The Who: The Kids Are Alright Review DVD (2003)

From thedigitalfix.com

Maximum R&B…it quickly became the description that The Who applied to their music throughout their lifetime, as well as being the title of their outstanding four-CD boxset. Even amongst the roar of late-sixties rock, The Who stood out, both by their volume and their ambition. With a clutch of great albums behind them, 1979 saw the compilation of this documentary, showcasing the greatest British rock band during the years in which everything they touched, even a mini-rock opera about Ivor The Engine Driver, put their peers to shame.

In as much as the recent Led Zeppelin two-disc set had a story of sorts, so The Kids Are Alright is the story of The Who from their earliest years playing in London clubs as The High Numbers through their near-bankruptcy during their year before the release of Tommy and how a deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard saved them from financial ruin. As Tommy ended the album freed from his obligations as a saviour so that album gave The Who the opportunity to indulge in further concept albums and rock operas, head-staggeringly loud concerts and great rock music.

Yet, in as much as the story of Led Zeppelin ended with the death of their drummer, John Bonham, so The Kids Are Alright ends with the disappointment at seeing Keith Moon age and, although it is not captured in the film, his death two weeks before its premiere. There’s no doubt that Moon’s death, like Bonham’s, was largely self-inflicted given his prodigious drug usage but the difference between the young Moon on one side of the DVD sleeve to the overweight, bearded, understudy to Oliver Reed seen on the other is a clear picture of how The Who changed from art-school punks and creators of daring rock operas to a band who faded from before both prog rock and punk with barely a breath left for a fight.

Unfortunately, The Kids Are Alright is rather too fond of celebrating Moon’s performances outside of the stage and recording studio, barely allowing an interview opportunity to pass by without choosing those moments when it dissolves into chaos due to Moon’s influence. Even in those moments when Townshend and Moon share a television studio, the film’s need to include a moment of destruction from Moon detracts from the intelligent comments offered by Townshend on the band and its place in pop culture, whether as a mod band, as the writers of Tommy or as pensionable rock stars.

But there’s always the concert footage and never is it better than during the years either side of Tommy in which Daltrey finally let himself go to be the front man who deserved to be standing to the front of Entwhistle, Moon and Townshend. With Tommy‘s messianic songs came the need for Daltrey to become the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard who is miraculously healed, before opening a retreat within a British seaside holiday camp and as seen at Woodstock in his tasseled leather jacket, he provides Zeppelin’s Robert Plant with a marker for his entire wardrobe for the next ten years. Although Entwhistle only changes from year to year by the cut of his moustache and Moon leers out from behind his drumkit, Townshend remains the focus of the music, remaining great so long as he plays either a Rickenbacker, Les Paul or SG and in the Clockwork Orange garb at Woodstock, is the whip-smart street thug to Daltrey’s messiah. When it all comes together, as it does on the euphoric performance of See Me, Feel Me at Woodstock, with The Who taking to the stage at 4am, unpaid and having been spiked with LSD, the performance is all that The Who were meant to have been.

Elsewhere, Stein has rescued The Who’s performance of A Quick One While He’s Away from The Rolling Stones’ Rock ‘n Roll Circus from whatever archive it was lost within and there’s a fistful of great performances and interviews from US, British and German television shows, including Townshend defending The Who from an audience accusing him of having little artistic merit and another in which a young Jeremy Paxman spars lightly with him over his youthful anger.

As good as all this is, The Kids Are Alright still has glaring omissions, of which Quadrophenia is the most obvious. Arguably a better album than Tommy and certainly better at holding tight to a more difficult concept, Quadrophenia has been repeatedly written out of The Who’s history and although it was never as extensively toured as either Tommy or Who’s Next, neither was Sgt. Pepper but imagine a documentary on The Beatles that failed to mention it. Jeff Stein would have produced a better film had he considered moving away from the concert footage to allow five minutes to the likes of Quadrophenia, Lifehouse, I Can See For Miles and other moments that are either never or only briefly mentioned in the rush to include another shot of Moon’s arse or a couple more minutes of live footage.

According to both Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey, Keith Moon was disappointed to see himself looking grizzled, overweight and old but neither Townshend nor Daltrey ever give much away in their appraisal of their band, preferring to stay together, tour the old songs and occasionally get back to finishing off abandoned projects like Lifehouse. As The Who prepare to tour once again, with only Townshend and Daltrey alive, The Kids Are Alright is a great way to look back on the fury, the dazzling rock operas and the Union Jack jackets from when The Who still meant a four-piece piercing 12″ speaker bins with the distant end of a Rickenbacker.

Picture

Even from the film’s opening minutes, it’s evident that the transfer of The Kids Are Alright makes it look better than it has in years, even better than its Laserdisc release, according to Jeff Albarian, who remastered the film for DVD. The quality of the image is terrific and although it is a vast improvement on the quality of the VHS release and that of recent cinema screenings, The Kids Are Alright is never quite as flawless as a number of other recent music releases, the Led Zeppelin set included.

Sound

The Kids Are Alright has been transferred onto DVD with a PCM stereo soundtrack or a choice of surround soundtracks, either Dolby Digital or DTS. Of the three, the stereo track is the most immediate with the rear channels on the surround tracks being used to add presence to the music tracks if not the interviews.

Extras

Audio Commentary: Martin Lewis introduces and hosts the commentary track, joined by director Jeff Stein and the man responsible for the restoration of the film on DVD, Jeff Albarian. As expected from these guests, Stein is good on the origins of the footage and the reaction of the band to seeing the film in 1978-79 whilst Albarian chips in with details on his work for this year’s DVD release.

Eyesight To The Blind: This set of subtitles offers liner notes for each song and interview featured in the film.

Guitar & Pen: Whilst given this title, this extra is only English subtitles for the songs and interviews in the film.

