SIVAD [edit]
Miles Davis
Live-Evil
Columbia : 1971
MD, electric trumpet; John McLaughlin, electric guitar; Gary Bartz, soprano and alto sax; Keith Jarrett, electric piano; Michael Henderson, bass; Airto Moreira, percussion; Jack DeJohnette, drums.
Thanks for all the insightful and provocative comments on the previous post. They’ve got us thinking about entry points to the music and the tunes that first got us passionate about this thing more-or-less called “jazz.”
For Chilly, the moment was clear cut. It was buying the box set Miles Davis: The Columbia Years 1955-1985:
Some friends were jazz aficionados and recommended it for the selections from Kind of Blue and the classic 1960s quintet. Making my way through the discs I thought it was interesting but hardly overwhelming. It wasn’t until I reached the last disc that a switch got flipped. The track was “Sivad” and it was like nothing I had ever heard.
What the fuck was it? There were hiccuping spaced-out effects, a bouncing groove, and an electrified trumpet that almost sounded like a guitar. The tune seemed to bound in three directions at once. It only lasted three minutes and I played it over and over. It was thrilling and made my heart sweat, but I couldn’t seem to get to the bottom of it. There wasn’t a category in my mind for this type of music. This was… jazz?
My jazz friends were appalled that I had latched on to something they claimed was obvious crap and not even jazz. They told me I had missed the point. But while they cringed at the idea of Miles playing electrified trumpet through a wah-wah pedal, I couldn’t imagine anything cooler. Plus this was one of his very best solos. Later, I began to thrill to the different pleasures of the Gil Evans collabs and the ’60s quintet, but it never lessened my esteem for the untamed brilliance of “Sivad.”
Above is the three-minute edit of “Sivad” from the Columbia set (for the full length version, see the amazing Live-Evil). If you’re feeling it, tell a friend to check it out, buy the download, etc. etc.
And: What jazz tunes initially lit you up and eventually led you here?
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Some commenters have wondered whether it matters if “jazz ” withers on the vine. This is a not illegitimate question. Obviously it matters to us, otherwise we wouldn’t bother running this site and would keep the tunes to ourselves. From the get-go, we’ve believed lots of people would dig this music if only they were exposed to it. This is our exceedingly humble attempt to push a little more beauty into the world. (See also the fab ongoing series about Jazz Now at the redoubtable Blog Supreme.)
The “Armstrong/Parker/Coltrane continuum” could go away and the planet would keep spinning. Access to (g00d) jazz is not a protected right. There are more important things to worry about and you are free to worry about them. But let’s not forget that most adventurous jazz has thrived only when people stuck their neck out for it – booking clubs, starting labels, hosting loft throw-downs, etc. There’s always been a strain of activism keeping the music alive. Nobody gets rich off this music and it’s a labor of love all around. But it’s important to make sure the musicians get paid for their hard work and creativity. Or not, but what kind of world do you want to live in?
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NEXT MONDAY: Stay tuned for an exclusive preview of the new Henry Threadgill album This Brings Us To, which lands in October. We’ll have two choice tracks and highlights from an interview with Threadgill about his first album in almost nine years some time. It’s an impressive one, too.
Jason Guthartz // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:06 pm
“…his first album in almost nine years.”
Actually, this vinyl-only album was released four years ago:
http://www.hardedge.tv/hardedge001.html
Brad Nelson // Sep 16, 2009 at 3:23 pm
If we’re just talking glorious sound that singlehandedly thrust us into jazz obsession where every horn or stretched drum skin we stared at afterward only communicated its limitlessness, then that was the Dave Brubeck Quartet’s “Blue Rondo a la Turk,” because 9/8 jazz piano will shatter your internal rhythm and tighten your veins until your blood goes blue.
After hearing Time Out and wanting to become a piano when I grew up, I went for all the critically-lauded jazz markers, Kind of Blue and etc., but for some reason nothing affected me until I stumbled down Miles’ electric well. Bitches Brew left its dark pulse in me.
Worked backward and forward and in circles from there.
ledrew // Sep 16, 2009 at 6:10 pm
For my part, it basically went “All that Meat and No Potatoes” (Satch Plays Fats) >> “The Sidewinder” >> … >> In a Silent Way.
lj // Sep 16, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Growing up, my dad listened to (among other stuff) a lot of blues, old R&B, and some jazz, so that set the stage. Looking through his collection, I found Kind of Blue especially beautiful, and Bitches Brew was the first glimpse of a world I didn’t know existed (I sought out other electric Miles). But later on, seeing Happy Apple live (c. fall 1999)–perhaps *because* it was live–was the big sucker punch. (Speaking of, this hit me early on.)
