You're Under Arrest

Miles Davis | Format: Audio CD

Product Details

• Audio CD (August 2, 1989)
• Number of Discs: 1
• Label: Sony
• ASIN: B000002642
• Also Available in: Audio CD  |  Audio Cassette  |  Vinyl  |  MP3 Download
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #269,506 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Reinvigoration through an infusion of modern pop standards., December 9, 2008

By 

Michael Stack (North Chelmsford, MA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You're Under Arrest (Audio CD)

Another album that's suffered unfairly in the face of critics in the lexicon of '80s Miles Davis, "You're Under Arrest" isn't exactly a masterpiece, but it's a whole lot better than most people give it credit for. Their biases are based on a distaste for pop music and Miles Davis' decision to cover a pair of contemporary pop songs. But I've always felt that digging below the melody you're hearing, "You're Under Arrest", while a bit uneven, has a lot of really fantastic material.

Let's not shy away from discussing the pop songs outright though-- Davis made the controversial decision to cover Michael Jackson's "Human Nature" and Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time", two highly successful contemporary pop songs. What's curious is the universal distaste for this action-- in the '50s, Miles Davis established his reputation by, among other things, blowing covers of contemporary pop ballads. While he'd stopped doing that in the '70s, the criticism has always felt to me based on a musical snobbery (and this is coming from a self-professed music snob). Davis' chops were not what they used to be-- years of drug use and a several year layoff are not kind to brass musicians-- the instrument's demands to physical conditioning are high. But what Miles lacked in chops he never really lost in emotive quality, and nowhere is that more obvious then in his optimistic reading of "Human Nature" and his yearning on "Time After Time". In playing modern pop ballads, he seems to have rediscovered some of the fragile beauty in his playing he largely left behind with the advent of fusion.

Is it for everyone? Not really, I get that, but I'd think it'd be the choice of instrumentation rather than the selection of material that would be most difficult to digest. Then again, the dislike of electric instruments is another case of jazz snobbery, but I digress...

The point is, both pieces get great readings and are critical parts of the Davis lexicon. The balance of the originals on the album are a bit weak, there's a trending towards and electric reggae that, while it seems to get quite decent playing out of Davis ("Something's On Your Mind"), it's nothing that stops me in my tracks. It's this inconsistency that stops me from recommending the album highly-- it's inconsistent, with snippets of spoken word (opener "One Phone Call/Street Scene") and dodball interludes ("Katia Prelude"). None of it's awful, but it makes for an inconsistent record.

The bottom line is though, "You're Under Arrest" is a whole lot better than people give it credit for-- newcomers to late Miles should start with the excellent Tutu, but this is not necessarily a horrible second stop.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Arresting Concept..., August 2, 2000

By 

Armando M. Mesa (Chandler, AZ) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: You're Under Arrest (Audio CD)

I have no harsh words of criticism for Miles' 1985 pop-soft jazz effort. While so-called die hard fans of Miles or jazz used adjectives such as "flop", "poor quality", and "worst", it is anything but...The only slight unstable choices he made was to do cover instrumentals of Michael Jackson's Human Nature and Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time at a time when the original songs were still fresh. Instead, he should have opted for writing a couple of original tunes himself (even if they were only going to be filler material---the key word being original).These two tracks ended up being played as light elevator music tunes in department or grocery stores. The rest of the album, however, showed that Miles could adapt to the changing times and styles of music in order to reach younger listeners as well. No longer was his music exclusive to hardcore jazz purists...Miles Davis is for the entire world !

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Human Nature/Time after Time make it a bargain, December 25, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Sacramento, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You're Under Arrest (Audio CD)

Time after Time and Human Nature are wonderful songs which Miles brings a great interpretation to. Even though Miles may be doing things that are above us in this time period, lets not forget how much he changed jazz.