Miracle Cure (40m26s, 1.33:1, 2.0 Stereo): Opening with an interview with the producer of the DVD release of The Kids Are Alright, John Albarian discusses his efforts in sourcing footage for this release. In addition to his comments on the old VHS and Laserdisc releases of The Kids Are Alright, Albarian also talks about the amount of searching that was required to track down all of the negatives of the original footage and how the owners of the footage assisted in the restoration of this film. This is an exhaustive documentary and one of the best yet presented on DVD as regards the restoration of a film for release on DVD.

Getting In Tune (6m13s, 1.78:1 Anamorphic, 2.0 Stereo): Using three scenes from The Kids Are Alright – I Can’t Explain from 1965’s Shindig!, John Entwhistle skeet-shooting his gold discs and Won’t Get Fooled Again from the Shepperton Film Studios – this compares the sound from previous releases of this film to the restored sound on this DVD release, showing a clear and improved difference from one to the other.

Trick Of The Light (5m05s, 1.78:1 Anamorphic, 2.0 Stereo): Using split screen, this bonus feature demonstrates the improved quality of the DVD release over the VHS and Laserdisc releases, again using three chapters from the film, including Baba O’Reilly from the Shepperton Film Studios performance, the tour of John Entwhistle’s home and a recording of Who Are You in Ramport studios.

The Ox (1.78:1 Anamorphic, 2.0 Stereo): With multiple angles, one for each of the members of The Who, this bonus feature allows John Entwhistle’s bass track to be isolated within recordings of Baba O’Reilly (6m42s) and Won’t Get Fooled Again (11m39s) from the Shepperton Film Studios performance. Both songs can also be played in full with 5.1 Surround and 2.0 Stereo audio tracks.

The Who’s London (8m44s 1.78:1 Non-Anamorphic, 2.0 Stereo): This bonus feature looks at twenty key places in London related to where the members of the band were born, where they met, played their first gigs and lived during their early years.

Behind Blue Eyes (25m38s, 1.33:1, 2.0 Stereo): This is an interview with Roger Daltrey, who is now looking very old and who, compared to Pete Townshend, was never the most articulate of interviewees. As a result, this plays up on Daltrey’s tough Londoner character and his frequent refusal to give a straight answer soon grates.

Anytime You Want Me: (1.78:1 Anamorphic, 2.0 Stereo): Using the same multiple angles as The Ox – Ox Cam, Pete Cam A, Moonie Can and Roger’s Pit Cam – this includes the recordings of Baba O’Reilly (6m42s) and Won’t Get Fooled Again (11m39s) from the Shepperton Film Studios performance. Given, however, that John Entwhistle’s bass track can be isolated on this extra, Anytime You Want Me is really no more than a retitled version of The Ox.

Pure And Easy: This is a trivia game of twenty-one questions on The Who leading to a recording of Ringo Starr promoting The Kids Are Alright.

It’s Hard: Another trivia game of twenty-one questions on The Who leading to a recording of Who Are You (6m21s) remixed in 5.1 Surround.

See My Way (29m23s, 1.33:1, 2.0 Stereo): This is an interview with Jeff Stein, the director of The Kids Are Alright as to his introduction to The Who, how he came to make the film and how his relationship with the band changed during the making of the film, particularly as he requested they perform live for the film.

Overall

I’ll admit to being biased as the mix of Daltrey and Moon’s wild-eyed anger and Townshend’s art-school concepts have always impressed me much more than the pop noodlings of The Beatles and the brief bloom of The Rolling Stones. In particular, during the years from the writing of The Who Sell Out, through Tommy, Quadrophenia and Who’s Next, The Who left a thrilling set of albums that sit rock and pop next to concept albums about freedom, responsibility, maturity and Odorono deodorant. Yellow submarines? Doesn’t get anywhere near…

The Kids Are Alright would have made a perfect boxset had it shipped with Quadrophenia as then the story on The Who would almost have been complete. But to buy both those films and the Maximum R&B boxset, then you’re getting close to as good as rock has ever been.

Steve Hackett: “I’m always open to the idea of Genesis”

The guitarist talks protest songs, what makes him angry, future Genesis activity and mind-melding with wolves

After a quarter-century of releasing solo albums, you might expect Steve Hackett to at least consider resting on his laurels. But he’s having none of it. His new album, The Night Siren, finds the guitarist in fierce form, tackling extremism and intolerance in his lyrics while continuing to push against musical boundaries. The instrumentation includes Celtic Uilleann pipes and Peruvian churango, and the music ranges from flamenco to symphonic rock, while singers unite from all sides of the political divide. Classic Rock caught up with Hackett during rehearsals for his forthcoming Genesis Revisited With Classic Hackett tour, which kicks off in April.

You’ve made twenty-five solo albums since leaving Genesis. Have you ever thought about slowing down?

I thought I’d go for the John Wayne award. How many movies did he make? I’ve got a while to go, and a few more albums to churn out. I just think that instead of getting older and slower I should get older and faster.

How did you approach the recording of The Night Siren?

I started with a guitar solo. The whole process of songwriting and recording means that the guitar playing often ends up being the last thing on the agenda. But this time I thought, “To hell with that – why don’t we start with a couple of chords and a freewheeling guitar solo?” So I started with the end of one of the songs, Anything But Love. And I know that’s arse-about-face, but it meant that I started with the icing of the cake, rather than the cake itself. I’ve found that this is the right way to do it for me. It means I always come in fresh, doing what I’m known best for, and the music doesn’t suffer from a lack of energy.

The other thing I do is I collect data. For instance, when I was in Hungary doing [2015 album] Wolflight we had some very interesting stuff – a combination of didgeridoo and mute trumpet – and I ran out of time. So we used it on 50 Miles From The North Pole on the new album. This time round I was recording with some musicians in Sardinia, under the understanding that whatever came out of those sessions could be used by any of us, in any way. It was data for them and data for me.

You have to defeat all the obstacles that naturally crop up when you’re doing so-called solo work. Of course, in reality it’s a team, but as a solo artist you carry the can. You get all the glory and all the blame.

Are there times when you put these disparate elements together and it simply doesn’t work?