John Garratt // Sep 16, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Jason et al,
I have the two mp3s for “Pop Start the Tape, Stop” should you want them.
John Garratt
kurt // Oct 29, 2009 at 4:09 pm
i am in serious search of the zooid lp tracks offered above. i just stumbled on this page, but if you’d be so kind as to drop me a note, i’d love to arrange something.
thanks
Alan // Jan 25, 2010 at 1:23 pm
Hi John, Catching up with this a little late, but if you still have the ‘Pop Start’ mp3s, I’d love to hear them, especially after the delights of Henry’s most recent CD. Drop me a line. Thanks, Alan
Jake // Sep 16, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I started out listening to fusion, too, but nothing as cool as Miles. I liked David Sanborn, Marcus Miller, Stanley Clarke, Tower of Power – you get the idea. I had a sense the music was unfashionable, but I liked it better than “Kind of Blue” and wasn’t too worried about other people’s tastes. (I wish I were so confident today.)
When I was in college, I got to see Masada live and got heavily into the Tzadik roster. (My favorite from that period was “Cue Sheets,” an eclectic compilation of soundtrack work by the English composer Steve Beresford.)
Lately I get most of my recommendations from blogs like this one. The most consistent picks have been from the wonderfully enthusiastic Hank Shteamer at Dark Forces Swing Blind Punches. He’s turned me on to Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor, Tim Berne, Charles Brackeen, Muhal Abrams, and loads of others. (He’s also good on food and books.)
If I were going to introduce an open-minded kid to jazz, I’d probably skip all of the above and give ‘em Tito Puente, early Roots (was anyone else taken with the scat section on “Essaywhuman?!!!??!”), or ledrew’s Satch Plays Fats. I love Kind of Blue, but it’s charms seem needlessly subtle for a newbie.
ledrew // Sep 17, 2009 at 12:34 am
Shteamer is the bomb.
Michael Bradley // Sep 16, 2009 at 11:46 pm
After saving up money and buying my first CD player in the mid 90’s, the very first CD I bought was “The Birth of Third Stream” (picked randomly in the “Jazz” section at Best Buy). I was in high school at the time and was interested in finding something new-to-me that couldn’t be found on the Top 40 radio stations. Amazingly enough, that disc brings together a huge array of awesome jazz talent (Jimmy Giuffre, Charles Mingus, J.J. Johnson, John Lewis, Miles Davis as featured soloist, etc.) along with more classically-trained avant garde collaborators a la Gunther Schuller. From there I radiated out in time through collaborators and side players through all of jazz history. For instance, Mingus, Johnson, and Davis collaborations plus 2 or 3 degrees of separation (forward and back in time) will get you just about everywhere. “Kind of Blue” hit me hard, as did Monk’s “Misterioso”, Johnson’s “J.J. Inc.”, and because I started playing in a high school big band, several Count Basie discs. Over time my musical tastes have become far more inclusive, but jazz is what first hit me with the audiophile bug.
Chris M // Sep 17, 2009 at 5:33 am
Oh, boy! I can’t wait for the Threadgill album. If there’s one artist I’ve been listening to more than any other during the last few years it’s Threadgill, especially his Sextet/Sextett records (and Air is one of my favorite groups of all time, so…).
Live Evil is a great record. It was one of my first jazz “loves” too, but which tunes got me “here”?
I was a very curious music fan and had read about Charlie Parker in an interview with, I don’t know, some punk band I liked, and my first Parker record was a badly packaged but decent French collection in a series I think was called Quintessential. “Now’s the Times” and “Koko” were two of the initial “hits” with me. Bought one Bud Powell record too (on Verve), and especially liked his “Tempus Fugit”.
I checked out Armstrong and Ellington around the same time, but didn’t fully appreciate them until a few years later.
Then I had a brief flirtation with the Weather Report – I’ve always been taken with bass, and a friend pointed me to Pastorious. Impressive chops, I’ll admit, but his playing meant nothing to me, it had no resonance beyond the chops. He could just as well have been an athlete. Not my kind of bass player. The flirtation was brief, but I soon picked up Miles’ 70s records, as I said above.
