Customer Reviews

The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(4)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

I'm a rock and roll obsessed teenager - look at my reviews, and you'll see me gushing about Radiohead, Bob Dylan, The Clash, R.E.M., and Elvis Costello. Which means that I feel somewhat out of my depth trying to recommend The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965 to anyone - I know very little about jazz, and my (growing) collection would look psychotic to anyone who does: I must surely be one of the only people in the world who owns Plugged Nickel and has never heard a lick of Kind Of Blue. So this is more in the spirit of a testimonial than a straight review; I have little context to work with, and I apologize in advance. All I can write about is what I hear.

And what I hear is the sound of a GROUP of soloists, not five SOLOISTS in a group. I don't suppose that makes too much sense to anyone, but what I mean is that despite the long, harmonically amazing spotlights given to Wayne Shorter and Miles Davis, the focus (as I hear it) seems to be on the group dynamic - how they liquidly shift time, tempo, and tone around whoever is up front. I'm just amazed at the sixth-sense feeling of these performances, how drummer Tony Williams will toy with the beat while Ron Carter falls in naturally behind him without missing a single note, with Herbie Hancock keeping pace all the time with piano interjections that are more rhythmic than melodic. Speaking of Williams, I normally don't give two sticks about drummers and drumming, but...wow, he's something special, isn't he? Apparently a prodigy in his own day (how old was he when this was recorded, EIGHTEEN?), he cuts up the beat in all sorts of unpredictable ways sometimes, totally flying free, yet he never, ever, ONCE loses the underlying pulse of the song. Furthermore, although he's playing jazz rhythms, when gets loud he sounds almost like (blasphemy, I know) a ROCK drummer to me, pure physicality and muscularity. (I'm talking especially about tracks like "Four" and "Agitation.")

The music itself is both wonderfully quirky and breathtakingly melodic, usually in the same performance - Shorter tends towards jagged, strangely accented bursts of sound which resolve themselves only by implication into "lines" (I think of "Agitation," on the second set of the second night), while Davis takes off on soaringly lyrical runs which are all seduction one moment and pure aggro-fueled energy the next. As for the fact that most of the songs on Plugged Nickel are duplicated two or even three times in the course of the set, it's an absolutely moot point because for all intents and purposes these might as well be 39 different pieces. Except for little fragments of the original melodies here and there, every song on Plugged Nickel seems to be a unique entity to itself, although of course I'm sure there's much that I can't pick up yet.

One thing in particular that I love about Plugged Nickel that I guess most of you jazzers take as a given is the AMBIENCE of the whole thing. Live albums in rock (my realm of expertise) are usually messy, cavernous stadium affairs; the Plugged Nickel is of course a club, and the marvelous production picks up all sorts of wonderful ambient noises that physically transport me to Chicago on a cold, windy pre-Christmas night. Cash registers *ching!*, phones ring, and there are even hecklers of a sort (I agree with whoever wrote that the fellow who keeps on shouting out during Ron Carter's bass solo on "When I Fall In Love" deserves a bop on the head). Even better is the way you can hear the club steadily grow more and more swingin' as the sets progress - by the end of the first night, you can hear a real crowd has gathered. All of this makes the box incredibly intimate; turn down the lights, open the windows, turn up the music, and I defy you to tell me that you're not THERE in front of the Quintet as they play, sipping on expensive liquor, smoking unfiltered Pall Malls, and wishing you could toss a chair at the jerk in front of you who won't shut up.

Another observation: I don't simply see 8 CD's of stunning music, I see a complete package which contributes to the atmosphere. The box, the visual layout, the look of the discs themselves - everything is superb. The thorough, track-for-track liner notes (the content of which remains, sadly, partially inaccessible to me; I don't have the necessary background to appreciate what a "Wynton Kelly groove zone" means in reference to "No Blues," for example) are complemented by the spectacular visual imagery of the jewel case art: all stark blacks and whites, light and shadow. The photograph of that martini glass on the cover of disc 6 alone is work of art.

So that's why Plugged Nickel gets five stars from me, an ignorant and unrepentant rocker. I'm sure as I my ears develop and my sense of history is refined I'll come back and be bowled over by the significance of all of this in terms of the future of jazz, but for now what I am swept away by is the music and EXPERIENCE of hearing it. Music to fly to, music to cry to, intellectual and forceful, gentle and brutal, made by a group of five self-effacing leaders - sweet paradoxes, each and every one. Nothing gets old, nothing gets repetitive, and you get the impression that this is a well they could have drawn water from over and over again without running dry, if they had only felt like it.