Certainly. The main thing when you’re experimenting is to ditch something the minute you find it’s not working. We had a whole other song that was supposed to be a bit jokey, and a bit dark, but it didn’t quite function in that way, and everyone who’d worked long and hard on it reluctantly admitted it. So I just used some elements on it that worked elsewhere. You’ve got to know when to ditch things.

How is The Night Siren different from Wolflight?

We’re using a United Nations of musicians from all over the world, not just my prog neighbours – people from Iceland, Azerbaijan, Israel, Palestine, Hungary and so on. I didn’t plan it that way, but we’ve got a very different album because of it. In the end it doesn’t matter where it comes from. And it’s not like I sat down and decided to make a world music album. I wanted to make a rock album. But using all these other elements took it rather outside its familiar source.

The other difference is the lyrics. We realised that two of the tunes had a peace message, so we bookended the album with them.

Are they protest songs?

The protest song is something that’s fallen into disuse. There are a couple of examples of the protest song on the album, but it’s my version of it, not just a man standing there with an acoustic guitar.

Some of the tracks, such as Behind The Smoke and El Nino, have a very ominous sound. Is that a reflection of the way you feel about the world?

It certainly is. Just about every journalist I speak to seems fearful, particularly in the US, and rightly so. The subtext of the album is unity, the idea that we can all work together, and age-old concepts of peace and love. The message is all-important, but those minor keys are also part of my DNA. I’ve always enjoyed ominous music. With the surround-sound mix of El Nino I wanted it to feel like you were at the eye of the storm, with everything going on around you. You’re under assault from the word go.

What makes you angry?

The lemming-like behaviour of politicians who follow instead of lead, and their lack of statesmanship. When I see that our leaders are more stupid than I am, it worries me. I’m not bright, politically speaking, but I think that things like globalisation and world peace are things we need to preserve and fight for.

I’m not just worried by Brexit, I’m terrified by it. I’ve been working freely in Europe for years, and I want to be able to come and go. I think borders are overrated, and we got rid of them in all but name in Europe. Now we’re in danger of losing the very thing we’ve been fighting for since the 1930s, and no one’s talking about peace. Everyone talks about train strikes and the economy, and whether we’ll be able to do deals with America and China and India, ignoring the fact that we’ve got this huge market on our border. And no one’s talked about protecting the rights of individuals who live and work where they choose. I don’t like mob rule.

An obvious question, given recent events: what do you make of Donald Trump?

If I can answer diplomatically, I would say that he has yet to prove himself to either his critics or his supporters. The worrying thing is that he has set people against each other, and it’ll be interesting to see what happens next. A number of people I’ve spoken to have suggested that he’s upset so many people he’s either going to get shot or impeached. So we’ll just have to see how far a leader can go with that maverick style, without co-operating with people. We’ll see if it leads to civil war, unrest, murders and riots. Black Americans are already starting to arm themselves. But if you were suddenly being marginalised, wouldn’t you do that too? Donald has got plenty of time to learn the craft of politics, and lots of work to do.

Do you consider what you’re doing now to be an extension of what you were doing with Genesis in the 1970s?

I think about this quite a lot, and I don’t normally talk about it. At the time, they were a band that needed me. I like to think that my joining had the effect of making them more professional, and more adventurous. So if I do professionally adventurous music, I’m carrying on in the same spirit. In those days I used to think you could break boundaries, but I’m a tad more modest now. Music is always changing, but all I think you can really do is juxtapose things that already exist. Being surprised by music is a function of being young.

What kind of set have you got planned for the upcoming tour?

I’m doing a set of my own stuff and a set of Genesis stuff, with an intermission in the middle.

Which Genesis songs will we get to hear?

I’ll be playing Eleventh Earl Of Mar, One For The Vine – I haven’t played that for forty years – Blood On The Rooftops, In That Quiet Earth and Afterglow, and we’ll also be playing Inside And Out, which didn’t make it onto the album [Genesis’s Wind And Wuthering]. It featured on an EP and is on a re-released box set, and it’s one of the best tunes we recorded at that time. I take great pleasure from playing that, and the band have been playing it extraordinarily well. I find it very emotional.

Wind And Wuthering is actually my favourite Genesis album.

It was one of our very best, notwithstanding the fact that I left at the end of it. I thought it was best to go out on a high rather than a low.

The five of you that formed the ‘classic’ Genesis line-up – Hackett, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks – reunited for the BBC documentary Genesis: Together And Apart a couple of years ago. Are there any plans for similar projects?

There are no plans, but I’m always open to the idea. It would be lovely to do something with Peter again with all of us, providing we could find enough common ground. Although it’s possible, I suspect it’s improbable. It’s been a long wait.

So we’re not going to see you pop up on stage with Phil Collins this summer?

That’s interesting, isn’t it? I think I’ll be away gigging myself. But it’ll be nice to see him back there, back doing it.

Going back to your Wolflight album, it has that terrific cover photo. Tell us about the wolves.

It was daytime – although it was made to look like nighttime – and the wolves were extremely well‑behaved. Spending time with wolves can change your mind about them entirely. They were trained and incredibly responsive, and I had a wonderful day, both with the wolves and their wolf-cub young. I got to feed them, I got to play with their young… and I think they read my mind.

I think they’re more intelligent than dogs. You can almost interact with them on another level. If you show concern or affection to them they immediately show it to you, although they’re very reserved creatures. They look like large scary dogs but they were totally wonderful.

Since then I’ve had the need to befriend every dog I see, whether they’re a tiny little dog or a big one, and I try to find the key to them.

Miles Davis On The Corner (1972) – The most hated album in jazz

From theguardian.com

At the time, everyone loathed Miles Davis’s On the Corner – even the people who played on it. But now, reports Paul Tingen, some of the coolest names in music are proud to name it as a major influence.