But the one record that really got me going into jazz was Coleman’s Shape Of Jazz to Come. Then Mingus’ Pithecantropous Erectus (now that was bass playing I could like) and Coltrane’s Love Supreme around the same time. From then on, nearly every other record I bought was a jazz or related release as opposed to maybe every tenth before that.
matt fee // Sep 17, 2009 at 12:58 pm
i bought mike watt’s ball hog or tugboat cd because some of the sonic youth folks guested on it. i was 15 maybe and had been looking for a way into jazz but couldnt find it. (miles’ round about midnight was my first jazz cd but to me it sounded like elevator music except for monk’s round midnight which was moody, unpredictable and really good.)
two tunes on the watt cd sealed it for me. intense song for madonna to sing and forever one reporters opinion. they had mr nels cline on them and i thought that this was jazz i could get into. (sort of jazz….) nels mixed a sonic youth aesthetic with the jazz thing and this is what i was looking for.
i own the cd round midnight now and it does not sound like elevator music.
godoggo // Sep 17, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Somebody named my 1st jazz purchase Record Cover of the Week
Kit // Sep 17, 2009 at 8:25 pm
I listened to a lot of ska in college, and a CD by the New York Ska-Jazz Ensemble included a version of Mingus’s “Haitian Fight Song” which compelled me to seek out the original. I picked up The Clown and Mingus’s own recording of that song – wild, funky, and loose – took the top of my head off. That was the real stuff, and soon thereafter the stylings of The Toasters et al were never so satisfying as they used to be.
Ken Shimamoto // Sep 18, 2009 at 7:52 am
I read a review of Ornette’s “Science Fiction” in Creem when I was 14 (I’m 52 now), but I didn’t get the nerve to buy it until after I’d listened to “Crisis!” in the library at SUNY Albany with my roommate, who also introduced me to Captain Beefheart and Harry Partch. Curiously, the record that really prepared me to hear Ornette, Trane, Cecil, et al., was Frank Zappa’s “Weasels Ripped My Flesh.”
Sam Byrd // Sep 18, 2009 at 9:31 am
Thanks to Santana’s “Caravanserai” and “Welcome,” which I got when they first came out in ‘72/’73, I was primed for three things that made it all come together for me: Miles, “Agharta,” Coltrane’s “Impressions” and an Everest LP of Royal Roost Bird. Then I got the 2-LP set of Trane at the Vanguard ‘61 with “Chasin’ Another Trane” and there was no turning back. I also got “Live/Evil” early on, and was always open to his extraordinary sound manipulation (after “Strawberry Fields Forever” and Hendrix, I failed to see how anyone couldn’t be open to what Miles was doing). And yeah that solo on “Sivad” is a killer!
frAT // Sep 18, 2009 at 10:24 am
Herbie Hancock’s Chameleon just rocked my James Brown funk comfort zone, then a curious listen to Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior further shook my foundation. The common denominator of Miles Davis induced me to listen to my father’s Round About Midnight lp. From the point on went fell in love with Monk, first the composer then the player…Late night FM radio informed me of the NY loft players, BAG, AACM, Paul Horn…and I’ve been questing ever since.
Ed Carson // Sep 18, 2009 at 1:26 pm
Joni Mitchell, who had “fusion” players all over her stuff. Steely Dan, control freaks, who also had players on the albums. Movie soundtracks. My brothers records: Maynard Ferguson, Cannonball Adderly, Benny Goodman. All that moved me sideways in space and backwards in time.
Les // Sep 18, 2009 at 7:24 pm
Bitches Brew was my introduction to jazz with Kind of Blue close behind. However, it was my introduction to impulse! era Pharoah Sanders and Albert Ayler that really redefined in my mind what jazz could be.
The thing that got me with Sanders was his spirituality, his tone can be so beautiful and beatific and then he becomes rapturous and blows the sax until you think it will explode in his hands. Ayler tied in a century’s worth of music by pulling together the works of Ives, Armstrong, Coltrane, and others and filtering it through his fiery playing.
Matt W // Sep 19, 2009 at 12:36 pm
As a fan of Pink Floyd fan and other less reputable prog, I heard “Kind of Blue” in the corridor at computer camp and bought it when I got back home. Interesting stuff, “So What” and “All Blues” were immediately accessible and the other tracks took a little more effort to get into. Then for some reason I got “Romantic Warrior” by Return to Forever and didn’t pay much attention to jazz for a while.
