Bitches Brew Virgin No Mo!

[Teasing the Korean]

Well, believe it or not, with dozens and dozens of Miles Davis albums and a room full of LPs and CDs, I have never heard Bitches Brew all the way through, and I have barely heard it period.

The only time I ever heard Bitches Brew was when I would engage in illicit activities at my friend's place, circa 1980, when I was about 16. At that time, I had 3 Miles Davis albums, all of which I loved for different reasons: Round About Midnight, Kind of Blue, and In a Silent Way.

We would hear only one side of it at a time, sandwiched between other records. Even then, in my mind-altered state, I didn't think BB was anywhere near as great as "In a Silent Way."

Well, I picked up the 2-CD reissue with the bonus tracks, and while my tastes have changed significantly since the age of 16 - e.g. no more punk or garage - I stand by my original assessment and think "In a Silent Way" is many, many times better than BB, and broke a lot of the ground that BB gets credit for. I'll keep BB but I doubt I'll spin it any time soon.

The best track on the CD is the single edit of the frog track. I hope there is a longer version of it someplace.

Well, that's about it. Thanks for indulging Your Beloved TTK!

Edited January 6, 2011 by Teasing the Korean

[Big Beat Steve]

Speaking out against the "accepted wisdom" can never be wrong. Because what is disguised as "accepted wisdom" in the field of music in the end all boils to a matter of taste and hardly, really hardly ever is it justified to insist that one just "has to like" this or that music.

Actually I heard BB at about the same you heard it (at a time everybody seemed to claim that "jazz rock" was what "ALL jazz" was all about). Left me slightly underwhelmed (which to an extent certainly was due to the fact that while I had already progressed to Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus etc. I was not really smitten with that jazz-rock mishmash). I've been ready to reconsider since and was about to pick up a vinyl at a clearout sale at a local record store a while ago but the vinyl was so thrashed that I passed it up. Some other day, maybe ...

[JSngry]

Like it, love it, or remain unmoved by it, it takes longer to hear it than it does to listen to it, if you know what I mean.

There's a lot of music on there, very little of it particularly obvious...I'd give it more than one listen (or year) myself, but obviously YMMV.

[Chuck Nessa]

Been there done that. I have spent about 40 years with it. Not one of Miles' best, but a great influence.

[Teasing the Korean]

Is there a longer edit of the frog tune anyplace?

[jeffcrom]

Is there a longer edit of the frog tune anyplace?

The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions box set.

[Chuck Nessa]

We all want longer frogs.

[Teasing the Korean]

Is there a longer edit of the frog tune anyplace?

The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions box set.

It's on iTunes - Two different takes, a buck a throw, 20 minutes worth of music.

Edited January 6, 2011 by Teasing the Korean

[Bright Moments]

i agree (for once ) with TTK - i was underwhelmed by BB and still am. IMHO the best thing about BB is the album cover!

[Teasing the Korean]

i agree (for once ) with TTK - i was underwhelmed by BB and still am. IMHO the best thing about BB is the album cover!

That and the amazing frog track. Now get over to iTunes and download it!

[jeffcrom]

Just to throw in my two cents - when I first heard Bitches Brew (about five years after it was issued), I knew that there was something there, but I didn't know what it was. There were bits I liked, but only pieces. Over the years, I picked up more and more of what was going on. It only took me 15 or 20 years to come around to my current opinion, which is that it's brilliant.

I can totally understand how some listeners don't care for it. But if you hear anything there, keep listening.

[Chuck Nessa]

I got BB as a promo before it was issued. Still ringing in my ears was Miles ridiculing Eric Dolphy and some other stuff - I thought he was a creep. The music in the records made me reconsider Miles for the first time since I was introduced to his music in 1958. It took me a while to get over this and accept he was still a creep.

[jeffcrom]

I got BB as a promo before it was issued. Still ringing in my ears was Miles ridiculing Eric Dolphy and some other stuff - I thought he was a creep. The music in the records made me reconsider Miles for the first time since I was introduced to his music in 1958. It took me a while to get over this and accept he was still a creep.

Almost more than any other artist, I have to separate Miles the person from Miles the creator of incredible music. From what I've read and heard from musicians, "creep" doesn't begin to cover it. My theory is that everything that was good in Miles came out in his music, and apparently nowhere else.

[GA Russell]

I've never liked Bitches Brew. I like Bennie Maupin, but I've never like the bass clarinet on the album.

[JSngry]

Just to throw in my two cents - when I first heard Bitches Brew (about five years after it was issued), I knew that there was something there, but I didn't know what it was. There were bits I liked, but only pieces. Over the years, I picked up more and more of what was going on. It only took me 15 or 20 years to come around to my current opinion, which is that it's brilliant.