I could say that after hearing The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel I'm going to go out and buy all of the Miles Davis Quintet's albums tomorrow, but that would be a lie.

Because, don'tcha know, I already did.

Go without espresso for a month. Pack your own sandwich, make your own soup. have your kid pay his/her own tuition. Save your money anyway you wish but buy this set. This is such an extraordinary document of one of the very greatest groups in all of music one would be remiss in not including it in one's collection.

Recorded over two nights at the Plugged Nickle nightclub in Chicago during 1965 this includes all of the music (approx. 6 hours) played during six sets over a two evening engagement. Frankly, it doesn't get any better than this. Captured at a peak level this band was pushing the boundaries and creating a group approach to the music that current musicians still are using as a road map. Incredibly influential at the time, the availability of this recording demonstrates how fresh and absolutely contemporary the Miles Davis Quintet's music remains 30+ years later.

Interestingly, the 6 or so hours of music consists of only twenty tunes. Some are played a number of times and some appear only once. "The Theme" appears in versions ranging from 22 seconds to 10 minutes 29 seconds. And in no small part that is what makes this set so extraordinary. By adhering to a relatively limited list of tunes over the two nights of performance the group demonstrates an astonishing ability to make the commonplace absolutely of the moment. "Stella By Starlight", for example, appears in three rather different incarnations, each unique from the other and each taking a 'standard' and making something else entirely of it. The tunes become the structure for incredible harmonic invention and rhythmic originality. Avoiding repeated patterns while finding absolute encouragement and support within the group itself each tune is it's own adventure. And after all, that is the goal of improvised music. Few groups have ever achieved this level of accomplishment, fewer still have left such a worthy document of those efforts.

Very important music.

If I were to recommend one Miles album, I'd still stick to Kind of Blue, Miles Smiles or one his fusion albums. However, if you wanted an in depth exposure to Miles' music or jazz in general, you couldn't go wrong with the Complete Plugged Nickel set. 1) Music is ultimately about concepts, combined with skill. While Miles' technique was subpar on this recording - lots of cracked notes, for example, the concepts were all there. For example, Tony Williams is constantly juggling the rhythm and changing meters. Ron Carter re-energizes old jazz standards with funky, modern bass lines. The entire group took old tunes and completely re-worked them so they had an exciting new feel - and it works. If that isn't jazz, then what is? 2) The individual players: Each player went on further affect jazz and the music beyond jazz. If you want to see Wayne Shorter stretching out and applying his new ideas to old tunes, then listen to these recordings. Miles approach to the band was precursor to the heady, atmospheric sound of his fusion albums. Even with the squawked notes from Miles, every jazz instrumentalist can learn something by listening to the individuals on this album. Wayne and Hancock's harmonic ideas, Williams stunning cymbal work and even Miles' celebrated sense of space are all worth listening to. 3) The group sound: the feel of this group is nothing short of wonderful. There really isn't another group that pulled it off in quite the same way. For example, the Art Blakey group sound revolved around tight arrangements and driving rhythms. Coltrane quartet was built on repeating modal vamps - free based on simplicity. The Miles group was something else - complete felxibility organized around highly abstract harmonic sequences. You can hear it in all of the Miles recordings of the mid 1960's of the mid-1969's. Here you see it done with jazz standards, rather than the original compositions found on ESP, Nefrititi and Miles Smiles. Overall, you get something that is very rare in the history of art - five virtuosos at or near the peak of their abilities experimenting, having fun and holding no punches but still retaining the beauty and structure of the material they're working with. What really makes the whole thing click is that you see the process unfolding over eight hours. Would you pay ... to hear Melville discuss his novels with Hawthorne? or Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo chat about painting? That's what you get here. A few drawbacks, small in the big picture, but it might be an issue for some buyers. First, Miles clams a lot of notes. As the box set progresses, he intentionally twists notes but some of it is just a plain screw up. Second, you have to turn the stereo up to really hear Herbie Hancock - the sound mix is less than perfect. Third, the audience is loud. You can hear hear everything. But what can I say? It's still great music.

