Customer Reviews

Complete on the Corner Sessions

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The key to understanding what Miles was doing in The Complete On The Corner Sessions is revealed in a Changes magazine interview in 1974: "I think it's time that people changed where they put the melody. The melody can be in the bass, or a drum sound, or just a sound".

With these sessions, Miles left behind the standard approach of the solo as the sole source of melody. From the first notes of "On The Corner", the soloist became one of the many sources of melody, which now coming from all corners of the band. A large part of this was the work of a young Englishman named Paul Buckmaster, who Miles met in 1969. He was greatly impressed by Paul's sophisticated version of this approach, which came out of his fascination with composers such as Stockhausen, Lutoslawski, and other 20th century masters.

The set incudes complete takes of the "On The Corner" sessions with new mixes that allows the listener to really hear all the inner parts so this approach can be fully appreciated, as well the original edited mixes. One fabulous feature is notes by Paul Buckmaster giving the untold story of how this record came about, detailing the process that he and Miles used.

This set also includes tracks from "Get Up With It", an equally important and influencial record for the world beyond jazz. "Rated X" has been cited by some producers as the genesis for dark drum and bass. Brian Eno considers "He Loved Him Madly" as major inspiration for his ambient works that followed.

But best of all this set includes around 2 hours and 45 minutes on unreleased tracks, all of which this reviewer would classify as very worthwhile. They are too numerous to list, but included are great takes from the large group that threw sitar and tabla into mix, plenty from guitarist Pete Cosey, reedman David Liebman, and the unmatchable bass of Michael Henderson, whose rock solid grooves were central to all this music.

For jazz fans who believe there is life beyond 1967 and electronic fans looking for new ideas, this set is a piece of history that's worth the big price.

If you are a fan of "On the Corner" chances are you are going to purchase it (if you haven't heard "On the Corner" by all means check it out now). Otherwise, you may find some of the out-takes to be repeatitive and uninteresting (they are called out-takes for a reason). Also this really should be titled Miles 1972-5 as it goes way beyond the 1972 "On the Corner" sessions (though the actual out-takes of "On the Corner" itself are essential listening for anyone who is into that album). Some of the material is on "Big Fun" and "Get Up With It" as well. Also the titles of the unreleased materials were guestimates and from what I've read they were edited and remixed as well. I would agree with one reviewer that the official live albums are superior but I personally would start with "In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall" (with the actual "On the Corner" line up)as well as "Pangaea" and "Agharta" (if you can find the official Japanese remasters). Also some of the later pieces such as "Minnie" and "Hip Skip" tend to reminescent of Miles 80's stuff (which fortunately they are not doing a retrospective of, by then he was dangerously close to smooth jazz) which shows that had Miles not gone into retirement that he would have still lost his edge. This does not in anyway, diminish my enthusiasm for "On the Corner" at all. Still if you enjoyed the multiple out-takes of the same track on the "Complete Jack Johnson Sessions" (actually a better boxset overall) and are a completist, then this may be your thing).

I got this a few days ago and have listened through the entire box and re-listened to some of the things I had not heard before.

Firstly: The packaging is quite impressive. The set comes in a metal box with color reproductions of the original artwork raised into the metal and printed in color. The booklet inside is beautifully printed with a number of new illustrations by Corky McCoy. The liner notes are mostly reprinted from the most recent remaster of the stand alone On The Corner CD but without the track details. There is a nice essay from Paul Buckmaster though.

The music:

Disc 1) This is all previously unreleased material. I regard this material as essential listening. You get to hear the unedited master recording of the material that makes up the original LP. In addition there are some strong recordings that didn't make the original cut. Great stuff!

Disc 2) Ife is already available on Big Fun and Rated X on Get Up With It. The balance again is unreleased material. The two pieces entitled Turnaround and U-Turnaround are the basis for the frenetic number which opened Miles' live concerts with the "funk collective" but are clearly in development here. Interesting but not particularly riveting for this listener.

Disc 3) Other than Billy Preston (Get Up With It), this is a CD of previously unreleased material. I won't comment on this having heard this side only once.

Disc 4) Calypso Frelimo and He Loved Him Madly - both from Get Up With It. No new material here.

Disc 5) Maiysha and Mtume - both from Get Up With It. The balance of this disk is previously unreleased. What They Do is absolutely burning! This track stands with the best of any of the live material from the "funk collective" in my view. Scorched earth intensity live in the studio - I regard this as essential.

Disc 6) On The Corner presented as Miles and Teo originally envisioned it with the addition of two 45 RPM sides.