Within weeks of its release in 1972, Miles Davis’s On the Corner had become the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz. “Repetitious crap,” wrote one critic. “An insult to the intellect of the people,” remarked another. Even the musicians who played on the album were bewildered. “I didn’t think much of it,” recalls saxophonist Dave Liebman. “It was my least favourite Miles album,” says Paul Buckmaster, the British composer and arranger who supplied musical sketches for the sessions, and turned Davis on to the music and method of Karlheinz Stockhausen.

The history of music is full of works that were derided on first public exposure – Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring (1910), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz: A Collective Improvisation (1960), the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks (1977) – but within a few years enjoyed a critical rehabilitation. By contrast, On the Corner remained shunned, if not forgotten, for decades. All the more striking, then, that 35 years after its first release it is hailed by many outside the jazz community as a visionary musical statement that was way ahead of its time.

Jamie Morrison, drummer with post-punk band the Noisettes, is one of them. “On the Corner is a huge influence on us,” he says. “I love the rhythm section, and the way you’re just thrown into the music at the beginning. It’s really punk in its attitude. It’s so offensive, and pushes boundaries at the same time.”

He is echoed by Paul Miller, aka electronic and hip-hop musician and producer DJ Spooky. “I’m highly influenced by the collage process producer Teo Macero applied on the album,” he says.

Bassist Jah Wobble chips in: “On the Corner is fantastic, because this same riff comes back to you again and again. You can’t do it with any old riff.” And New York guitarist Gary Lucas, who has come through the Captain Beefheart school of warped aesthetics, loves the “ominous, dense, swampy jungle of urban desperation its dub-like grooves conveyed”.

So it seems On the Corner simply went underground, only to emerge again when the world was ready for it. The release this week of The Complete On the Corner Sessions, a six-CD box set, is timely. It’s worth pointing out, though, that the re-evaluation of On the Corner has been going on since the early 1990s, when hip-hop artists began quoting it as an influence. “It was the first hip-hop/house/drum’n’bass/breakbeat album I’d ever heard,” explains American musician and longtime Village Voice writer Greg Tate.

Since then, the list of musicians who have namechecked Miles Davis’s electric music in general, and On the Corner in particular, has become seemingly endless; knowing and liking the album appears to have become indispensable in the hipness stakes. On the Corner’s influence can be heard in the music of such varied artists as Underworld, Radiohead, Sonic Youth, Red Hot Chili Peppers, David Byrne and Squarepusher.

Yet, the mainstream jazz community still won’t touch On the Corner with a barge pole. And whatever remains of jazz-rock continues to be too deeply in thrall of the pyrotechnics aspect of such 1970s bands as Mahavishnu Orchestra to take any notice of On the Corner’s repetitive funk, which was the antithesis of virtuosity.

So what is this most mysterious and outré of albums? The culmination of Davis’s two-decade-long quest for the African roots of his music, On the Corner has a huge, extended rhythm section rotating around circular, one-chord bass riffs. But there were a number of other things that set the album apart. First there were the influences of Stockhausen, Paul Buckmaster, and Ornette Coleman’s atonal “harmolodics”. These were superimposed over grooves and bass riffs that were more tightly circumscribed than ever before. On the opening track, the bass plays the same few notes for 20 minutes. Inundated by an ocean of rhythm instruments, including sitar, tabla and three electric keyboards (played by Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, among others), and without any harmonic development, the soloists had very little space, and became merely strands in a tangle of grooves and colours.

In addition, producer Teo Macero did his wild cut-and-paste thing, which he had pioneered on Miles Davis’s In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew. Here, he went deeper than before into overdubbing and studio effects territory. According to The Complete On the Corner Sessions producer Bob Belden: “The original album version was an effect. In essence, it’s compression in a narrow stereo field to make the music work on AM radio.”

Why go to such trouble for AM radio? The answer lies in what the more anti-commercial members of the jazz community considered to be Davis’s biggest sin: having already been accused of “selling out” for incorporating rock influences, he asserted that On the Corner was his effort to go mainstream and reach the kids in the streets. Predictably, this impenetrable and almost tuneless concoction of avant-garde classical, free jazz, African, Indian and acid funk bombed spectacularly, leading to decades in the wilderness. As far as the jazzers were concerned, it completed Davis’s journey from icon to fallen idol.

But the story doesn’t end there. In the three years following On the Corner’s release, Davis managed to take a few more steps in the same direction. In the spring of 1973, seemingly tired of the constraints imposed by huge rhythm sections, he trimmed his band down to seven players and fronted it with Pete Cosey, a fearsome electric guitarist whose jaw-dropping exploits still sound advanced today. The band were at their best live, and their ferocious acid-funk improvisations can be heard on the staggering live double albums Dark Magus, Agharta and Pangaea.

Most of the 1973-75 material on The Complete On the Corner Sessions sounds tame by comparison to those three albums.But the box set also contains Davis’s acid-funk band’s only studio album, Get Up With It, which includes a meditational homage to Duke Ellington, He Loved Him Madly – a half-hour-long track that Brian Eno has quoted as a major influence on his ambient direction.

In the past few years, there have been signs that this 1973-75 output is also heading for a radical reappraisal. Julian Cope aptly wondered, “Are there any others who took up the baton from Miles after his funk ensemble collapsed? I hear the influence in post-punk but that’s about it.” Barring a few tributes, this music still appears to be buried in a time capsule of its own, waiting to be discovered.

Miles Davis – Live Evil (1971)

From comlexdistractions.blog

I mean, if I’m forced to stay home in pandemic isolation I might as well enjoy myself. There’s no point in fretting over not being able to hang out in crowds at restaurants, or zombie shuffle my way thru the mall. I’m really not a fan of either of those activities anyways. Crowds cause me great anxiety. I can fake my way thru any situation, like painting a smile and “Joe Cool” sunglasses on a coconut and assimilating into the burgeoning consumer crowd. But I’d rather be home drinking an IPA and listening to records. Like the one I’m about to talk about next. Welcome back to my live album series, and this time it’s a goddamn whopper. Miles Davis’ Live Evil. Is it completely live? No. But then again, are any of us?