When Wayne Shorter entered Miles' group in the mid-60's, things exploded - and the results are nowhere better to be heard than on this magnificent, cataclysmic set! Compared to live recordings of just a few years back, there has been a profound change in the music - it's dark, introvert, existential, raw, imaginative beyond belief. Miles' own playing is not at its best, but clearly he is the center around which this musical cycloon whirls. And the band plays like no-one else has played before or since. The compositions are more or less irrelevant - after the casual presentation of the theme it more or less sounds the same on all the tracks, thundering along in (mostly) 4/4 time. This is a vision of a universe, a dark, splintering world with only the creative spirit creating coherance. Those wanting pretty versions of "My Funny Valentine" are advised to look elsewhere!

Many of the adulating comments made by other reviewers about this box set are valid and should be taken seriously. This is a truly historical box set which provides the most in-depth overview of Miles' second great quintet (or at least their live act -- their studio albums are considerably different) currently available on record. On this album one can experience the dynamic interplay and fluxuating feels and tempos of the rhythm section (arguably the best in jazz history), the daring chromaticism and innovative phrasing of Wayne Shortner on tenor, the creative interpretations of a number of jazz standards (the same tune is often played in a remarkably different way in different sets), and interesting reworking of a number of Miles' own tunes, including a blistering So What? played at a bop tempo.

So why not give it five stars? Well, for me the weak link in all of this is Miles himself. His playing on this box set is, quite frankly, subpar. A big part of the reason is that he had spent much of 1965 in the hospital due to health problems and had not played much trumpet as a result. His solos, while still brilliantly concieved, come off a bit ragged at points because of flubbed high notes, inprecise phrasing, and a diminution of the clear, singing tone that is so beloved by his fans (myself included). This is not to say that his playing is awful--it's still fairly listenable. But it's not Miles at his best, and that's one of the reasons why I have to give it four stars instead of five.

The other complaint is that while I am mindful that the sound quality is supposedly much improved from the original vinyl recording (which I have never heard), it is still not great. Foremost among my issues with the sound is that Hancock's piano is very far back in the mix, making it difficult to discern exactly what he's playing at times. Also, the crowd noise is a little too loud, especially during some of the ballads, when the din of conversation is clearly audible (along with the cash register and phone).

Having said all this, as a fan of Miles I don't regret buying the box set at all and have been listening to it straight ever since I got it about a month ago. However, if you are not a Miles fan, or if you are obsesive about sound quality, I would recommend getting the highlights album instead...

With 18 customer reviews (thus far) and an excellent editorial review by the Amazon staff, there is nothing really left to add to the musical analysis of this magnificent box set. However, I did want to take a moment to praise the sound quality of this collection. When I first got into jazz in the late 80s, Miles Davis' single CD "Cookin' At The Plugged Nickel" on Columbia Jazz Masterpieces (now long out of print) was one of the first discs I purchased. I had been told by jazz educator/musician Ojeda Penn that this was the first classic look at Miles' second famous quintet, and that it was a great purchase since classic albums like "ESP," "Miles Smiles" and "The Sorceror" had yet to be reissued on CD. And he was right, the music was terrific but the sound quality sucked. I traded that CD in long ago, but my lasting memory of it was some guy in the crowd yelling in a deep Barry White baritone "thank the bass player, thank the bass player" during the song "Miles" -- a funny moment for sure but not something you wanted to focus on after repeated listenings. As a result I always had reservations about plunking down three figures for something that didn't sound very good. Well, the other day I finally bought this box set and I was simply amazed at the remastering job! The sound quality on the "Plugged Nickel" Box is light years ahead of that initial album I purchased. Major kudos to the Sony engineers -- after two complete listenings I have yet to discover my favorite "bass player" line.

Miles Davis is supposedly a more commercial and "accessible" musician than his colleagues in the 1960s - but that is totally false, as is demonstrated by the Plugged Nickel sessions. While Coltrane was deconstructing jazz in his own way, Miles' group followed a parallel and quite separate path.

Miles' second quintet have found ways of presenting melodies, even well-known melodies, in ways unimaginable in 1960. The days of chord progressions are long forgotten - when Miles plays a bop tune like Walkin', it's almost a shock when he leaves the tidy world of bebop behind and launches into the unknown.

Coltrane had discovered that modal jazz could surge with an energy and abandon inconceiveable to bebop. Simultaneously, Miles was discovering the more directly expressive possibilities. He and Wayne Shorter now spit out short, intense phrases separated by long silences. The abandonment of chord progressions makes these phrases, and the pauses, as long or as short as the musician desires.
The way the melodies are presented is now startling. Whereas Coltrane took advantage of the modal form to concentrate on charging from one pinnacle of energy to another, Miles' quintet seems to present their improvisations in tiny, unique packages like the splashy, cursive ideograms of Chinese calligraphy.

