Agharta and Pangaea were the last new Miles recordings issued by Columbia before Miles retired from public view in 1975. (Though not the last recordings before his reappearance in 1980 – Jan Lohmann’s discography lists a number of unissued Columbia dates from 1976 and 1978.)
At this time Miles’s live performance mostly took the form of extended rock and funk jams, frequently on one- or two-chord ostinatos with a variety of r’n’b bass riffs and simple horn motifs serving as thematic material. The instrumentation, including two guitars but no keyboard, reflects the profound effect Jimi Hendrix had had on Miles. Even as late as this, five years after the great guitarist’s death, and at a time when other fusion groups were bringing bebop sophistication to the genre, Miles was happy to employ two mediocre rock guitarists spectacularly lacking in the jazz sensibility which was already informing the playing of their more talented peers such as Allan Holdsworth and the young John Scofieid. The crudity of their playing is an accurate reflection of the music as a whole, with only Sonny Fortune’s Trane-inspired polytonalisms and bebop licks splashing jazz colour on to an otherwise grey canvas.
The essence of the music, according to Miles, was a ‘deep African thing’, but Herbie Hancock had made much more sense of interlocking African polyrhythms on his Headhunters album of two years earlier. Where Hancock had devised intricate and dramatic structures with plenty of jazz soloing, Miles tries to pass off the sort of desperate, lumpen rock jams which echoed around undergraduate hostels of the period. Miles the trumpeter has his moments, but it’s difficult to discern in the shapeless morass of the ensembles the controlling genius so often attributed to him. He seems as much led as leader, his lack of direction unmitigated even by the ability to find good sidemen.
The best moments in a dull bunch come during the cool two-chord shuffle some way into Interlude (actually Theme From Jack Johnson, as explained below) and the jazz-style walking bass and comping some half-hour into Pangaea’s Gondwana. Unfortunately, these brief pleasures are not easily got: the lack of access points into Gondwana’s 46 minutes means a lot of fast-forwarding or a long and tedious wait.
Not untypically, the Sony presentation is disappointing. On this occasion they have perpetuated the error of nearly two decades by leaving the transposition of the Interlude and Theme From Jack Johnson titles uncorrected on CD label, insert and case. What they call Interlude actually begins with Right Off, the theme from the Jack Johnson album. One wonders if sentient humans are actually involved with these Sony reissues. Mercifully Kevin Whitehead’s eloquent if occasionally fanciful insert-note rationalisation of Pangaea is free of the elementary printing errors which plagued essays I did for earlier Columbia Legacy issues, where, for instance, the ‘clamorous’ rhythms of Herbie Hancock’s Sly were imaginatively rendered ‘glamorous’.
Miles’s final period was not without its lapses, but soon after his return in 1980 he was back on creative course, the evidence presented on the remaining five albums here. This renascence may be attributed in great part to the arrival of a new generation of outstanding sidemen. In the early eighties the bop revival manifest in Marsalis et al was underway, but the renewed awareness of bebop extended beyond the purist revivalists. Thus Miles was able to choose from a crop of players who were comprehensively conversant with both Hendrix and Coltrane.
The Man With The Horn has Miles easing back into gear; indeed he could be the back seat driver of track two. The sidemen are at the wheel, and most of the applause and blame falls to them. Robert Irving III, perpetrator of the discofied Shout and Man With The Horn could do better than this, as he showed later on Decoy, but in the meantime the opener, Fat Time, explains what Miles’s new dynamic was about, with Stern’s hot guitar and Miller’s propulsive and sensitive management of the groove a far cry from the frantic overplaying of the 1975 ensembles.
By the spring of 1981, the band was developing a lethal momentum. The basis of We Want Miles was once again funky vamps, but Miles’s jazz-aware sidemen were equipped to push harmony and rhythm much further than their guileless mid-seventies predecessors. This was, of course, the period when the knees of a number of semi-conscious critics jerked in thoughtless condemnation of Mike Stern’s ‘rock’ guitar. It was no doubt his clanging, overdriven sound, and the superbly delivered rock obscenities of such as his solo on Jean-Pierre which occasioned this reaction, but a modicum more attention reveals in virtually all his playing here a potent union of the sound of Hendrix and the vocabulary of bebop.