So I fell hard for Miles Davis around ten years ago. Before that I thought he was quiet, cool jazz man who had a raspy voice and appealed to romantics and guys with soul patches. Yes, I was an idiot. I had gotten into jazz by then, but I was a Thelonious Monk cat. I fell hard for Monk’s Dream in the mid-90s. The jaunty nature of Monk’s playing won me over, and his cover of “Just A Gigolo” is still one of my absolute favorite performances. He took a big dumb pop song and turned it into this complicated, melancholy piece of modern musical art. Like a robot that developed emotions and gave us a broken, geometric version of a song about a braggart playboy. It was unbelievable.

Okay, back to Miles.

So I had a handful of jazz CDs by the time I’d bought a turntable in 2008. On a trip to Chicago I bought three records from Jazz Record Mart: Wes Montgomery’s Smokin’ at the Half Note, McCoy Tyner’s The Real McCoy, and Miles Davis’ Nefertiti. I’d been listening to a lot of jazz on internet radio at work, so Wes an McCoy I’d heard a lot of. The Miles record was a random grab. I knew Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain, but I wanted something I wasn’t familiar with so Nefertiti was what I grabbed. Man, that record completely re-wired my brain. It was still all acoustic, but there was a darkness to Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock’s compositions. It felt like a record that was moving towards something new, exciting, and maybe even a little dangerous. I had been instantly converted to the Church of Miles Davis.

Of course I knew where I was going next. The following year I received Bitches Brew and my life was forever changed. What a dark and dangerous album that was. Davis won over fans of Sabbath and Hendrix, but lost his most devoted fans that had followed him for 20+ years. He was crucified by hard line jazz critics and fans, much like Dylan was crucified by the hard line folk critics and fans(sort of becoming the fascists they claimed they wanted to kill.) Miles Davis didn’t care. He’d stepped into the broader, modern musical world and loved it. Psychedelia, rock and roll, and the buzzing of electric instruments was the new Church of Miles. You either got up and worshiped, or you walked out the door.

I was screaming “Amen!”, brothers and sisters.

Now “Electric Miles” was a totally different beast from the “Cool Jazz Miles”. Electric Miles was wild and woolly. He played his trumpet through delay pedals and a wah wah. He opened the door for a guitarist like John McLaughlin to bring a mathematical Hendrix-like quality to the sound. He brought in musicians like Jack DeJohnette, Billy Cobham, Dave Holland, and Chick Corea into the fold, while still using his quintet favorite Wayne Shorter and longtime producer Teo Macero as well. He wanted to create this acid-burnt, electrified version of jazz that opened the doors to counter-culture kids and disillusioned hipsters that felt jazz needed to inject some serious LSD into its aging veins.

Some of my favorite Miles records come from the Bitches Brew period. Filles de Kilimanjaro, Miles in the Sky, In A Silent Way, Jack Johnson, and Big Fun represent a time in jazz when anything went. It was a re-writing of the rules of jazz, much like Monk did in the 50s and Davis did in ’59 with Kind of Blue. Hearing what these bands did live during this period was something to behold. It was one thing to listen Davis’ meticulously cut and pasted improvisational sessions by Davis and producer Macero, but to hear these musicians live and letting loose was incredible. Live at the Fillmore, Agharta, Pangaea, and Dark Magus are all extensive live double LPs that represent the most far-out, dense live excursions you’ll likely hear. Ever. And they’re not for everyone. For me, those albums are my bread and butter. Others may not appreciate the long jams and extensive sound excursions. One album that may appeal to those souls without the wherewithal to soak in the dense Miles Davis musical brine, Live-Evil might just be your cup of tea.

So Live-Evil isn’t a completely live record. It’s split up between cuts recorded live at the Cellar Door in Washington D.C December 19th, 1970, and studio cuts recorded in New York at Columbia Studios B in June of 1970. The results are a collection of raw, visceral songs and beautifully-constructed studio cuts intermingling picking up where the other leave off. Davis’ band covers shorter passages written by composer Hermeto Pascoal, cutting them in as palate cleansers amongst the heady soundscapes and funky jams. It all comes together beautifully.

“Sivad” is one of the live tracks and it sizzles and conjures funky spells. Reminiscent of what would come with On The Corner, it displays the absolute power of Davis’ electric period to a tee. Street vibes, psych rock, and fusion meld together to give us 15-minutes of mind-expanding glee. “Little Church” is a quiet, dissonant piece written by Hermeto Pacoal that takes the edge off the sweaty funk that came before. His style really does fit right in with Davis’ bag of musical tricks. The 20+ minute “What I Say” sees us sees us back at the Cellar Door and in funk/soul mode. Keyboardist Keith Jarrett is the star here, displaying some lightning fast electric piano moves that are matched only by maestro drummer Jack DeJohnette. I can only imagine sitting in that crowd and letting this track roll over me. Simply outstanding. Of course, the ringmaster Miles Davis doesn’t go unnoticed. He’s in top form here.

The back and forth between quiet studio tracks and the live cuts really makes Live-Evil a very special entry into the Miles Davis canon. Not just as a live representation of his stage prowess, but as a well-constructed double LP journey. Like I said earlier, these live albums from Miles Davis in his electric period are dense, sweaty creatures. They’re not for the faint of heart or ear. But for those of us that want the challenge and savor the hothouse heat, prodigious playing, and trance-like nature of these extended jams these albums are like catnip. They seriously make my soul buzz with delight. Getting lost in these records is an absolute joy. Live-Evil is the perfect balance of psych freakout fusion jams and well-manicured intellectual sound excursion.

What better way to spend the great social distancing of 2020 than to get lost in some heady records? Hunker down with some double LPs and let them soak up the anxiety of the current times. Live-Evil is a great way to spend an afternoon. So is Big Fun, Aghara, Miles in the Sky, Bitches Brew, Live at the Fillmore, Filles de Kilimanjaro, and In A Silent Way.

