Jazz Archives

Get Up With It was Miles' last studio album before he took a long break, and shows him at the absolute apex of his mid-70s creativity. All the elements he had been experimenting with are here, crazy psychedelic guitars, Stockhausen influenced attempts to stretch time and space, futuristic polyrhythmic African grooves and bizarre, almost satirical de-constructionist takes on common blues, funk and rock licks all combine to make an album that was way ahead of it's time in the mid-70s, and still sounds modern to this day.
Songs like Rated X and Mtume stand out with their polyrhythmic wall of wah-wah guitars, percussion, bass and distorted organ recreating a futuristic psychedelic yet somewhat traditional African music. On Honky Tonk the band stretches common funk riffs into pointillist abstraction by slowing down the time and leaving a lot of space between their interactions. Maiysha opens with a loungey latin groove that becomes strangely unsettling and menacing before the song eventually breaks into a harsh blues riff played at a numbingly slow tempo while psychedelic guitar wizard Pete Cosey's solo sounds like it was recorded on a tape that was underwater and slipping badly, this is absolute de-constructed blues from beyond hell.
Another stand-out track is Calypso Frelimo, this song takes up side three as it winds itself through different sections before it ends with a chaotic, almost punkish, double-time African jam that has gutarists Cosey and Reggie Lucas trading harsh distorted psych-funk licks with weird repeated spaghetti western type melodies. This totally bizarre song always has something new to hear in it's thick collage of almost incongruos sounds.
Probably the best song on the album, and the most prophetic and forward looking, is He Loved Him Madly, a lengthy improvisation which takes up all of side one. On this cut Miles presents two guitars, flute, bass, drums and percussion playing a patient and slow unfolding of musical events that is part Stockhausen and part raga before the percussion kicks in. Anywhere from ten to twenty years ahead of it's time, this song would pre-date much of the ambient, new-age and trip-hop music that would follow in it's wake. Brian Eno has often praised this song for what an effect it had on his own musical direction.
It is really hard to describe this album and do it justice, words like rock and funk etc could apply to millions of albums, but there is no album like this one, fueled with a malicious sense of mischief, a dark sarcastic sense of humor and tempered with a deep love for music, and a love for those that feel as strongly about music as he does, Miles produced an absolute masterpiece, an album that never could, nor never will be repeated.

1. He Loved Him Madly (32:20)

2. Maiysha (14:56)

3. Honky Tonk (5:57)

4. Rated X (6:53)

5. Calypso Frelimo (32:10)

6. Red China Blues (4:10)

7. Mtume (15:12)

8. Billy Preston (12:35)

- Miles Davis / trumpet

- Steve Grossman / soprano saxophone

- John McLaughlin / electric guitar

- Keith Jarrett / electric piano

- Herbie Hancock / clavinet

- Michael Henderson / bass guitar

- Billy Cobham / drums

- Airto Moreira / percussion

- Miles Davis / organ

- Cedric Lawson / electric piano

- Reggie Lucas / electric guitar

- Khalil Balakrishna / electric sitar

- Michael Henderson / bass guitar

- Al Foster / drums

- James Mtume Foreman / percussion

- Badal Roy / tabla

- Sonny Fortune / flute

- Carlos Garnett / soprano saxophone

- Miles Davis / trumpet, electric piano, organ

- Dave Liebman / flute

- John Stubblefield / soprano saxophone

- Pete Cosey / electric guitar

- Reggie Lucas / electric guitar

- Michael Henderson / bass guitar

- Al Foster / drums

- James Mtume Foreman / percussion

- Miles Davis / trumpet, organ

- Dave Liebman / soprano saxophone, flute

- Sonny Fortune / flute

- Pete Cosey / electric guitar

- Dominique Gaumont / electric guitar

- Michael Henderson / bass guitar

- Al Foster / drums

- James Mtume Foreman / percussion

For those of you still looking for that ever elusive progressive rock album by Miles Davis, you have found it here. This is not jazz or jazz fusion, funk-rock or funky jazz, this is 100% psychedelic avant-garde hard rock totally devoid of any filler or useless by-products. On this album Miles writes out his old jazz credentials with a razor blade onto a jagged piece of metal, crumples it up and stuffs it down the throat of every critic who tried to tell him who he is and what kind of music he should play. If the jazz establishment thought Bitches Brew was tough, nothing could prepare them for this sonic onslaught. The best way to describe this album is equal parts Iggy Pop, Sun Ra, John Zorn, Stockhausen, MC5, Hendrix, Velvet Underground with John Cale and live King Crimson improvs.
I have always thought that Miles was heavily influenced by the early 70s Detroit rock scene during this phase of his career. The Detroit scene was particularly rough, as well as creative and featured bands like Iggy Pop and the Stooges, The MC5 and Funkadelic, long before Funkadelic gave up their psychedelic hard-rock roots to become a funk/dance band. These bands mixed hard proto-punk beats with bluesy funk and avant-garde noise and were light years ahead of many other American rock bands as far as the future of rock was oncerned.
Creative noisy hard rock is hardly the only influence on here. Dark Magus is similar to other 70s recordings by Miles in that he often breaks the beat down into free sections that are sometimes loud and busy, and other times quiet and ominous. These sections always show the usual Stockhausen and Sun Ra influences, but the difference on this record is that Miles has a bigger band and the sound collages are more dense and interesting. Some of my favorite moments happen when Mtume holds a cheap 70s drum machine up to the microphone and creates humanly impossible dense layers of rhythms while the other band members add electronic sounds and incidental percussion. There are some saxophone led hard funk-rock jams occaisonally, but these sections sound more like Crimson's Earthbound album or Band of Gypsys than 70s party music.
The star of this show is the incendiary avant-psychedelic guitar shaman Pete Cosey. Robert Fripp has referred to Cosey's guitar playing as 'wall paper shredding' and probably Fripp, and/or McLaughlin are the only guitarists I can think of that could possibly match this man's sonic outbursts. This isn't my personal favorite Miles album, but this is probably his best when it comes to creative avant-prog rock.

