{"id":4575,"date":"2011-06-13T09:00:37","date_gmt":"2011-06-13T14:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=4575"},"modified":"2011-06-13T09:05:02","modified_gmt":"2011-06-13T14:05:02","slug":"bitches-brew-revisited","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/06\/13\/bitches-brew-revisited\/","title":{"rendered":"<em>Bitches Brew<\/em> Revisited"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/dE7B003clL8?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Graham Haynes&#8217;s band touring under the name <a href=\"http:\/\/bitchesbrewrevisited.com\/\">Bitches Brew Revisited<\/a>, after the famous album by Miles Davis that turned 40 last year,  opened the Burlington jazz festival last week.<\/p>\n<p>They were wonderful.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->But I think it would have been more accurate to have called it  &#8220;Electric Miles Remixed,&#8221; which would have  covered Miles Davis&#8217;s entire 1968-75 &#8220;electric&#8221; period.  Hearing updated renditions (complete with a DJ turntablist) of his music from all those years made me realize how good <em>Bitches Brew<\/em> actually was, and how the albums that followed, while they had some very good music <em>in<\/em> them, weren&#8217;t as good.<\/p>\n<p>It was partly the musicians &#8212; <em>Bitches Brew<\/em> has never  been matched before or since: John McLaughlin,  Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Joe Zawinul, Keith Jarrett, Chick Corea, David Holland, Bernie Maupin, Jack DeJohnette, and on and on!&#8230; plus the artwork of Mati Klarwein and Teo Macero&#8217;s production. And partly it was Miles&#8217;s own gradual  descent into illness, depression, and addiction. (What was it about  the mid-1970s and cocaine addiction? David Bowie was the &#8220;thin white duke&#8221; to Miles&#8217;s cocaine blackness.)<\/p>\n<p>The  friend who saw the concert with me wondered if it mattered  that Miles Davis beat his wife. Yes, certainly, it matters.  But music and art transcend their makers, and we can too. A lot of  the best art comes from pain. Not that it has to or that that&#8217;s a good  thing, but life is painful; the point is to transmute it into something  entirely greater than the pain, and Miles did that through music. He took music (<em>all<\/em> of it) and sent it reeling in so many new directions, time after time.<\/p>\n<p><em>Bitches Brew<\/em> was the most radical and dramatic of these departures, and not all of what came in its wake (&#8220;jazz-rock fusion,&#8221; as it came to be called) was successful. But if creativity is all about opening up new strata on which life can spread, the moment that created <em>Bitches Brew<\/em> was undoubtedly one of the most fertile <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/06\/27\/actual-occasions\/\">prehensions and concrescences<\/a> in the history of modern music.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/Qn6yP7EiiK0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Graham Haynes&#8217;s band touring under the name Bitches Brew Revisited, after the famous album by Miles Davis that turned 40 last year, opened the Burlington jazz festival last week. They were wonderful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[692399],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-soundscape"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-1bN","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3859,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2017\/05\/08\/greatest-albums-of-the-lp-era\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":0},"title":"Greatest albums of the LP era","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The recent social media meme\u00a0listing 10 concerts people have attended accompanied by one they didn't (\"find the lie!\") has incited\u00a0me to complete a list that started out as a \"50th anniversary of the concept album\" brainstorm over drinks one night last year. The question here is a little different: What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music &amp; soundscape&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music &amp; soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/50fB5L1vmn8\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":8081,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/03\/12\/a-7-year-musical-itch\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":1},"title":"A 7-year musical itch","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 12, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"One of my pet musicological theories is that the years 1967-74 were the most creative 7-year period in the history of musical humanity. Why those years? The social and technological revolutions of the 1960s -- civil rights, the women's movement, the counterculture and anti-Vietnam War movements, the sudden unifying singularity\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music &amp; soundscape&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music &amp; soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/LpHgG4jILa0\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3653,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/04\/23\/music-of-the-turning-earth\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":2},"title":"Music of the turning earth&#8230;","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Today's link dump is devoted to sound, earth, religion, language, and the creativity of friends... First the sounds. Here's Science Friday's Earth Day episode on the origins of music in the Great Animal Orchestra; and what American English sounds like to non-English speakers (hilarious): http:\/\/youtu.be\/BZXcRqFmFa8 which seems loosely related both\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Media ecology&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Media ecology","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/media_ecology\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/BZXcRqFmFa8\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1196,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2011\/02\/07\/25-random-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":3},"title":"25 random things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"February 7, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of off-line conversations about the inspirational power of music and of SF (science\/speculative fiction) have gotten me to dig up this old Facebook piece and to share it here. See bottom for details. I dedicate it to Little Rinpoche. 1. My best friend in kindergarten used to mix\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Adrian Ivakhiv\"","block_context":{"text":"Adrian Ivakhiv","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/tag\/adrian-ivakhiv\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8051,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/04\/09\/33%e2%85%93-environmental-studies-greats-or-a-canon-revisited\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":4},"title":"33\u2153 Environmental Studies greats (or, a canon, revisited)","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 9, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The following is a significantly revised version of an article I posted to the Indications\u00a0blog\u00a0(and\u00a0etc)\u00a0five and a half years ago. I was curious to see how much of it still holds (a lot, I think), so I've revisited it and expanded its proposed sort-of-canon, in the second part of what\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Academe&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Academe","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/academe\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Throbbing-Gristle-20-Jazz-Funk-Greats","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/03\/Throbbing-Gristle-20-Jazz-Funk-Greats-275x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1017,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/01\/15\/music-as-coffee-and-as-philosophy\/","url_meta":{"origin":4575,"position":5},"title":"music as coffee and as philosophy","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 15, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"I just came across this interesting tribute Brian Eno had written to trumpeter and experimental composer Jon Hassell, which gets at a few very deleuzian and immanentist notions: about music as \"embodied philosophy\", and Hassell's idea of a \"coffee coloured music of the future\" that reflects \"a globalised world constantly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Music &amp; soundscape&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Music &amp; soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4575"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4588,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4575\/revisions\/4588"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}