Miles Davis In A Silent Way review by Lester Bangs (1969)

From rollingstone.com

This is the kind of album that gives you faith in the future of music. It is not rock and roll, but it’s nothing stereotyped as jazz either. All at once, it owes almost as much to the techniques developed by rock improvisors in the last four years as to Davis’ jazz background. It is part of a transcendental new music which flushes categories away and, while using musical devices from all styles and cultures, is defined mainly by its deep emotion and unaffected originality.

Miles has always gone his own way, a musician of strength and dignity who has never made the compromise (so poisonous to jazz now) with “pop” fads. It is a testimony to his authenticity that he has never worried about setting styles either, but continued his deeply felt experiment for two decades now. Albums like Miles Ahead, Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain simply do not get old, and contain some of the most moving experiences that any music has to offer. In his new album, the best he has made in some time, he turns to “space music” and a reverent, timeless realm of pure song, the kind of music which comes along ever so often and stops us momentarily, making us think that this perhaps is the core around which all of our wayward musical highways have revolved, the primal yet futuristic and totally uncontrived sound which gives the deepest, most lasting sustenance to our souls, the living contemporary definition of great art.

The songs are long jams with a minimum of preplanned structure. That they are so cohesive and sustained is a testament to the experience and sensitivity of the musicians involved. Miles’ lines are like shots of distilled passion, the kind of evocative, liberating riffs that decades of strivers build their styles on. Aside from Charles Mingus, there is no other musician alive today who communicates such a yearning, controlled intensity, the transformation of life’s inchoate passions and tensions into aural adventures that find a permanent place in your consciousness and influence your basic definitions of music. And his sidemen also rise to the occasion, most of them playing better than I have ever heard them before. Certainly Herbie Hancock (piano), Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), and Joe Zawinul (organ) have never seemed so transported. The miracle of jazz is that a great leader can bring merely competent musicians to incredible heights of inspiration —; Mingus has always been famous for this, and Miles has increasingly proven himself a master of this incredibly delicate art.

The first side is taken up by a long jam called “Shhh/Peaceful.” Tony Williams’ cymbal-and-brush work and the subtle arabesques of Zawinul’s organ set a space trip, a mood of suspended time and infinite interior vistas. But when Miles enters, the humanity and tenderness of his trumpet’s soft cries are enough to bring you tears. I’ve heard that when he was making this album, Miles had been listening to Jimi Hendrix and Sly and the Family Stone, but the feeling here is closer to something like “2000 Light Years From Home” by the Stones. It is space music, but with an overwhelmingly human component that makes it much more moving and enduring than most of its rock counterparts.

Side two opens and closes with the best song on the album, a timeless trumpet prayer called “In a Silent Way.” There has always been something eternal and pure in Miles’ music, and this piece captures that quality as well as anything he’s ever recorded. If, as I believe, Miles is an artist for the ages, then this piece will be among those that stand through those vast tracks of time to remind future generations of the oneness of human experience.

Between the two takes of “Silent Way” lies “It’s About That Time,” a terse, restrained space jam somewhat reminiscent of the one on the first side but a bit sharper, allowing more of Miles’ fierce blues ethos to burn through. This is the one that might be connected to Miles’ interest in Hendrix and Sly.

They say that jazz has become menopausal, and there is much truth in the statement. Rock too seems to have suffered under a numbing plethora of standardized Sounds. But I believe there is a new music in the air, a total art which knows no boundaries or categories, a new school run by geniuses indifferent to fashion. And I also believe that the ineluctable power and honesty of their music shall prevail. Miles Davis is one of those geniuses.

Jethro Tull Thick As A Brick (1972)

From ultimateclassicrock.com

Ian Anderson had a point to make when he turned his thoughts to Jethro Tull’s fifth album. He wanted the work to act as a response to reviews of 1971’s Aqualung, which had been generally positive but was called a concept album.

“Concept album? No,” the band’s frontman and multi-instrumentalist tells Ultimate Classic Rock. “It was just a bunch of songs, and two or three of them happened to have a link. When I came to do the running order and work on the cover text, as you do when you wrap a Christmas present, you choose nice paper and put a nice bow on it. That process in presenting the album gave it some cohesion. But it was whimsical individual oddities, written in hotel rooms, very often in the U.S.”

Anderson decided to prove his point by giving the world what it thought it already had – a genuine Jethro Tull concept album. The result was Thick as a Brick, a milestone in the progressive genre, which arrived on March 10, 1972.

The problem was that a lot of people weren’t likely to get the joke. “It was a spoof of what was happening in the world, with particularly British bands like Yes, ELP and Genesis and so on,” Anderson says. Describing his approach as “competitive,” he adds, “I was going to out-prog them, really.”

So he was aware he was taking a risk; but instead of shying away, Anderson decided to charge forward. Thick as a Brick featured just one track, split into “Part I” and “Part 2” on the vinyl release, and cut into eight separate titles for the 40th-anniversary edition of the album released in 2012. But that wasn’t far enough. Anderson pretended that the lyrics on the LP had all been written by an 8-year-old boy named Gerald Bostock, who’d become notorious after using a swear word on TV, leading to a poetry award being revoked.

Anderson admits that Bostock’s writing had an element of autobiography about it, in parodying the Boys’ Own-type of publications that portrayed Germans as “Jerries” and fell alarmingly short in providing heroes that weren’t part of the British establishment. “I was subjected as a schoolboy to the nationalistic and unpleasant boys’ magazines, which were not the best way of grooming young minds for the ‘60s and ‘70s,” he notes. “There was a radical change in society, most notable in the U.S. We weren’t prepared for that in schoolboy literature.

“It was that stereotyping that I was lampooning, pretending the album had been written by someone writing adult themes through the distorted mind of a schoolboy,” he continues. “It was relatively easy to do. It was a tall order to have it accepted.”

His approach had been inspired by a British brand of humor, known mainly in the rest of the world through Monty Python, but remembered as much in the U.K. for the genius of Spike Milligan and the Goons, Round the Horn and many others.

