At Fillmore: Live at the Fillmore East

Artist: Miles Davis
Label: Sony
Category: Music

Average customer rating:

Format: Limited Edition
Media: Audio CD
Number Of Discs: 2

UPC: 074646513927
EAN: 0074646513927
ASIN: B000002AH4

Release Date: 1997-07-29

Related Categories:

General

| Jazz | Styles | Music

Jazz Fusion

| Jazz | Styles | Music

General

| Pop | Styles | Music

Pop Rock

| Pop | Styles | Music

General

| Live Albums | Jazz | Styles | Music

Listmania:

Jack Attack: favorite albums featuring Mr. DeJohnette
ESSENTIAL MILES DAVIS (In order)
WOT I'VE BEEN GETTING UPTO IN JAN 2005 PART 2
25 Best Miles Davis Records (in order of greatness)
Slightly nerdy guide to finest albums
A Dejohnette Primer
Free Miles
Electric/Electronic Miles (Chronological)
At the Fillmore[s]

Tracks:

Wednesday Miles: Directions
Wednesday Miles: Bitches Brew
Wednesday Miles: The Mask
Wednesday Miles: It's About That Time
Wednesday Miles: Bitches Brew/ The Theme
Thursday Miles: Directions
Thursday Miles: The Mask
Thursday Miles: It's About That Time

Tracks:

Friday Miles: It's About That Time
Friday Miles: I Fall In Love Too Easily
Friday Miles: Sanctuary
Friday Miles: Bitches Brew / TheTheme
Saturday Miles: It's About That Time
Saturday Miles: I Fall In Love Too Easily
Saturday Miles: Sanctuary
Saturday Miles: Bitches Brew
Saturday Miles: Willie Nelson/The Theme

Similar Items:

Black Beauty: Miles Davis at Fillmore West
In Concert: Live at Philharmonic Hall
Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It's About That Time
Dark Magus: Live At Carnegie Hall [2-CD SET]
Live-Evil

Customer Reviews:

Do not buy.......2006-07-14

I am a huge fan of Mile's electric stage. That said, please do not buy this album, it is absolute trash. It basically gives you 2-5 minute clips of songs that should have gone on for 20 minutes, and tries to make it seem like it was part of the same song. Get the Columbia release of this same show, it is 10 times better, although not so great itself. Again, please save yourself the 15 dollars.

On the Cutting Room Floor.......2006-02-08

I've heard the full concerts that made up this two cd set and they are brilliant. However, the concerts have been butchered so much on this album you'll never really get to listen to a coherent song. If Columbia officially released a box set of these concerts, many jazz fans (including myself) would be more than willing to buy it. Unlike Live at the Fillmore East, Live-Evil also involved splicing but it makes sense but it was still great to have the full Cellar Door Sessions released. Fillmore could use the same treatment. All the players on the concerts are in peak form (I just wish Keith Jarrett would stop dissing Miles' electric bands when his electrified playing on them is far more creative than his solo career) and the concerts deserve to be heard the way they were supposed to be.

AT FILLMORE: interesting but flawed.......2005-09-25

this album is an interesting experiment in tape splicing live performances from a four night run at the famous new york city venue. Bitches Brew had recently just come out at the time of this live show and most of the selections are from that grand and sprawling monster of a record. these performances were probably well worth their weight in gold without the meddling of the tapes. alot of the power and transitions are just lost because of the splicing. at times, it seems like the song just ends abruptly right when it was getting started. it's a confusing record and not one i can recommend except to the die hard fans. thankfully, there is a recording available that took place at the fillmore just a few months before these shows. Miles Davis "Live At The Fillmore East (March 7, 1970) It's About That Time" is a far superior recording that shows the band in all it's glory (and thankfully leaves the tape splicer at home).

Where are they?.......2005-05-25

Somewhere on the planet Earth, probably in some dusty warehouse in New York, is a box or metal canister containing about a half-dozen 2-inch magnetic tapes. On those tapes, in their pure form, are four nights of recordings of Miles Davis' stupendous band at the Fillmore East. Where are they? Why have they not been found?

It seems every outtake, every demo, every alternative version of every Miles recording of the electric era has been found and stuck onto a "complete....sessions" compilation.

Everyone seems to agree that the main complaint about Miles Davis at Fillmore is the unfortunate (if necessary) editing. Fix it!

Columbia/Sony, FIND THOSE TAPES! The performances were outstanding, the material excellent, the recordings top-notch. Let's finally hear the entire performances. THERE IS A MARKET.

FIRST STEPS INTO THE LOST YEARS OF JAZZ.......2004-11-16

The average layman can be forgiven looking at Miles Davis' sudden profusion of "live" albums in the early 1970's wondering what that was all about. Indeed, just what was it all about? Davis released several "live" albums before 1970-that is true. But for the years leading up to his 1975 retirement, Davis expressed himself to the listening public mostly through his concert appearances.

