Get Up with It

Artist: Miles Davis
Label: Sony
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Original recording reissued
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 074646397022
EAN: 0074646397022
ASIN: B00004VWA5

Release Date: 2000-08-01

Related Categories:

General

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Jazz Fusion

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General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

Jazz Funk

| Funk | R&B | Styles | Music

Listmania:

The Human Imagination: Unfettered!
Miles Davis Columbia Years
Hurrican Refugee Playlist
The Electric Miles Davis-From Day One
ESSENTIAL MILES DAVIS (In order)
My favorite Miles Davis.
Miles Above Your Head
~1974~
Miles Electric
Better Than What You Listen To

Tracks:

He Loved Him Madly
Maiysha
Honky Tonk
Rated X

Tracks:

Calypso Frelimo
Red China Blues
Mtume
Billy Preston

Similar Items:

Big Fun
Dark Magus: Live At Carnegie Hall [2-CD SET]
On the Corner
Pangaea
Agharta

Customer Reviews:

NINTENDO.......2007-03-09

Listen to the bass line in Calypso Frelimo when it slows down. It's the music from Super Mario Bros. They totally stole that!

Love Miles Music Madly........2006-11-11

I love Miles the way Miles loved Duke. I even play with an electric band that tries to approximate much of his music from this period. Almost everything Miles did was simply golden. It's hard for me to think of a more than a track within a single era that I don't like. Perhaps the Gil Evans stuff speaks to me the least but I love all of it.

I had this CD on Lp when I was a young man so when I (finally) got the packaging and seals off of the thing, I was treated to this music that I hadn't heard for about 28 years!

I'll write a bit about every cut and give you the version of the band performing. Almost all of the tracks are great, though I don't "get" Red China Blues. I have no idea why Teo and Miles released that particular track. There isn't anything particularly special about this I-IV-V blues, and it is played with a group of guys you normally wouldn't associate with Miles, though Foster, Henderson, and Mtume were on hand for this jam, or whatever it is.

He Loved Him Madly - simply stunning. It starts of rather timidly and one begins to wonder when the piece is going to really start to take shape. Around the nine minute mark things really start coming together. There's a great flute solo starting at around 11 minutes and then Miles comes in with the wah-trumpet at around the 13 minute mark playing the most mournful, sorrowful lines I've ever heard. This piece is incredibly moving. It's dense. It's rather like walking into a dark tunnel with the sunlight at your back and you can feel the tunnel narrowing and you know there's no going backward. It has the acknowledgement of one's own eventual death and mortality written all over it. These are the emotions that I felt while I played this for the first time. Performed by the Dark Magus line-up of the band.

Maiyisha - essentially the same melody and structure heard on Agharta though the rhythm guitar comping is far more soulful here. Rather Marvin Gaye-like. Performed by the Dark Magus/Agharta line-up (sans Mr Fortune).

Honky Tonk - I was very pleased to hear this when it queued up. I purchased the Cellar Door Sessions and the Jack Johnson Sessions so I got rid of Live-Evil. There is one particularly funky bit at the beginnging of Honky-Tonk from Live-Evil where Jarrett is playing one note repetively on the organ with a wah pedal and I couldn't find that little edit on the Cellar Door Sessions. It's very funky sounding stuff. Anyway, I discovered it here on this version on Honky Tonk. It had been edited into the version appearing on Live-Evil. Performed by the Live-Evil line-up.

Rated X - This is found in expanded form on Miles Live at the Philharmonic. There's more structure here and it's easier to make out who is doing what though this is incredibly dense and dark music. This is the Live At the Philharmonic line-up.

Calypso Frelimo - This piece places this happy, carefree, and sunny little calypso melody line played on an organ over extremely heavy, dense, dark funk. Quite a contrast and it makes me smile in places. Make no mistake, it's a calypso holiday interspersed with an intense pychedelic trip! Played by the Agharta line-up with Liebman and Stubblefield in place of Sonny Fortune.

Red China - Meh, where's the skip button?

Mtume - full of wonderful sounding percussion, particularly a little bell melody figure that pops in on a regular basis played on what sounds like a-go-go bells of different sizes. Heavy funk. Played by the Agharta line-up

Billy Preston - more wild, psychedlic funk played by the Live at the Philharmoic line-up.