Marcus Miller continued to provide incomparable support for the group, his contribution, like Pastorius’s elsewhere, as much compositional as instrumental and a precursor to the more concrete manifestation of his orchestral talents on later Miles and David Sanborn albums. Miles is much more confident and assertive, typically on Back Seat Betty and the buoyant groove of Kix, where his witty fooling with the rhythm tips the band into double time. Kix also draws some excellent tenor from the often overlooked Bill Evans. Throughout, the playing and the listening seem enhanced by the electric atmosphere of the Kix club in Boston, and the result is a rough diamond, one of the finest of Miles’s late albums.
Star People, trumpeted in the insert by Leonard Feather as something of an event, is a cooler affair and has a major disappointment in the weak and contrived blues Star People. But this was John Scofield’s recording debut with Miles, and he kicks off with an extraordinarily well-crafted statement on Speak, blending an unlikely assortment of flavours, from country and western to polytonal jazz, into a tale which compels from beginning to end. There’s tough chromatic funk typical of the period on Come Get It and Speak, and an irresistible diversion in the two-chord Caribbean vamp U’n’l, though the latter is marred by the over-recorded hi-hat which has an even more ruinous effect on Star People. For some reason Miles, Teo Macero and Feather seem to have been rather excited by this percussive innovation, but the true stars of the date are the juniors, Scofield and Miller.
Decoy, a far more closely arranged record, in essence presents formalised versions of the dissonant, Gothic funk introduced by Star People’s Speak and Come Get It. Indeed, Jan Lohmann usefully notes that Decoy’s That’s What Happened is actually an edit from a live version of Speak. There are dull moments, notably on Robot 415, Freaky Deaky and the Star People soundalike That’s Right, but such is the power of Scofield and Marsalis’s soloing and Scofield and Irving Ill’s compositional concept that Decoy must be recognised, along with We Want Miles and Tutu, as one of the three essential late Miles recordings. In addition, Decoy may be one of the most influential Miles records of the period, perhaps providing a blueprint for the M-Base sound which emerged in the late eighties.
You’re Under Arrest has Miles executing a typical volte face, from artist to entertainer; from this point on he was prepared to meet face-on the wider public he had long courted. Time After Time, Human Nature and the little tableau which opens the set were the means of seduction and are largely jazz-free, but the record is worth having for Something’s On Your Mind, a disco tune turned modal vehicle with Miles on fine, billowing form, and for Scofield’s excellent You’re Under Arrest, good for his own solo and the only official recorded evidence of Bob Berg’s lengthy stint with Miles.
Discography
AGHARTA
Prelude; Maiysha (44.55) – Interlude; Theme From Jack Johnson (51.52)
Davis (t, org); Sonny Fortune (as, ss, f); Pete Cosey (elg, syn); Reggie Lucas (elg); Mike Henderson (elb; Al Foster (d); James ‘Mtume’ Forman (pc). Osaka, Japan, February 1, 1975.
(Columbia 467897 2)
PANGAEA
Zimbabwe (41.48) – Gondwana (46.50)
Collective personnel as above. Same date and place.
(CBS 467087 2)
THE MAN WITH THE HORN
(1) Fat Time; (2) Back Seat Betty; (3) Shout; (2) Aida; (4) The Man With The Horn; (2) Ursula (52.37)
(1) Davis (t); Bill Evans (ss); Mike Stern (elg); Marcus Milier (elb); Al Foster (d); Sammy Figueroa (pc). New York City, probably March 1981.
(2) as (1) but Evans out and Barry Finnerty (elg) instead of Stern. NYC, probably January 1981.
(3) Davis (t); Evans (ss); Irving III (elp); Randy Hall (syn); Finnerty (elg); Felton Crews (elb); Vincent Wilburn Jr (d); Figueroa (pc). NYC, May 6, 1981.
(4) Davis (t, elp); Evans (reeds); Irving III (kyb); Hall (elg, cel, syn, v); Crews (elb); Wilburn Jr (d); Angela Bofill’s backing singers (v). NYC, May or June 1980.