:::Review by Easy Money:::

Miles Davis - Dark Magus Live (1974)

CD1
01. Moja (Part 1) 12:28
02. Moja (Part 2) 12:40
03. Wili (Part 1) 14:20
04. Wili (Part 2) 10:44

CD2
01. Tatu (Part 1) 18:47
02. Tatu (Part 2) (''Calypso Frelimo'') 06:29
03. Nne (Part 1) (''Ife'') 15:19
04. Nne (Part 2) 10:11

Credits
Miles Davis - trumpet, organ
Dave Liebman - flute (2), soprano sax (1), tenor sax
Azar Lawrence - tenor sax
Reggie Lucas - guitar
Pete Cosey - guitar
Dominique Gaumont - guitar
Michael Henderson - electric bass
Al Foster - drums
Mtume - percussion

This is the second of two performances from February 1975 at the Osaka Festival Hall in Japan. This is the evening show; the Columbia release Agharta was the afternoon show. Pangaea is comprised either as a double LP or double CD of two tracks, "Zimbabwe" and "Gondwana." Each is divided into two parts. The band here is comprised of Sonny Fortune on saxophones, Pete Cosey (who also played synth) and Reggie Lucas on guitars, Michael Henderson on bass, Al Foster on drums, James Mtume on percussion, and Davis on trumpet and organ. The band, no doubt inspired by their amazing performance earlier in the day, comes out swinging, and I mean like Muhammad Ali, not Benny Goodman. This is a take-no-prisoners set. Davis seems to be pushing an agenda of "What the hell is melody and harmony? And bring on the funk -- and while you're at it, Pete, play the hell outta that guitar. More drums!" If there is anything that's consistent in this free-for-all, as everybody interacts with everyone else in an almighty dirty groove & roll while improv is at an all-time high, it's the rhythmic, or should we emphasize "polyrhythmic," invention. Mtume and Foster are monstrous in moving this murky jam session along ("Zimbabwe" is one set, and "Gondwana" is the second of the evening) some surreal lines. When Cosey's not ripping the pickups out of his guitar, he's adding his hands to various percussion instruments in the pursuit of the all-powerful Miles Davis' inflected voodoo funk. And while it's true that this set is as relentless as the Agharta issue, it's not quite as successful, though it's plenty satisfying. The reason is simple: the dynamic and dramatic tensions of the afternoon session could never have been replicated, they were based on all conditions being right. Here, while the moods and textures are carried and the flow is quite free, the dramatic tension is not as present; the mood is not quite so dark. And while the playing of certain individuals here may be better than it is on Agharta, the band's playing isn't quite at that level. That said, this is still an essential Miles Davis live record and will melt your mind just as easily as Agharta. People would complain on this tour that Davis played with his back to the audience a lot -- Lester Bangs went so far as to say he hated his guts for it. But if you were this focused on creating a noise so hideously beautiful from thin air, you might not have time to socialize either.

:::Review by Thom Jurek:::

Miles Davis – Pangaea (1975)

Disc One

1. Zimbabwe - 41:48

Disc Two

1. Gondwana - 46:50

Credits
Bass [Fender] - Michael Henderson
Congas, Percussion, Drums [Water], Performer [Rhythm Box] - Mtume
Directed By [Album & Cd] - Keiichi Nakamura
Drums - Al Foster
Engineer [Assistant] - Mitsuru Kasai , Shuichi Takamoto , Takaaki Amano
Engineer, Engineer [Cd Remix] - Tomoo Suzuki
Guitar - Reggie Lucas
Guitar, Synthesizer, Percussion - Pete Cosey
Other [Contemporary Jazz Masters Coordination] - Amy Herot , Gary Pacheco , Mike Berniker
Other [Liner Notes] - Kevin Whitehead
Other [Package Coordination] - Tony Tiller
Producer [Album] - Teo Macero
Saxophone [Soprano, Alto], Flute - Sonny Fortune
Trumpet, Organ - Miles Davis