Is this worth owning? For me; absolutely, however I am a fairly hardcore fanatic when it comes to Miles' electric music. Quite a bit of this is available on On The Corner and Get Up With It - both available in recent (and very good) remasters. Nevertheless, the wealth of previously unreleased recordings here make this essential for me. The sound is superb since all of this is mastered 24/96.

The only reason I left off a star is because of all the previously released material in this set. Most hard core fans ( and let's face it, that's who is buying the box sets ) already have On The Corner and Get Up With It

let's see ... well over $20 per cd for six cds of material that has been, for the most part, already released in finished studio form, that is, as intended by Miles and Macero, on the single disc On The Corner and the double disc Get Up With It, or, in blistering live form, on the fantastic Dark Magus. if this set were priced in the range of how the original metal-spine release of the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions was when it debuted in 2003 ($69.95 or so, if I remember my purchase price correctly- I guess it could be around $79.95 for this particular set, as it does have one additional disc), I wouldn't be posting this 1 star review, but hey, you know what, Sony needs to be called out for their marked greed...

In November 1971, Miles Davis made a momentous decision. He dismissed his old band, and the last remaining links to his jazz roots; musicians such as Keith Jarrett and Gary Bartz, who were steeped in the old bop/postbop tradition.

In 1972, facing unexpected attention from the IRS, a terrible hip problem, an attempted murder on himself and a debilitating cocaine addiction, Miles made another of his radical artistic changes. People had been accusing him of transplanting jazz improv in top of funk and rock beats, an accusation that gained more force as his music became more funky through late 1970 and the whole of 1971.

However, in 1972 Miles made an even more extreme leap in that direction, hiring musicians who often had no links whatever with the jazz tradition - such as Pete Cosey, Khalil Balakrishna and his old bass player Michael Henderson.

In 1972, Miles's music became extremely dense and fugue-like, layering instrumental lines on top of each other in a kind of percussive melange, perhaps best demonstrated by the track "On the Corner". Even Miles's trumpet, normally electrified, becomes little more than another percussive voice. The last traces of a jazz beat are gone. Beats are often stiff funk-style drum riffs under repetitious bass ostinatos.

In the studio Miles began to splice stuff together to an extent not previously attempted. For example, "Rated X" is a dizzyingly complex percussion track squashed together with a completely unrelated organ solo by Miles. Tape loops and small samples gave a foreshadowing of modern hip-hop techniques. For example, the original "Black Satin" is almost unrecogniseable here, as the final result was mixed liberally with drum loops, an unrelated bass line, and weird samples of clapping and whistling.

In 1973 Miles sacked a lot of the extraneous members of his band, and his music became a little less dense and more like his earlier styles, concentrating more on solos. Two electric guitarists, Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas (Lucas recogniseable by his vibrato and effects pedals, Cosey by his aggressive bluesy style) were hired, along with David Liebman on the sax and Al Foster on drums. The aggressive style of this band is exemplified in tracks like "Calypso Frelimo", with its endless ostinatos and fierce soloing over a repetitious drum groove. However, this band could also be tender, as on the remarkable "Mr Foster", aka "For Dave", which became a live staple for Miles in 1973-5.

Miles's style remained mostly stable from 1973 to 1975. His music seemed to become more melancholic, as shown in "Mr Foster" and "He Loved Him Madly", which share a brooding, mournful air. Miles's increasing health problems, drug abuse and depression probably affected this mood.

Even the hard rocking tracks like "U-Turnaround" (aka Agharta Prelude") seem infused with a sense of experimentation and mature emotion that seem far removed from mere pop-based fusion. By August 1975, his music was funereal and morbid, with weaker solos from the master and an increasing use of strange synthesised samples. His last recorded concert before his retirement contains a version of "Ife" making use of strange ocean sounds and an almost total lack of melody.

This box set is ideal for anyone obsessed with the music of this later period. However, to me this particular period is best experienced through Miles's live performances. Many of the unreleased tracks seem not very distinguished. Someone who is not a fan of this period is likely to find them a little repetitious and perhaps gloomy.

Like a lot of people, I held off buying this for a while because I had much of the music already, and the price tag was so extravagant. Eventually the price did come down.

Most people reading this know what "On the Corner" sounds like - deep, "black", in-your-face aggressive, and above all HIGHLY RHYTHMIC (and strikingly unmelodic). Some reading this are probably also familiar with the material from "Get Up With It" which is dense and great in its own unique take-it-or-leave-it way.

Is there a substantial amount of new material? Heck yes as it turns out. Arranged chronologically as it is it really does amount to a dramatic expansion of what we have of Studio Miles, 1972-74. I want to point out that while at a glance Disc 1 looks from the titling like a rehash of material that is assembled in the final mix - as was some of the "Complete Jack Johnson" box - it is actually quite different and almost an alternate album's worth of stuff to my ears. I listened to that disc last but it actually put the biggest smile on my face.