All of the tracks were recorded in-studio. While I love this CD I do not recommend it to someone who has not thoroughly sampled the lineups I mentioned aboved. There are some line-ups that new Miles listeners just might not appreciate.

If you've heard Agharta, Pangea, or Dark Magus and you liked what you heard, then this is probably a very safe bet.

Great stuff.......2006-09-18

I hesitated before getting this album, having been bitterly disappointed by "On the Corner". But this album is far superior to "On the Corner". It combines several tracks recorded from 1970 to 1974 to form Miles' last studio album.

1. HE LOVED HIM MADLY
The more I listen to this one, the better it seems to get. A seemingly directionless piece of ambient mood music reveals itself, on further listenings, to be a series of improvisations on a single musical theme. Mostly played in a swirling rubato, though there is a rhythmic bit in the middle. Miles plays mostly organ, with two very subdued electric trumpet solos. The rest is mostly electric guitar and a startlingly beautiful flute courtesy of Dave Liebman.

MAIYSHA
I love this tune. An easy-going peaceful ballad by Dave Liebman featuring some pretty fine blowing by Liebman, and some raucous electric trumpet work from Miles. This tune became a standard for this band.

HONKY TONK
Jump backwards four years and you end up with a quite different band - Keith Jarrett and Airto Moreira and Miles on an open trumpet. A deliciously energetic groove, with fine soloing from Miles. Live recordings show that this tune became a signature tune for the band right up to 1972.

RATED X
Quite possibly the most bizarre item in the entire canon, and it also became a standard for this band! How, I don't know! A churning, evil, sadistic organ solo from Miles fills up the entire track, with no beginning and no ending. Meanwhile, the 1972 band (including sitars) churns and thuds underneath. By some technological miracle Teo Macero manages to make the rhythm section turn off and on seemingly by magic. A very, very atmospheric piece. Try cranking it up to annoy the neighbours!

CALYPSO FRELIMO
The evil atmosphere continues with an absolutely mammoth track (half an hour long!) that also became a standard for Miles! This time Miles' trumpet is very much in the fore. Absolutely flesh-ripping solos like armour piercing flechettes soaring through the air...and a strangely playful calypso theme which reappears in weird contortions all the way through! A second section continues the identical theme, much slower (and with a slowed down bassline that sounds oddly like Super Mario Bros music...) A huge, sprawling gem - like a metropolis with too much going on to take in on one trip!!!

RED CHINA BLUES
I am among those who loathe this tune. Nice Miles soloing, though.

MTUME and BILLY PRESTON: I have not yet heard these tracks properly - MTUME became a signature tune of the band too!

KILLER Acid Jazz.......2006-08-04

Comprised of eight tracks in a sprawling, 2-hour timeframe, this album is nothing short of brilliant. It's probably not the best place to start for anyone who's a beginner into the Miles' canon but it's worthy of owning nonetheless. But keep in mind, this is not always an easy listen.

"He Loved Him Madly" is a song that can be desribed in a number of words: brooding, intense, scary, poingant, sad. But this is more than a song that pays tribute to a protege (in this case, Duke Ellington.) No, this is the sound of Miles exorcising his inner demons -- when his drug use and emotional angst were coming to a head. The first 12 minutes or so feature Miles on organ, with some eerie guitar work that sounds like music culled form a horror film. The latter is a relentlessly dark, sad, touching section where Miles' trumpet bellows like a somber foghorn. Think of Pink Floyd's "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" but even more somber, because here there are no words to explain the immense pain that an human being feels after watching their old friend slip away. When you hear this, it almost sounds like Duke's spirit is just stirring in the breeze.

"Myisha" is a more upbeat, 15-minute track. The initial nine minutes are comprised of lovely wah-wah organ and trumpet courtesy of Miles. At times, this has an almost Latin rhythym to it. Then, just when it sounds like the track is growing monotonous, this killer riff comes in that features some absoultely searing guitar work that could shame many of today's lead guitarists. Psychedelic jazz rock at its best!

The trippy, funky freakouts continue on "Honky Tonk," which features guitar work from some guy named John McLaughlin. An outtake from 1970, the mood here is playful and bluesy. A slow, neat little ditty in which Miles interjects when appropriate.