As a Sonic Youth fan late into college I heard John Zorn’s The Big Gundown as part of my 20th-c classical music class and that was my next jazz purchase (this class also introduced me to Braxton+string quartet, which I dug though it seemed like the extreme of skronk at the time). My big brother had actually primed me with Spillane. Then I was like, this jazz stuff that people write about is worth investigating, no? So I started picking up odds and ends — “Hey! This Charlie Parker album has Miles Davis and Max Roach too! It must be some kind of all-star session!”
But, even though I already had gained access to a CD player and dug Mingus Ah Um and some bits of Ornette, what really flipped the switch was Ellington’s Blanton-Webster box (this was back when it was still called The Blanton-Webster Band). “You You Darlin’,” pretty corny. “Jack the Bear,” wow. “Ko-Ko,” this is obviously the best album ever made. Which I still think was basically right. [Then I went out and bought a bunch more Braxton albums, though I think the first two I found were vol. 1 of the Hank Jones standards set and the Peter Niklas Wilson duet, which were a somewhat mystifying combo.]
peter breslin // Sep 25, 2009 at 10:26 pm
I grew up with parents who listened to Sinatra, Miles, Benny Goodman, Peggy Lee, Sarah Vaughn, Brubeck, Gene Krupa, etc. Oh yeah, my father was a huge Modern Jazz Quartet fan as well. He especially liked how subtle Connie Kay was. So I had a very traditional background. The Buddy Rich Big Band was my favorite jazz group when I was 12, in 1973. Then it was a collection my mom bought me for me birthday called The Drums, an amazing anthology from Impulse (after they were bought by ABC). Included on this anthology were some absolutely stunning tracks such as the version of Ayler’s Ghosts with Milford Graves (!!), an excerpt from Hues of Melanin by Sam Rivers, some wild/free Jarrett (Angles Without Edges), some Rashied Ali, right alongside Louis Bellson, Baby Dodds, Buddy Rich, Roy Haynes and more. It all made perfect sense to me and blew my mind (and contributed to my sense that the music is one huge continuum, not an “inside” and an “outside.”)
For an eye opening experience, check out the live performances that Sivad was sewn together from on The Complete Cellar Door. Gorgeous.
Matt E. // Sep 30, 2009 at 9:35 pm
My parents started me on the King Cole Trio at a young age, my mom tried to force Sinatra on me, and my dad always had Kind of Blue laying around.
I picked up some Marsalis and Diana Krall as a teenaged metalhead, trying to get a hold on what was supposed to be so cool about this j-word without veering very far from the mainstream.
Then, on a PE-induced whim (“Writers treat me like Coltrane, insane/Yes to them, but to me I’m a different kind/We’re brothers of the same mind, unblind.”) I picked up both the Coltrane Quartet’s self-titled lp for Implulse and a Mingus comp.
And it was like a new universe opening up in my cracked skull. Garrison sawing and thumping, Elvin clacking out a confident cool I’d never heard behind a kit before. McCoy building these dense spirals like kicks in the chest. And ‘Trane blowing over top with the fury of an Old Testament G-d.
By the time I got to Hora Decubitus on the Mingus record (and the acutely ridiculous Dolphy solo on which) I was done. Between sips of illicit vodka I’d been trapped in a rich world of swirling dark blues and scattershot bursts of white-hot light. I’ve never looked back.
That version of Out of this World still gets me every time.
beebe // Oct 1, 2009 at 11:05 am
From pop to fusion to jazz. I came into jazz through, of all people, Sting. I loved his cover for Hendrix’s Little Wing off his Nothing like the Sun album. So I sought out the original version by Hendrix.
I rapidly became a huge Hendrix fall and–while reading a bio–found out that he and Miles Davis were talking of collaborating; the bio also informed me that Miles put out Bitches Brew during that time. So I got Bitches Brew and that was it for me. Nothing ever sounded so bizarre, so scary, so important for me to understand. Then I just went from there, following Miles back through the 60s, 50s, 40s, listening to the records of his sidemen and contemporaries.
(It wasn’t until a few years after listening to Sting’s cover of “Little Wing” that I understood he was singing with the Gil Evans Orchestra. Yet another thread . . .)