(Columbia 468701 2)
WE WANT MILES
(1) Jean-Pierre; (2) Back Seat Betty; (3) Fast Track (aka Aida); (1) Jean-Pierre; (3) My Man’s Gone Now; Kix (76.43)
(1) Davis (t, kyb); Bill Evans (ss); Mike Stern (elg); Marcus Miller (elb); Al Foster (d); Mino Cineiu (pc). Shinjuku Nishi-Guchi Hiroba. Tokyo, October 4, 1981. (2) as (1) but Avery Fisher Hall. New York, July 5, 1981. (3) as (1) but Evans plays ts on Kix. Kix, Boston, Mass, June 27, 1981.
(CBS 466440 2)
STAR PEOPLE
(1) Come Get It; (2) It Gets Better; (3) Speak; (4) Star People; (5) U’N’I; (6) Star On Cicely (59.09)
(1) Davis (t, kyb); Evans (ss); Mike Stern (elg); Marcus Miiler (elb); Al Foster (d); Mino Cineiu (pc). Jones Beach Theatre, Long Island, NY, August 28, 1982.
(2) as (1) but Davis plays trumpet only, Evans plays ts and add John Scofieid (elg). New York City, January 5, 1983.
(3) as (1) but Evans plays soprano and Tom Barney (elb) replaces Miller. Cullen Auditorium, University of Houston, Tx, February 3, 1983.
(4) as (1) but Evans plays ts. NYC, probably September 1, 1982. Additionally, Scofieid (elg) is overdubbed at a later date (probably January 5, 1983) during the organ interlude.
(5) as (1). NYC, probably September 1, 1982.
(6) as (1) but add Gil Evans (arr). NYC, August 11, 1982.
(CBS CDCBS 25395)
DECOY
(1) Decoy; (2) Robot 415; (3) Code MD; (4) Freaky Deaky; (5) What It Is; (6) That’s Right; (7) That’s What Happened (39.36)
(1) Davis (t); Branford Marsalis (ss); John Scofieid (elg); Robert Irving III (syn, eld, arr); Darryl Jones (elb); Al Foster (d); Mino Cineiu (pc). NYC, September 10 & 11, 1983.
(2) Davis (t, syn, arr); Irving III (syn, eld, arr); Cinelu (pc). NYC, c. September 1983, probably 10 and 11.
(3) as (1) but trumpet overdubbed.
(4) Davis (syn); Jones (elb); Foster (d); Cineiu (pc). NYC, June 31 & July 1, 1983.
(5) Davis (t, kyb); Bill Evans (ss, f); Scofieid (elg); Jones (elb); Foster (d); Cinelu (pc). Theatre St Denis, Montréal, Canada, July 7, 1983.
(6) as (1) but Davis also plays synth and arrangement by Davis and Gil Evans, not Irving III.
(7) as (5) but Evans plays only soprano.
(Columbia 468702 2)
YOU’RE UNDER ARREST
(1) One Phone Call/Street Scenes; (2) Human Nature; (3) MD1/Something’s On Your Mind/MD2; (4) Ms Morrisine; Katia Prelude; Katia; (5) Time After Time; (6) You’re Under Arrest; Medley: Jean Pierre, You’re Under Arrest, Then There Were None (43.02)
(1) Davis (t, v, arr); Bob Berg (ss); John Scofield (eig); Robert Irving III (syn); Darryl Jones (elb); Al Foster (d); Steve Thornton (pc, v); Sting, Marek Olko (v); James Priniville (handcuffs). NYC, December 26 & 27, 1984.
(2) Davis (t, arr); Scofield (elg); Irving III (syn, arr); Jones (elb); Vincent Wilburn Jr (d); Thornton (pc). NYC. December 26 & 27, 1984.
(3) as (2) but Something’s On Your Mind arranged by Davis only.
(4) Davis (t, arr, also syn on Katia Prelude); John McLaughiin (elg); Irving III (syn, arr); Jones (elb); Wilburn Jr (d); Thornton (pc). NYC, early January 1985.
(5) Davis (t, arr); Scofieid (elg); Irving III (syn, arr); Jones (elb); Foster (d); Thornton (pc); Gil Evans (arr). NYC, January, February or April 1984.
(6) Davis (t, arr); Berg (ts except on Jean Pierre); Scofieid (elg, also arr on Arrest); Irving III (syn, cel, org, also arr on Then There Were None); Jones (elb); Foster (d); Thornton (pc). December 26 & 27, 1984.
(Columbia 468703 2)
