Way More Than Kind Of Cool Funky Brilliant

A brief rant: it truly bites on this site when epinions.com can correctly spell the name of this album and have it as a link, yet I cannot correctly spell the name of the title song in the body of my review, instead having to come across like an amateur who can't spell, all to make happy a few dickweed hypocritical prudes who probably never visit this site anyway.

I can get away with dickweed, but not (synonym for single mother dog)?

Anyway.

Withdrawn, surly musical icon begins career by playing traditional acoustic music as well as his own outstanding originals. Decides in the mid-to-late 60s to "go electric" Critics and fans left stunned and saddened.

Sound familiar?

I don't understand why Biitches Brew came as such a shock. There are two reasons I don't understand. My first reason lies within the music that Miles had been making throughout his life. I'm not just talking about "In A Silent Way" either. Before last week, I had never heard any of the tracks off of this l.p. I believe that the man who wet-nursed Kind of Blue and Cookin' was, in fact, going to eventually have to make this album also.

Beneath the tunefulness of such classics as All Blues lay restless and almost hyper soundscapes. Miles was proving himself to be a master of not just blues and jazz, but a master of mood also, or rather what moods sound like and the sounds and moods that can be created from particular combinations. Always wanting to increase his palette, and playing jazz in a time when traditional jazz was on the outs and traditional jazz venues like piano bars were either boarding up or only open on the weekends, Miles needed something new.

Enough of the history lesson: The music itself.

"Biitches Brew" is 27 far too short minutes of music combining an elephantine horn, Elvin Jones style drumming and the best bass vamp. The song isn't a shout out to an arena full of fans, but a cry to the edge of the universe -- the sound of wild stampeding primordial Africa, a scene I am sure many have reached in mescaline or LSD hazes.

"Spanish Key": rhythm section has to play in a far more locked-in mode. One can hear the influence of Sly Stone anchoring the jabs and flying shards of John Mclaughlin's electric guitar. One can also hear the amble of that sexy private dick who gets all the chicks. This is the sound of Times Square on any particular midnight between 1965 and Rudy Giuliani. This isn't melody nicely humming, it's mood that chugafunks in the rhythms, lays down the mellow in the keyboards, keeps it short sharp in the horns.

The stellaricity of this boxed set continues with the then-reviled now-classic "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down" With such a title comes again a very tight rhythm section punctuated by Miles Davis's and Wayne Shorter's stabs of brass. Biitches Brew represents my first step into so-called modern jazz or fusion and I've heard nothing that isn't jazz at its very most fundamental. Improvisation is about ways of reconfiguring melody.

Melody can be stretched, contorted, it can be in 3/4 and in twelve bar and other signatures and modes all in the same song. This album was recorded in much the way that Kind of Blue was also done, with Miles bringing to a session only a rough sketch of a song. There are sketches of melodies in all these songs, or rather the idea of what makes a melody. That's not only why you won't be able to shake Pharaoh's Dance, Biitches Brew or Miles Runs the Voodoo Down for days, it's also why you wont want to. This music is tones and textures.

Smooth nylon silk is the best texture to describe the indelible vamps on bass which are hypnotic and often just one or two notes over and over. Miles's method of writing the bass line was quite complex. He said "write me one of them bass lines." Voila. It's as easy as cooking chicken marinara for five. Step one: drive to restaurant... (okay, enough of my vaudeville act). The conflagration of Shorter and Davis is the bewitched child running with the silk in circles over his or her head all day. It's child-like, it's rough mood cityish, and when it comes to sexy, it makes Led Zep IV sound and feel like two pimples and a quick grope. Melody in its brief bursts when it does appear in Shorter's or Davis's or Dave Holland -- or, quick, just name any seminal jazz figure of the past 25 years -- chances are they appeared, and probably first, on this album. Herbie Hancock -- yup. Chick Corea. Yep. Dave Holland, absotively. Bill Cobham, posolutely.

As this is a boxed set, there are plenty of extras. As this is a rather pricey boxed set, where the original alone was pretty challenging and heady stuff, something must be said about the extra tracks and maybe even the essays. This isn't music with neat and concise melodies on either side of the released/unreleased divide, and that's not a put down of either side -- George Jones and The Ramones are to the left and right of this one in my CD collection (My theme song's first lyric would be: "20-20-20-24 Hours Ago-oh-oh he stopped loving Yaphet today"). The reflections and test tube experimentations that turn up on Discs 3 and 4 are, in some cases, worthy numbers like Guinnevere by David Crosby (yes, THAT David Crosby)but they mostly represent fascinations that don't quite gel. But maybe when I hit my 100th fascinated listen I'll change my mind. I'm only number 43 right now.

People who dig the sonics on this might also love Sgt. Peppers by the Beatles, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys. And if you already like this and haven't already shook your bootyliciousness to Parliament, Funkadelic, or the P-Funk All Stars, or Sly And The Family Stoned -- why are you reading this? Go give up da funk go yet yourself higher higher higher then tear the roof off the mutha.

Reflections and essays in boxed sets to me are mostly curios. I buy a CD to listen to the music. I'm sure the essays are wonderful and revelatory, but my head is already full of enough of arcane trivia. I will always remember that the 2 most important events in Davis's life in 1967 were: 1) The death of John Coltrane, who no one, not even Miles, knew was sick and 2) Herbie Hancock playing the electric piano. Multiply that times 10 billion other arcane and, in the practical world, useless facts, add a gazillion-song jukebox and some writing talent and you have my brain in a nutshell. I will know that fact forever. Will I ever know how to get a third date?

I'm a music and movie critic who champions and loves unhip music and movies. That's answer enough.