I can totally understand how some listeners don't care for it. But if you hear anything there, keep listening.

Pretty much my story...heard it first in the summer of 1971, I was just 15, and heard big swaths of tonal color, but no real specific muscic other than the most obvious. Tha shit is dense and layered, and recorded live but assembled methodically. I didn't begin to get it until I was 17 or 18, and didn't really start to hear it as actual specific music instead of a lot of cool jamming until my mid-20s.

Like I said, there's lot of music on that record. Be sure you know what you're hearing (or not yet hearing) before deciding how you like it or not. The interaction between all the keyboards, that's good for a few years just itself!

[Sundog]

The interaction between all the keyboards, that's good for a few years just itself!

That little bit quoted above reminds me of something you once said to the effect that with this period of Miles-- The Music Is In The Middle. That one simple statement always rang true with me, and helped in my understanding, appreciation, and ultimate enjoyment of this era of Miles' music.

[marcello]

Try listening to it with some LSD and headphones.

Just a thought.

[Jim Alfredson]

There's so much music in there it's overwhelming. I didn't get it at first. It took one night under headphones, listening for probably the 10th time in as many days for it to finally start revealing itself. Incredible stuff.

[jazzbo]

I first heard it about the same time as Jim, and was about a half year older. I had just come back from living in Africa and was in rural Ohio and hated what I heard on the radio. I heard this and Filles De Kiamanjaro and Miles Davis At Fillmore all about the same time and they just knocked me on my ass. Especially Bitches Brew. It had a wild mixture of blues and African sound and something totally different and the energy just has never left the music for me. It's definitely a desert island disc for me, and I have never tired of it, and find new joy in it year by year.

I love In A Silent WAy too. But it's no Bitches Brew.

[David Ayers]

Hm. If it takes 20/40 years to 'get' how comes it was a (kind of) hit?

If it normally got slated I'd be saying no no wait it's good, but...

[controversy]In part I find Miles a fairly cynical musician who is selling art music, rather than someone practicing art and on whom we are privileged to eavesdrop.[/controversy]

There again, Get Up With It, which was slated, I'd majorly defend for He Loved Him Madly and, I guess, for Calypso Frelimo. For whatever reason I find it more authentic than BB - maybe just more pared down and less obviously aspirational.

[Big Beat Steve]

Hm. If it takes 20/40 years to 'get' how comes it was a (kind of) hit?

If it normally got slated I'd be saying no no wait it's good, but...

[controversy]In part I find Miles a fairly cynical musician who is selling art music, rather than someone practicing art and on whom we are privileged to eavesdrop.[/controversy]

There again, Get Up With It, which was slated, I'd majorly defend for He Loved Him Madly and, I guess, for Calypso Frelimo. For whatever reason I find it more authentic than BB - maybe just more pared down and less obviously aspirational.

This is just why all this "mandatory listening" and "gotta have heard it" blurb is just bogus.

Of course BB must have clicked with lots of people which is why it acquired its cult status pretty fast (when I got into collecting in 1975 all this jazz rock and "Electric Miles" thing was oh so big everywhere and BB had been touted as a major work of art for some time). Now if - as you indicate - there are lots out there who say you GOT to allow yourself PLENTY of time to grasp it, then the obvious quesiton is:

WHAT FOR???

Either you grasp it at least to a moderate extent (so SOME more in-depth listening will reveal the full strength of the music to you) or a lot of the success of those times was just hype (because among those who made this record a hit there were LOTS who had been lulled into believing they "had to like it" in order to be part of the "in crowd" - but in fact only "pretended" having gotten the message) and so the record may not have been THAT overwhelming.

Or it - again - really is a matter of taste, not a matter of forced endless re-listening in order to WORK oneself into somehow grasping the music.

In which case there is no need to be ashamed in saying that BB (or any other allegedly "must listen" record) just doesn't cut it with you. Because - again - IMHO there is no such thing as "mandatory listening" that you have to do in order to pass a sort of "music appreciation test" of any given style of music.

You can like country music without being touched by Hank Williams, you can like swing music without being touched by Benny Goodman, you can like Classic Rock (i.e. Hard Rock as it used to be called in fact) without being touched by Deep Purple etc. It just is so ... because there is SO much more in EVERY style of music that one's personal preferences are just that ... personal, and certainly not to be dictated by what one is "supposed to appreciate in order to understand", even if these personal preferences contradict established thinking patterns.