Like the "Slient Way" and "Bitches Brew" boxes, this augments what we had of the period and lays down a more definitive and fulfilling picture of Miles' work at the time. Now, it's not the most friendly and inviting music out there, and at times it sounds static. That's what Miles was playing with and shaping, and some of this is the unused clay. To a fan of the music, this is a joy. Best packaging of the series too, I love the way the figures jut out of the metal.

It is understandable why this music was so unjustly trashed when it came out in 1973. For the most part, jazz critics and fans thought of funk as pimpy street trash, and people listening to the Ohio Players or Sly Stone probably didn't understand the more esoteric directions in jazz.

This music mixes both, and is amazing. The reduntant grooves come out of funk, but Miles mixed in timing concepts and musical reductions cooked up by Stockhausen, and by association, the great German band, Can. (Can was also ripping off Miles at this point, and if this sounds circular, in music, theivery among the Gods usually is.) The result was a powerful template for improvasation.

Hostle, provocative, expermental and sometimes impenitrable, this is defiantely music you have to sit with. It is funk as a canvas for sound, not dance music to party to. It makes you think of the pusher on the sidewalk, not the kids in the discos. But it is like a painting that seems to change colors the more you look. There are truckloads of nuances in this music.

This material also provided the basic structures for Hip Hop and Dance Music. It could pass for being brand new.

There is a lot to mine on this mammouth set. But the remastering breathes new life into the music, and there is a lot of subtance here. The basslines are a lot fatter than on vynal, and you can hear all those percussive snips and snaps Miles was going after. Hearing the music in one big capsule such as this also shows you how diverse and ambitous Miles' framework actually was; this gets overlooked, because these recordings were origonally released in such a fragmented way.

Absolutley worth taking the plunge.

This 6-disc set chronicling Miles Davis' studio recordings from 1972-1975 is outstanding. It features about 2 discs worth of previously unreleased material, all of which I consider to be indispensible. The sound is improved as the entire set got 24/96 remastering treatment from Sony. Trying to list out who is playing here would be an exercise in futility, as the sidemen are too numerous to list. Suffice to say, this set features some unreleased McGlaughlin work from the actual On the Corner Sessions, as well as some unreleased material in the vein of the straight-up uberfunk found on the albums "Get Up With It" and "Big Fun".
Kudos to Sony for the fantastic job they have done with the Miles Davis box sets. The metal spine packaging for this release is beautiful, with an enormous booklet that features complete track listings, session details, and boatloads of liner notes and photos. I have a few of these sets, and the quality of the presentation is fantastic. Expensive? Yes, but eminently worth it for the Miles completist like myself. And as with all of these sets, the price drops significantly after the first few months and it's available on this site for a fraction of list price.
This set is highly recommended for fans of Miles' electric period. Newcomers had better steer clear of this set until they have listened to the official releases from this time period. Miles Davis' music from this era is extremely polarizing...people either love it or hate it. I guess that's what happens when you push music itself to the limit.

Anyone who doesnt already know this item has been discontinued and has now become rare. I absolutly love this set. I sold it on half.com for $90 and people were complaining. The list price for amazon is 228 new right now so anyone considering selling this item you might want to hang on to it.As far as the 1/2 star reviews go I dont think these poeple understand the idea of full recording. Do we just skip song to song now adays or do we sit and listen to what a musician was trying to convey through the entire creation process. Maybe those reviewers dont understand what creation is, they might as well go back to running there buisnesses striving for a goal of financial dominance. Go suck on it and realize how hard it is to create something as an extension of your soul. GO MILES FUNK FUNK FUNK

Luckily I really wasn't into miles when this set came out in 2007 because apparently it was going for a price of $140. I got my set used at an FYE (electronics store) for 89.99 and i haven't turned back since. I think that a lot of people hear a lot of contradictory statements when it comes to this set, "its amazing" "its confusing" "its art" "it sucks". I think though, that if you're a miles fan (someone who's already purchased one of the eight box sets or contains a wide array of his cds, for example workin' with the miles davis quintet but also big fun) then i think you should get this box set. It represents a period in a musicians career that you can't find anywhere else, in the sense that it's not like dizzy was playing hard bop but then playing funk jazz fusion. I love the ability to open up the complete miles and gil to listen to i love you porgy, but then go open this and listen to the unedited on the corner. While these jams to some people might not have any direction, i say to them, would you have direction at that time? miles was doing something that was never heard before, there was no blueprint to follow or line to walk. he was venturing into music that was greatly undiscovered at the time. What he did with what he had, in my opinion, had an amazing outcome. Bottom line, i think if you're a miles fan, then this music is worth checking out.