"Rated X" has been hailed as a blueprint for hip-hop. For all I know this could be true, but I don't see it, nor am I particularly fond of this track. Still, some people enjoy this track and hail it as a masterpiece - so obviously it's a matter of taste.

"Calypso Frelimo" kicks off Disc 2 and, like "He Loved Him Madly," clocks in at over a half hour. But unlike the former track, this latter one actually seems long even though it moves at a faster rhythym and pace.

"Red China Blues" is another early '70s outtake that features some truly mind-blowing harmonica work courtesy of Wally Chambers as Miles delves head-first into wah-wah distorition on trumpet. An absolute funk masterpiece. Clocking in at just 4 minutes, this is the album's shortest track that's a truly impressive, innovative piece from Miles. The title says it all: a song that would work well in a dimly lit room with a red light, wearing black, wrap-around sunglasses. This song is white-hot!

"Mtume" is nothing to write home about. It's another track where Miles explore the funk territory, but he's done better elsewhere on other tracks.

The album closes out with "Billy Preston" that features a bouncy, funky rhythym that continues repeatedly for just over 12 minutes. It's intriguing, but because it never changes course or explores a new beat, it does sound a bit repetitive after a while. A fun little number, regardless. Just a bit lengthier than it ought to be.

For those new to Miles Davis, this is an album worth hearing, albeit once you've had a chance to familiarize yourself with his classic material (i.e, "Kind of Blue," "Bitches Brew," "In a Silent Way," et al). It's important to understand this album came at a time when Miles had plummeted to a commercial and emotional low. In the midst of physcial health problems, commerical record slumps, personal angst and a growing drug addiction, here's a man who transformed all of these inner conflicts into an intense, understated, occassionally beautiful album. Most of the album's mood is playful, and Miles sounds as confident as ever. But even so, it's hard to completely erase the bleakness one feels after hearing the opening track.

Sadly, this would be Miles' last studio recording before his semi-retirement that lasted 1975-1981. But man did he go out with a bang! In some ways this is more bold and audacious than "Bitches Brew" and "On the Corner" in terms of Miles' explorations into other musical genres. Whether or not it's as enjoyable is another matter.

Too Much of Too Little?.......2006-06-30

Drawing together tracks recorded between May of 1970 and October of 1974, this sprawling, two-hour 1975 double disc is very much a grab-bag, the first of many which would follow over the ensuing five years of Miles Davis' leave of absence from the jazz world. Ill, drug-addled and generally fed up with the demands of his personal and professional lives, the legendary trumpeter would walk off a Japanese stage barely a month after GET UP WITH IT's release and - so the story goes - not pick up his horn again until late 1979.
In any case, the material on GET UP WITH IT reflects its creator's up-and-down state at the time, opening with an eerie thirty-two-minute requiem for Duke Ellington, "He Loved Him Madly," on which Miles plays both organ and trumpet against a droning background of electric guitars and funereal drum-tapping before zooming into the breezy, almost poppish "Maiysha," one of Davis' prettiest melodies from the seventies and a bracing nod to his long-neglected commercial side. These are almost certainly the album's two strongest cuts, but "Honky Tonk," a 1970 rehearsal nugget with both Herbie Hancock and Keith Jarrett on keyboards, does keep things moving. "Rated X" finds Miles back at the organ, making you wish he'd get back to the trumpet.
Disc two opens with another thirty-two-minute opus, "Calypso Frelimo," which unlike "He Loved Him Madly" really is far too long. "Red China Blues," the shortest track on GET UP WITH IT, is also just about the most unrepentantly rock-influenced thing Miles ever recorded, and features him doubling a wailing harmonica to good effect. "Mtume" and "Billy Preston" are meandering and monotonous jams of the sort Davis recorded too many of in his post-1972 acid funk period.
While the good stuff on "Get Up With It" certainly makes it a worthwhile purchase for fans of Miles Davis and/or seventies fusion generally, this is yet another example of a potentialy great single album inflated into a middling double. My guess is that this period of Miles' career isn't too far from getting its own "complete" boxed set, however, so we may yet get a chance to see all of this material in a very different context, for better or worse. We miss you, Miles!

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