It is not that Davis abandoned the recording studio. It just that the most reliable way to document Davis' musical explorations (which had always shifted frequently but now had assumed terminal velocity) was to be sure the tape was running during concert appearances:

This typically exhausted the average jazz fan. No more than once he had digested Miles' last "live" double LP another hefty album was released. As much as Davis' spacey and "progressive" music dismayed the jazz community, the sheer weight of all these releases overwhelmed even the most dedicated fan. Miles "lost" his listeners in more ways than one.

But there was another factor that broke Miles connection to his audience. Miles was in trouble with the IRS. He owed a lot of money and they were working their way through the legal system to get him. Whether it was true or not remains an open question. But many began to suspect that Davis' issued these releases because he needed the money. There was a suspicion that Miles was trading in on his fame by flooding the market and taking advantage of his available audience for cash. More than one critic complained out loud that for all the high falootin' talk of "art" and "challenges" the bottom line was garbage for hard currency.

In Davis' defense, one would only have to point to his pre-1970 album catalogue to show that Miles always was a prolific artist who spun out records at a furious rate. But all this begs the question: was any of it any good? Here we come to a whole different matter. The trouble is many of Davis' defenders for this period in his creativity seem to be defending the "idea" or conception of the music rather than the execution of that idea. In theory, there is nothing wrong with using electronic instruments in jazz music (Wynton Marsallis will argue with you on that.) and for many of Davis's defenders it is this "idea" they are actually fighting for. Some would argue that the very presence of electronics means it's bad jazz right off the bat. But if we get past that prejudice, what are we really left with?

The most common complaint for AT FILLMORE: LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST is the editing. To accommodate the LP format of the time, each of the four evenings of performance were pared down to 25 minutes so that one evening's "recital" would fit on one side of the LP. (We have no such problem today. In fact, each CD has so much room for music that to fill up the disc artists feel compelled to record pieces which are under-rehearsed and undigested.) So edits sometimes jump unintuitively and Steve Grossman's solos on sax are missing in the mix. In my judgment, however, the strange editing is not an insurmountable defect.

The first section, labeled "Wednesday Miles", kicks off with Joe Zawinul's "Directions" and then eases into a very short version of "Bitches Brew". "The Mask" runs only a minute and a half. Then the band settles down into "It's About That Time". Up to this point Miles has been blowing his horn to lead us on the way. Both Keith Jarrett and Chick Corea trade off against each other on keyboards--which is entertaining at first but all too soon becomes irritating. Like a little kid, they use their keyboards' capacities to throw in the odd, weird noises that at least reminded me of low budget science fiction movies' background music. Then their actually playing resembled that of a child's first hammering at the family piano. This continues through a much longer rendition of "Bitches Brew". The overall sense of this night's performance is one of a fresh, self-conscious, new band pensively introducing itself to a strange audience. This was a band holding back more than just a little as it explored just what its mysterious new listeners would take.

"Thursday Miles" is more self-assured and relaxed. The set list is also shorter: "Directions"/"The Mask"/"It's About That Time"; but soloing and improvising abound in each piece. The same complaints, unfortunately, against "Wednesday Miles" hold for this set as well. But overall "Thursday Miles" is a marked improvement.

"Friday Miles" is the best set on the album. The list gets shaken up with only "It's About That Time" remaining. Instead are included "I Fall In Love Too Easily" And "Sanctuary" with a return to a much longer "Bitches Brew". Here the spirit of the band is much freer and delightful. It is difficult to account for these things; but it seems that there is less keyboard "nonsense" on this set than in the previous two sets.

"Saturday Miles" tries to duplicate "Friday Miles" in some ways. The selections are the same as "Friday Miles"; but each piece is shortened for the inclusion of "Willie Nelson" at the end. While "Willie Nelson" is a welcome addition to the set, overall "Saturday Miles" is comparatively "repressed" and not as enjoyable.

Compared to the rest of the "live" albums from this period AT FILLMORE: LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST is a second best to LIVE-EVIL. Your reception to it will depend on how you relate to Miles' whole "fusion" period. BITCHES BREW presented the music world with a new challenge that is still being absorbed to this day. Unfortunately BITCHES BREW also remains one of those records people have in their collections but rarely listen to.

Others may prefer LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST (MARCH 7, 1970): IT'S ABOUT THAT TIME. This is a set that was recorded earlier in the same years as AT FILLMORE: LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST; but was just released in 2001. It is even more challenging and is not plagued by the same editing "eccentricities".

Many regard the 1970's as Jazz's "lost years". Such a judgment is not fair to a whole host of jazz records from that time; but the direction Davis trail blazed nearly ended up killing jazz as a commercial entity. . Miles Davis opened a musical door to a path many of us (myself included) still are not all that eager to go down. Perhaps my grandchildren will come to see things differently. But I doubt it.

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