because this band was definitely exploring uncharted territory. And the song provides a significant marker: The angular flow and tart blue tone of the melody to “Directions” ties back to bebop, but bebop almost sounds anachronistic within the electronic modernism that comprises the rest of these sets. They sound the musical equivalent of Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” a conquering of tradition, the overtaking of a new musical style by brute force.

In the first version of “Directions,” Holland’s bassline curves in a continuously repeating arc, like a mystical mantra that shapes its rhythmic pulse. Saxophone and electric piano really push the melodic/harmonic envelope in this first song/first set; the liner notes’ description of Corea’s contribution as “suggesting Stockhausen debating Sun Ra” is dead solid perfect. When “Directions” closes, Davis sounds a long solid brassy line, the clarion call to open “Spanish Key” into which the band smoothly downshifts like a magnificently integrated, single engine. As “Key” progresses, you can almost hear Davis’ sound, in fact the very nature of the music, transforming right before your ears: It’s strong and bright, grounded through bebop in the Armstrong tradition, yet it progressively grows more fractured, brittle and edgy, mutating eventually into a style that’s part of, but yet not quite within, the Jazz tradition.

Similarly, after the first movement of “It’s About That Time / The Theme,” Holland lays down a rocksteady funk bassline before it blossoms into a more exploratory groove. The middle sections of this piece – saxophone and then keyboards in three-ways with percussion and bass – often sound like a drowning man flailing for a lifeline. These sections may represent the growing pains necessary to advance this fledgling jazz-rock musical fusion, but they can extract from the listener a sometimes difficult toll.

Compared to the second set, Davis’ first set almost represents a false start. The songs in this second set, after the requisite “Directions,” find stronger footing in their grooves, particularly in the blues and funk. If you can catch a glimpse of him through the thick, prismatic electric funk of “Miles Runs The Voodoo Down,” you’ll see Davis throw down a swinging blues that’s simply super b-a-d, boasting a rhythmic swagger that’s equal parts New Orleans and On The Corner funk.

DeJohnette and Holland sound their most unified as the rhythm section in “Bitches Brew,” pounding out then riveting down a funk-rock beat which echoes Jimi Hendrix’ “Machine Gun” while Davis spacewalks on trumpet (Coincidentally – or not – Hendrix recorded “Machine Gun” with bassist Billy Cox and heavy drummer Buddy Miles as his Band of Gypsies in a concert on this very same Fillmore East stage for the previous New Year’s Eve, 1969-’70). Shorter rarely sounded more like Coltrane alongside Davis than at points in the second set’s version of “Spanish Key,” and Corea lights up fireworks with Moriera right before Davis ends “It’s About That Time / Willie Nelson” – and this second set – by pretty much just blowing it up. Sometimes it sounds like the soloists, confronted with the extreme freedom of Davis’ new musical approach, simply try to do too much. But there is no denying the sheer power and audacity of these underlying grooves.

…The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?