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| Recommending a Miles record is a lot like making a public service announcement: it's a strong statement of the obvious that surprisingly large numbers of people still need to hear, like smoking kills or friends don't let friends drive drunk. Without question, this hard to find European CD is one of the most important historical documents in modern music. It represents nothing less than a missing link in the well documented musical evolution of Miles Davis. This flawlessly recorded live set captures Miles at a pivotal moment: July, 1969. It was a time when massive changes were rocking his world. Miles was in the process of leaving large parts of himself behind--the standards, the mute, the sheet music. Something deep was happening to him and his music, something monstrous was brewing, and the world would soon be shaken by Miles' voodoo. To put it in historical terms, July 1969 found Miles and band playing at the Montreux Jazz Festival just a few weeks prior to embarking on the epic Bitches Brew sessions. These were the final days before the bomb. At Montreux you could hear the metamorphosis taking place. In a seven-song continuous set lasting over an hour, Miles and band played profoundly under the influence of one another. Powerful new ideas can be heard filtering through the live stage en route to the studio. Miles' live and studio directions had been fast diverging since he recorded In A Silent Way five months earlier. Fans of the old Miles still expected his concerts to cover familiar ground, and for years he obliged them, playing sets of mostly old standards while neglecting his newer material. This is not to say that his live gigs were conventional in the least. Anyone familiar with his masterful mid-60s performances at the Plugged Nickel Club knows that Miles never played the same song the same way twice, turning even the most tired standard into a vehicle for radical exploration. Nonetheless, Miles' choice to limit his live set lists caused friction among his young band-mates, who resented the fact that the new sounds they were passionately creating in the studio were being kept off center stage. By the time July 1969 rolled around, Miles' live and studio performances had stopped diverging and were suddenly coming together. It's About That Time features Miles playing the last live versions ever released of his two most classic standards, "Round About Midnight" and "Milestones"--both of which he turns completely on their heads. It also includes the earliest known performances of future Bitches Brew tracks, "Miles Runs The Voodoo Down" and "Sanctuary." This combination of swan song standards and unveiled classics are what make the Montreux set so historically significant. This was the inspired moment of transition signalling a watershed in jazz. Even as he plays "Milestones" for the thousandth time, the music surges with excitement as it points the way into the future like a blazing neon sign. Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea expand the canvas, while drummer Jack DeJohnette and bassist Dave Holland round out the bottom end with heavy circular grooves. By incorporating elements of rock, funk, and African modal textures, Miles was launching new directions in music. Although the end of the set is greeted by the kind of stormy applause you expect Miles always received, the unconventional style of his new music probably put off quite a few traditional jazz fans in the audience that day. Fortunately his electrifying sound attracted a new young crowd, who bought Bitches Brew in droves upon its release in March 1970, giving Miles his first gold record to reach the pop Top 40. While the Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary series completely dismissed this phase of Miles' career as creatively barren, the fact is that Miles evolved with phenomenal momentum between 1969 to 1975, recording nearly a dozen exceptional records and innumerable bootlegs. Like Bitches Brew itself, It's About That Time cannot be broken down into individual songs. It exists as a living composition, with each part feeding off the other to build a surging, otherworldly musical organism of almost terrifying proportions. With the driving electric keyboards of Corea, the propulsive rhythms of DeJohnette-Holland, and the stratospheric runs of Shorter, Miles was being pushed hard by a group of powerful mother fuckers, almost all of whom were half his age. Miles sampled the cosmic funk and rock in the ether around him, processed it, and poured it back on the world through his soulful trumpet. Miles triumphs as the sorcerer, hanging over the music, conjuring mood and fire from a wildly swirling pot of sounds. He proved that man too can give birth. ---John Ballon (email)
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