“That humor works, but it’s not just about rib-tickling, wisecracking humor. It’s got to have some substance. It’s got to be making a point,” Anderson says. “Monty Python, at its best, made those points. Sometimes it degenerated and it wasn’t always good, which I’m sure the Pythons themselves would be second to recognize. Sometimes, there were a lot of duds in there.”

To hammer his point home, Anderson created a 12-page provincial newspaper named the St. Cleve Chronicle, which served as the album cover. “It was very carefully studied,” Anderson says. “I amassed a pile of papers and drew inspiration from the really silly stories that people would write about because there wasn’t anything else to write about. That was part of the fun, and definitely made it a concept album.”

That was unfortunate for John Lennon. “He had his album Some Time in New York City in the works. He’d used the The New York Times as the cover. Thick as a Brick came out a few weeks before his – he had a single page, whereas the St. Cleve Chronicle was an altogether more ambitious affair, which luckily made it to the record store before his.”

A one-track record; a fictional lyricist; a spoof newspaper and a very British approach to art. How could it possibly succeed – especially when Jethro Tull’s live set included elements of live comedy cut into the performance? “I had a rule of thumb when we went out and did concerts,” Anderson recalls. “My assumption was that 50 percent of them got it, 50 percent of them didn’t. But 100 percent of them didn’t ask for their money back.

“I think it worked as a musical package,” he adds. “Whether people got what was going on was a moot point when you got to countries where English wasn’t even a second language. It wasn’t the international language it is today. People didn’t understand what was going on, but that didn’t stop us from doing well.”

Two territories stand out for him. “The Japanese just stared at us blankly, despite our manager Terry Ellis going out on stage with huge signs written in Japanese, explaining the quirky oddities – and apparently naked, although he had underpants on that couldn’t be seen behind the placards,” Anderson says. “It was a surprise that it got across in Scotland. My Edinburgh tones had long gone, and as a Scot going back to play something that seemed worryingly English, I felt a little self-conscious. It was a welcome relief that it didn’t antagonize the Scots.”

He was also surprised how well the U.S. accepted the work. “It was a blessed bit of luck that it did okay,” Anderson said. “It spent a number of weeks at No. 1 in the Billboard chart, which came as a surprise to everybody – including Mr. Bill Board.”

Nearly half a century on, Thick as a Brick has inspired two follow-up solo efforts: 2010’s Thick as Brick 2: Whatever Happened to Gerald Bostock? (which came complete with an online edition of the St. Cleve Chronicle and 2014’s Homo Erraticus (which credits Bostock as co-writer).

The original LP remains one of the Tull albums that, for Anderson, “would rise to the surface like the scum on a cold cup of tea.” “Stand Up was the first album that wasn’t just pastiche 12-bar blues, so it’s always going to be close to my heart,” he says. “Aqualung was a singer-songwriter album, and it marked a difference for me because I was in the studio with an acoustic guitar, performing songs on which the other band members would join in.

“Thick as a Brick was a landmark, then we jump ahead to Songs From the Wood, being more of a folk-rock album; then Crest of a Knave, which did really well in America but not so well elsewhere. You can toss heavy Horses into that, and I’d guess most people would agree with four or five of my choices.”

Tony Banks revisits the classic Genesis live album Seconds Out

From loudersound.com

“It’s got some good stuff on it,” says a typically understated Tony Banks, on Genesis’s Seconds Out

“I love Paris in the springtime!” says an animated Phil Collins during Seconds Out, the live double album released by Genesis in October 1977. Recorded mostly over four nights at the Palais des Sports in June – technically not spring, but let’s not spoil the moment – the record documented the band’s Wind & Wuthering tour (though it includes only Afterglow from that then-too-recent-to-fillet album). 

With Collins comfortably ensconced as frontman/vocalist and Chester Thompson drumming, the music hit the sweet spot between the group’s old and new identities, as they showcased a blend of their classic prog – Supper’s Ready, Firth Of Fifth and The Cinema Show (the last was actually taken from a 1976 show with Bill Bruford in the drumstool) – and more focused favourites from the dawning of ‘the Phil era’, with A Trick Of The Tail generously represented. Steve Hackett was to leave during the mixing sessions, leaving the band as, studio-wise, the Collins-Banks-Rutherford trio.

While Genesis didn’t consider live albums to be massively important, to one generation of fans this offering was the way in, a first introduction to their catalogue. As such, there are some of us who still – perhaps sacrilegiously – think of these versions as the definitive ones. 

At the very least, the readings of Supper’s Ready and Carpet Crawlers here give the earlier, studio-recorded Gabriel ones a real run for their money. Seconds Out made the Top 5 in the UK and even entered the Top 50 in the USA, where they were only just making inroads.

It’s now reissued on vinyl, and founding member, keyboard king and 2015 Prog God Tony Banks is talking to us about its strengths, weaknesses and legacy. He was 10 years in with Genesis at the time, and says he recently listened to it “for the first time in a very long while”. With the English reserve and understatement that’s his public trademark, he adds, “It’s got some good things on it.”

How does Seconds Out sound to you now, overall?

“There’s good and there’s less good. Some things are better than the recorded versions, others not quite. I think Supper’s Ready in particular is really good. We felt at the time that this live version was better. Phil’s voice comes across very well. On Foxtrot, we were putting it together without knowing exactly what we had on our hands. 

“We recorded a lot of the bits separately of course, and then joined them together. Whereas by the time of Seconds Out we were playing it more fluently. But I mean, Pete’s voice on things like the ‘666’ part was fantastic, so… you gain some, you lose some.”

Is this the best Genesis live album?

“Oh I don’t know about that. Well, the first one [Genesis Live] came out against our will a little, so we were never enamoured of that. It was all right, I suppose. The early 90s The Way We Walk ones definitely have some good moments. We were playing more consistently by then. In a way live albums felt like ‘marking time’, not like a ‘real’ release, you know? Like a sort of ‘greatest hits’. 