The Plugged Nickel performances have ignited my interest in this, the alternate style to Trane's classic quartet of the same period.

I think that Coltrane's Live at Birdland is truly innovative as a live recording because it chooses to use the live medium as an opportunity to explore new songs and a new way of playing instead of rehashing old favorites to sell another record. I have considered that the best live recording of jazz since I began listening to jazz. I have owned The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel set for about 5 years now and have to say that I am still getting a grasp on what is going on there--which is a good thing. There is a lot going on and certainly more, I think, than what surfaced on the studio albums of the second great quintet. That's not to say that Miles Smiles, etc. are not great albums; this collection is just that much better.

As a side note: Thankfully, Columbia issued this album in a different format from the box sets later issued. There is no "book format." Each CD gets its own case and there is a seperate, disconnected book which allows the listener to peruse the liner notes without having to hold the whole collection in his or her hands. Columbia would be well-served by going back to this design.

Everything in the collection would seem at first glance to be a cover of earlier work but that would almost be like saying that a Monk version of an Ellington tune is simply a cover. The versions here mark almost no resemblence to the prior versions that they can easily be classified as completely new songs. There is such a wealth of variation here--interesting variation, not repetitive, multiple-track variation--that you could easily see the box set as 7 or 8 seperate albums.

The sound quality is excellent. The mic tends to pick up Miles a little stronger than the rest but that is to be expected. But overall, these were sets milked pretty close to the stage, if not right on top of it. Wayne Shorter is brilliant throughout and Hancock, Williams and Carter are not too bad either.

I will leave the set details to someone else. I don't want to spoil it for you or set your expectations in the wrong way. Most people who would buy this album would be familiar enough to make their best judgement based on what they can see on the song listings.

Trust me. I highly recommend this album and have been waiting five years to say so. This is well worth your money.

Let's just get this straight: this is the best music you will ever hear in your entire life. A lot of stuff comes close to this, but nothing ever reaches this. This is the pinnacle in music. Period.

The level of interplay that this group developed is remarkable, from Tony responding to what a soloist is doing, to Ron Carter switching rythyms on his bass and making a chorus of Stella By Starlight twice as long to give a certain effect (Disc 4, Track 2, around 2:50), to Herbie Hancock's 'comping that NEVER got in the way, but rather provides inspiration. It is though the five of these guys can read eachother's minds. And rather than playing these standards without any passion, Tony injects fury into these songs to make them something totally different.

I have read reviews on this album complaining about how all they play is standards, and all those great tunes you hear on their records, esp. Miles Smiles, are left out. No need to be discouraged. Instead of being disapointed, the listener is enlightened in the different way each one of these songs are treated, even the same song is played more than once in this box set (walkin', stella by starlight, ect.).
As Miles said in his autobiography, "I was beginning to realize that Tony and this group could play anything they wanted to." And this album proves him correct--this music is phenominal, 30 years and more after it was released musicians are still changing their music to sound like this group (Wynton Marsalis, Brad Mehldau, ect.)
This group exercised "freedom within form," and the result is absolutely stunning. My suggestion: buy this immediately and find out what I'm talking about.

Look at the setlist for this 8-CD box, with its mix of standards, ballads and a few originals, and you might mistake it for one of those 50s albums that Miles recorded for Prestige. But the group on these recordings -- Davis, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams -- takes those recordings and turns them inside out. A tune like "I Fall in Love too Easily" will appear several times and on each version, sound completely different. "Stella by Starlight" might begin at a crawl, switch into a waltz on and off, acquire a bluesy or funky groove, and speed up from a snail's crawl to a Formula One pace only to slow down again. The original harmony of the tunes is often disregarded for whatever the soloist wishes to play, and the rhythm section follows right behind him. (Though just as often, it is Hancock & Williams that lead the soloist!) Miles plays a little erratically but Wayne Shorter is incredible; his playing is sometimes soft and melodic, sometimes intense and expressionistic, but always sparse and enigmatic. I find this to be the most difficult of all the official Miles Davis recordings; though it doesn't feature the outright abrasiveness of the electric albums, the abstract, exploratory and skeletal approach to these tunes can be hard to follow without concentration. But once you figure what's going on, there are hours of enjoyment and discovery in these seven sets of live jazz from December 22-23, 1965. This is in the Miles Davis top ten.