AR: Live-Evil

Miles Davis - Live-Evil (1971)

I first saw the intriguing covers of this overwhelmingly nasty album in the garage of the iPFam abode; the CD belonged to the Jamester. He described it as something like his favorite "dark groove album" by Miles Davis and a real inspiration. I knew it was going to be somewhat like the better-known Bitches Brew but otherwise had no real idea of the kind of music that sat behind the life/birth and evil/death imagery adorning the covers. Amazingly enough, as I'm sure we were traveling with other iPFammers who most definitely were not quite as into the level of free form music contained within, Jamie stuck the disc in the player, and we got to hear a bit of the funktastic insanity on our way to somewhere in Rachacha. A drumroll kicked things off, and before I could even try to orient myself to the audio landscape, drums and bass were kicking in a heavy lockstep groove with keyboards popping up. I still remember the rush of hearing it the first time. Davis comes in with a wicked-filthy wah-wah trumpet before a minute has passed, and the trance quickly sets in. Well before we had gotten out of the car, it had been set in stone that I was getting my hands on the disc when I returned home. And I did.

Live-Evil, it turns out, is not actually a live disc, but a split recording between a live show at the Cellar Door (Dec. 19, 1970) and some studio sessions with different lineups (Feb. 6 and June 3-4, 1970). All the lineups are stellar, of course, but perhaps even moreso than usual. These feature just a ridiculous slew of future / current band leaders: John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Dave Holland, Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul, and Keith Jarret are among the veritable '27 Yankees collected in the various combos. If you're a jazzhead, you can probably mentally construct the sound just from that list and the time period - heavy electric bass and drums, electric keyboard and organ texture, all creating a little pocket for the primal wails of Davis on open / wah-wah trumpet and McLaughlin on electric, overdriven guitar. The live performances are not straight takes from the show but spliced-together segments from different songs, some even mixing the live and studio components (which are pretty seamless; you'd have to pretty sharp and focused to notice the veer). Despite that heterogeneity, the album maintains a consistent sound across both of its discs. The overall effect is concert - not just virtuosos strutting their stuff, but an intra-band creation of space that establishes a brilliant, special sound.

The album is also split between free-form funk workouts and some spacey, solo-less, almost ambient texture ballads which feature Miles and some spooky, moaning vocals on melody. The latter are quite dream-evoking - "Little Church," "Nem Um Talvez" and "Selim" ("Miles" backwards, btw) all tread on In a Silent Way and (to a lesser extent) Sketches of Spain's atmospheric turf, using sparse space and very limited percussion and basslines to paint their moods. "Medley: Gemini / Double Image" sort of sits between the two, with some growling electric guitars creating a sort of arrhythmic nightmare shade to the dreams. It's an odd bird, one that sort of points at the stylistic jumps of years to come but can't keep them in a holding pattern. Fascinating, even if it is my least favorite track.

The real money here, though, is in the high energy funk, if "funk" is even a label that can stick. I already alluded to the thrilling album opener "Sivad" (Davis backwards, btw); the disc spills out from the get-go, funk-rocking over a dirty beat in organized cacophony for four and a half minutes before settling on a very slowed down, space walk. The trumpet screams all over this album, here through a wah-wah pedal that gives things an alien edge. McLaughlin gets a turn at about the ten minute mark and delivers a spitfire solo that resembles the inner self-directed argument of a psych patient. Things slowly pick up pace as the keys kick in, leaving the last minute or so for Davis to throw shrieks o'er top. The tune is a fifteen minute joyous mess that gives a good sense of the vibe of all of these sorts of pieces on the double LP - now is as good of a time as any to emphasize that this is crazy, controlled-chaos music, worlds removed from trad jazz and, for that matter, much of more rock-sounding jazz fusion. At base, this style of music is highly disorienting, so be forewarned: you're still somewhere north of free jazz, but I still wouldn't be shocked if this stuff gave you a strand of muscular vertigo.

The anchor of this album is the mesmerizing 21 minute "What I Say," a song with an insistent, head-down bassline that gets your head bopping before the end of the first bar. Keyboards dance all over the backing syncopation, and the amazing phenomenon of turn-on-a-dime harmonies are peppered throughout. After thoroughly establishing the backbone of the beast, players take solos that weave in an out of the vamping with an impossible grace. You get the impression that if Davis et al. saw a hosing, on-fire jamband in 2010, they would appreciate it while internally shrugging and thinking, "it's been done." All the members take hold of the center spot here (well, there's no bass solo, but the bass riff is so distinctive it might as well be a minimalist one), and even the drummer(s) wraps things up with a full kit solo/duet, one that manages to stay engaging through the last beat. "What I Say" is a little bit of what I might call riff-jazz; it's one of my favorite tracks from this general electric-jazz-funk-rock Miles.

The last fifty (!) minutes of the double LP, or all but two minutes of the second disc, consists of two more of these jazz jams called "Funky Tonk" and "Inamorata And Narration." The playing is brilliant, deep, complex and rewards approximately 12,485 listens. Rather than dig through these tracks bit by bit, I'll let you seek them out - there's way too much going on to really describe here, just know that they share the aesthetic of "WIS" with the bassline not quite as much in hypnosis-mode, and Miles and the keyboards takes a bit more of the lead throughout. Oh, and the latter contains narration. Yeah.

These last two tracks probably best exhibit what I have left out during the course of calling this album all these positive things. When I think of Live-Evil, I think "overwhelmingly complicated" - there's so much happening, and such little appeal to melody, that the traditionally minded and non-musically expert (read: me) can get lost, which makes it hard to remember specifics. It is, after all, an hour and forty-two minutes of free form spirited music, so the excitement is very tractable; the "songs," maybe not so much. I remember the grooves, the silky splash of the keys and the chunk of McLaughlin best here, and these signature sounds keep it from being just a vague jam album in my head. It is notably less spastic / all over the map than, say, Agharta, imho. Miles was finding the funk, an arc of his career which would continue to develop over the rest of the decade and produce some seriously powerful if somewhat iconoclastic albums. This is a dazzling (and strangely amalgamated) collection of a few of his heaviest-hitting lineups, and if you're interested in this sort of music - and like seeing some close, perhaps-more-expert ancestors of '90s and '00s jam-banding - you'll dig this confusing work.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Faves: "Sivad" and "What I Say"