Or is music listening (and HEARING) - which basically is a very personal experience - to be reduced to some sort of academic rites with preestablished curricula that you have to work off in order to have fulfilled your listening duties?

Edited January 6, 2011 by Big Beat Steve

[JSngry]

There's plenty of times when you can be grabbed by something without really grasping the details right away, or even knowing if you like it or not for sure. Unless you operate at the level of a chimp or something, delving into the details over time is not a bad thing, and might in some quarters be seen as a healthy thing. Then, you might find that you like it, love it, hate it, or...nothing - and you can back up your opinion with an awareness of the details.

On the other hand, there's always room for the Rate-A-Record approach to listening.

[Big Beat Steve]

There's plenty of times when you can be grabbed by something without really grasping the details right away, or even knowing if you like it or not for sure.

THAT'S THE POINT.

Like I said: If you are being grabbed by some recording and feel there is something there that strikes a chord with you though you have a feeling you do not (yet) grasp it in full, then OF COURSE do take your time to work your way into it.

But if you aren't even moved by that recording at this "starter's" level then why bother (for now) trying to force yourself into something just because somebody says this is a "must listen"?

Unfortunately there are those out there who value the concept of "essential listening" above all else. Falsely so IMHO.

I've stressed that point just because for all I have witnessed BB is one of those records that falls into that bracket (almost) whenever it is evoked. BB can stand on its own merits for those who see the merits and appreciate them but those who are unmoved have not missed anything either. Because ultimately it IS a matter of personal taste - legitimately so.

[JSngry]

There again, Get Up With It, which was slated, I'd majorly defend for He Loved Him Madly and, I guess, for Calypso Frelimo. For whatever reason I find it more authentic than BB - maybe just more pared down and less obviously aspirational.

"Rated X" alone makes that one a milestone, but...in comparing those two albums, you're comparing one made by a bunch of jazz musicians who were in the middle of questioning and actively redefining just what the hell that could mean with one made by a road band which for the most part really didn't give a damn about being "jazz musicians" but who were very focused on playing a very distinct & personal music that had next to nothing to do with the MilesMusic of just a few years before in terms of intent, content, and methodology.

I''ve said it before, etc., but to my way of thinking, the music of On The Corner thru Agarata/Pangea is in may ways the most personal & intricate music Miles ever made. It's also the densest, which means that you can hear the surface right away, but much less so the details. And at some point, you need to get to the details if you want to know the music.

[JSngry]

There's plenty of times when you can be grabbed by something without really grasping the details right away, or even knowing if you like it or not for sure.

THAT'S THE POINT.

Like I said: If you are being grabbed by some recording and feel there is something there that strikes a chord with you though you have a feeling you do not (yet) grasp it in full, then OF COURSE do take your time to work your way into it.

But if you aren't even moved by that recording at this "starter's" level then why bother (for now) trying to force yourself into something just because somebody says this is a "must listen"?

Unfortunately there are those out there who value the concept of "essential listening" above all else. Falsely so IMHO.

I've stressed that point just because for all I have witnessed BB is one of those records that falls into that bracket (almost) whenever it is evoked. BB can stand on its own merits for those who see the merits and appreciate them but those who are unmoved have not missed anything either. Because ultimately it IS a matter of personal taste - legitimately so.

Have you ever met a person, especailly a woman, who either left you unmoved upon first meeting, or even rubbed you the wrong way, but who over timed turned out to be a fascinating individual, maybe even became a friend, lover, or spouse? It happens all the time, and it's one of the finer things in life. But it won't happen if the "trust your gut" approach is always followed without an informed modification along the way. Life is full of unxpectedly pleasant surpises, if we allow them the possibility of occurring.

As far as "essential listening" goes, I think you're confusing that concept with "essential liking". Like it or not, there are certain things in any general "cultural group" that one needs to check out if one wishes to not be perinially stuck in the same place at whch one started in regard to one's knowledge of that group. Of course, one may not wish such a thing for one's self, in fact there's booming business in rewarding people for not wishig such a thing, but... I feel totally comfortable in saying that if you are interested in the possibilities of improvisational music and/or the evolution of American jazz (and culture) at the mega-crucial juncture of the 60s into the 70s, the Bitches Brew is indeed essential listening, simply because it is so fundamentally relevant to those concern. Certainly not the only thing that is relevant in those regards, but to pretend it's not one of them is just not a very bright thing to try to claim.

OTOH, if one is not interested in those things, one should just say so, and if one has listened enough to have an informed dislike, then one has no reason to be ashamed of saying so.

OTOOH, if one just walks by an open door & sticks one's head inside for a few minutes and then walks away, then WTF do they know about what's really inside?