“Seconds Out has an atmosphere, though – Paris was good for us. Europe in general was exciting: where people liked us, they liked us a lot. English audiences were quite polite back then, and the Americans made noise but did so throughout the songs as well. The Europeans listened reverentially, then if they appreciated something they’d make lots of noise at the end. So Paris was great – but it wasn’t Italy, which was best of all.”

The French seem to enjoy chanting here, though it’s unclear what
they’re saying…

“We never quite worked out what they are shouting either! At first it sounded like they were shouting ‘Pe-ter! Pe-ter!’ and we thought they wanted Mr Gabriel back. It transpired it wasn’t that, which made us feel better. It was something else, which we never quite got to the bottom of. They were very enthusiastic, whatever it was. Perhaps I should ask a Frenchman. I probably did at some point but can’t remember it now…”

So Phil (and Chester) had bedded in to their new roles by now?

“Oh yes, we weren’t worried at this point. Obviously when we’d first started (with Phil singing), he was a bit concerned when the odd person would shout, ‘Where’s Peter?’ and stuff. But even that was done with affection. 

“Also, we’d not had fantastic success live touring The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway, because we weren’t playing any old stuff. So now that we were touring A Trick Of The Tail and Wind & Wuthering and including old hits and important songs like Supper’s Ready again, the audience were on our side.

“As for Chester, the thing with having different drummers is that with some songs you don’t get the feel you had on the album, but other songs you get something better. So I know Eleventh Earl Of Mar isn’t on there, but it was much better with Chester. 

“And we slightly changed things like In The Cage, which became a much more rocky thing. Not just because Chester was drumming but because our approach shifted. In The Cage sounds too jazzy on The Lamb Lies Down…, I think. And there’s a track with Bill [Bruford] on Seconds Out, isn’t there? He really took to The Cinema Show, the two of them [he and Phil] played that really well, so we wanted to leave that on there.”

You left out the piano intro on Fifth Of Fifth…

“Did I? Ah yes. We didn’t have a proper grand piano to play live, so I tried to play it on this electric piano, but it had no touch sensitivity. I had to drop an octave in the middle, too, because it didn’t have the high octave. In those days we didn’t have the facility to play a proper piano – in fact, everything then was compromised. 

“You couldn’t do half the things you played on the record, you had to change things. But that was OK: you had to come up with new solutions. Of course nowadays everything would be different.”

What do you recall about the feel of the shows themselves?

“People always used to say we sounded better live than on record. I’m not sure that was true, but we heard it a lot at the time. And the Genesis show then was quite innovative in what it did visually. People got a memory of that when they bought Seconds Out. It probably got more extravagant over the years, but we were one of the pioneer bands when it came to lighting. 

“We pioneered the Varilight, which is now ubiquitous. That was when people first saw it, and it was a very hot thing. You had lights that could change colours, 100 lights for one colour and 100 for another – that was a huge change from the early days! The front cover of the album is the Afterglow effect.”

Another stand-out on Seconds Out has to be the gorgeous version of Carpet Crawlers…

“The strength of that song took us by surprise. It was written in a throwaway moment really. Mike and I just put together this simple – for us, anyway! – chord sequence, and Peter added this lovely melody on top. I think Phil’s voice, especially when it comes to the later verses – ‘mild-mannered Supermen’ and all that – just sounds so good. It really gives it a lift. 

“To be honest it’s a very strange lyric, if you analyse it! But over the years it’s been a stage favourite: we used it as the encore on our final tour in 2007. I appreciate music that’s simple but effective. Perhaps often Genesis’ best moments are more complex, especially in those days, but that one’s very enjoyable – even if nobody bought it as a single!”

Steve Hackett chose a strange time to leave the group – as you were mixing Seconds Out at Trident in London during the summer of ’77.

“He did. It was a curious thing, yes. Phil saw him in the street on the way to the studio and offered him a lift, and he said, ‘No, no, I’ll speak to you later’… and he’d left. I wasn’t too surprised that he didn’t stay with us forever, but I was surprised he left at the time he did. On recent albums, and obviously on Wind & Wuthering, he’d had several strong moments, so I thought maybe he’d be happier. 

“But I think he always felt a little bit of an outsider to the group and that we didn’t do enough of his music. That’s just how we were at the time. We’d do things that appealed to all of us, rather than to one or two. And to be honest, I tended to get more angry than anyone else if we didn’t do my bits, so my bits tended to end up on the records. It was a shame, in a way. 

“I missed Steve on the next album, …And Then There Were Three… as Mike was just finding his way as a lead guitarist and Steve might have made more of some of those songs.”

Was it significant that Seconds Out “broke” the US top 50?

“Our concerts in America were popular, but our records had never followed suit. And in Wind & Wuthering we’d just made our most extreme album in terms of harmonic complexity. Then perhaps after that, across the albums, we got a little more direct. Pockets of America liked us, but we meant nothing in the South or the mid-West until singles like Follow You Follow Me and Misunderstanding got a more universal appeal. 

“But at this stage we were still a niche group: to some extent in England as well. We weren’t exactly having monster hits. We were kind of ‘underground progressive’, and people who liked us liked us for that reason. Then didn’t like us so much when we became popular, just because we were popular! That’s always the way. You’re a little more exciting when not everybody likes you…”

What’s your favourite live album of all time?

“I’m not the best person to be asked this. I’m always slightly disappointed when I hear live versions of songs I love, y’know? I’m into compositions, so what I want to hear is the best possible version of that composition. 

“And usually that’s the studio version. Having said that, I’ve seen concerts I loved by Stevie Wonder, Elton John, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon… but I think in the live situation you hear things differently: it’s a one-off.”

Finally, what are you working on at present?

“Not very much, though I’m always writing this and that. There’s a feeling that Five (Banks’ 2018 classical album) has more mileage in it. It came and went very quickly. It was No.1 in the classical charts for one week then got knocked off by Alan Titchmarsh reading poems, so that was a bit of a comeuppance! It never really got enough exposure. 

“And I feel people who liked early Genesis would enjoy much of it. And… oh I’m just doing lots of gardening, a bit of golf, tennis – all the usual things, entertaining myself…”