 Miles Davis There's a famous philosophical riddle involving Theseus, the guy who slayed the Minotaur. In it, Theseus sets sail from Athens for his long voyage; along the way, the mighty ship requires continual repairs. As planks go bad, they are thrown overboard and new ones put in, until gradually all of the ship's original parts have been replaced. It's still a ship, for it is still sailing … but is it the same ship? Consider this in terms of music. The Beatles start out with John, Paul, George, and Pete, then replace Pete with Ringo. Then George is replaced by Eric Clapton. Hey, now things don't sound quite the same. Then Paul is replaced by Brian Wilson. What?! Then John is replaced by Sly Stone! Wait, what?!? Now Ringo, drinking heavily, is replaced by Hal Blaine! So now The Beatles are Sly, Brian, Eric, and Hal! Whoa man, do I want that album! Those who stare at a CD bay full of Miles Davis albums and don't know where to start would do well to realize that not only do the albums not all "sound the same," there are some really exciting differences between them depending on who's in the band. I'm particularly fascinated by Miles's 60s quintets, which began developing after John Coltrane left for a solo career produced by God. The plank-by-plank replacement of players in Miles's band shifted subtlely at first, but by the time he bailed on keeping a working quintet going, it had become quite a different ship. Follow me for a minute:
So in the span of a few years, you see Miles's quintet morph from a rather old-fashioned standards band to a ballsier, bluesier unit, then to a left-leaning, not-quite-avant band, and finally to an intense and challenging thing in a world of its own. And most people think things ended with the "last quintet" once Miles went "fusion" and started playing with huge electric bands. Ain't so. The "lost quintet" recorded no studio albums, but played live together for most of 1969 (after In a Silent Way), and they represent the true link between Miles's famously adventurous 60s studio recordings and the wildness of the early-70s live bands. Hancock, Carter, and Williams left, replaced by the looser and more radical Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack Dejohnette (all architects of the ECM sound, which carried the spirit of mid-60s Miles through the 70s, while Miles was wearing silky shirts and gigantic sunglasses). Seriously. Think about this band.
Were all the tables necessary? Should I just have done this in PowerPoint™? Ah, come on now, I'm excited. I just scored a recording by the Lost Quintet! This band jumped off the outer edge of what the Davis-Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams band was up to toward the end and cliff-dove straight into the murky waters of dissonant improvisation. Though still far from the out-and-out ear-splitting weirdness of, like ESP or Soul Jazz records of that era, this is as fucked up as Miles got while he still cared a whit about tonality. Beautiful horn lines still float above the band, but Corea and DeJohnette, in particular, crack the shit wide open. Gone is Herbie Hancock's soulful intellectualism, in favor of Corea's mischievous kitten-on-the-Rhodes playfulness – still smart, but not nearly as interested in letting you get your groove on. DeJohnette's restrained firepower is a different beast from Williams's pure balls-out carpetbombing – he's less cluttered, so the intensity is less like getting beaten up and more like getting viciously browbeaten. Er, in a good way, of course. It's the sound of a-little-too-late-at-night, a-few-too-many-stiff-whiskeys, when it takes all the effort you can manage just to maintain. Not everyone will be able to come along for the ride, but those who can keep up will gladly slip into the blissful, painful jazz K-hole that was this band's sound. Sony eventually will release some Lost Quintet shit for real, but when you're scouring mp3 blogs and torrent sites for new booty, should you run across anything from this band, you must score it. It's as essential a link in the chain as Homo Habilus is for understanding why Koko the Gorilla and your Uncle Dave have so much in common.
Review by La Fée |