Miles Davis "Ultimate Miles" 1945-2007(orig.) 2017(comp)****

I'm sure (or at least I hope, for your sake) that most of you will recognize the scantily dressed lady on the left. Her true name is unknown, but she's known as Venus De Milo. She was abducted by a Frenchman who put her on display at The Louvre, but her original home was the Greek island of Milos where I am right now, writing the introduction to today's post. She has served as a muse to many a pop musician, including Prince and Television, both of which wrote songs with the same name. Jazz saxophonist Gerry Mulligan (then a member of Miles Davis' band) also wrote an instrumental composition called "Venus De Milo" which was included in their masterpiece Birth Of The Cool. Further below you'll find a youtube clip of it, which I hope you'll enjoy. I certainly do enjoy Milos' beautiful beaches and tasty cuisine. I am nevertheless not neglecting my blogging duties and will keep posting during my island vacation. Until next time...

I'm not a huge jazz fan, in fact jazz only accounts for about 5% my rather sizeable collection. Not because I don't like it that much, I often go to jazz clubs and love listening to live jazz. But every time I play instrumental music at home it sort of blends in the background. By the time the CD is finished I remember very little about what I've just heard. Which means I'm not the one to enlighten you when it comes to someone like Miles Davis. Countless people have delved deep in his massive (100+ albums, including live recordings) and incredibly varied discography. Certainly for a genre that can seem samey to the ear of a beginner, few records can sound as different as, say, Kind Of Blue and Bitches Brew. I've always been meaning to buy Davis' "essential" albums to close the relevant holes in my collection but I end up buying overlapping compilations instead. The most exhaustive of them is this 5 CD collection, drawing from all the stages of his career. With such rich source material and ample running time, a cursory look made me think I was looking at the "Utimate Miles" collection indeed. Instead -let me spoil the end of the review for you- the compilers miss the mark. I really just wanted the highlights of Miles' illustrious career. Instead I'd say roughly a third of what's here is essential listening while the rest seems to have been selected randomly. Which doesn't make it a bad album. On the contrary, these CD's have a nice flow, and you get a broad overview of Miles' different styles and periods. But it's nevertheless a missed chance to assemble all of his essential recordings in one place. I guess eschewing the obvious in favour of the relatively unfamiliar is instinctive when the compiler is a true fan. The 5 CD's are more or less chronologically arranged, although not in any order. Instead we begin at the end: 

CD1 (1980-1992) contains songs from his last acknowledged masterpiece Tutu (1986) and covers of contemporary pop hits by Cindy Lauper ("Time after time") and Michael Jackson ("Human nature"). The general direction here is laid-back funk jazz though "Jean-Pierre" sports some fiery electric guitar solos courtesy of Mike Stern. A nice discovery for me was "Mystery" from his last album, the hip hop-influenced Doo Bop released shortly after his death. Two more posthumus selections continue in the same direction with hip hop remixes of classics: "In a silent way" is remixed by dj cam and "Freedom jazz dance" features vocals by rapper Nas.

***** for Time after time

**** for Tutu, Human nature, Fat time, Mystery

*** for Jean-pierre, Back seat betty, Perfect way, White, U 'n' i, Freaky deaky, In a silent way remix, Freedom jazz dance ft. nas

CD2 (1956-1961) is a non-stop parade of classics, especially ballads. Albums anthologized here include Miles Ahead, Milestones, Kind Of Blue, Round Midnight and Gerswin's Porgy And Bess. On some of them Miles is accompanied by John Coltrane (tenor), Cannonball Adderley (alto)  and Bill Evans (piano) - each a jazz giant in his own right. Others feature a bigger band under the supervision of Gil Evans. Every track here is pure magic.

***** for So what, Stella by starlight, Summertime, Round midnight, Blue in green, Someday my prince will come, Bye bye blackbird

**** for New rhumba, Sweet sue just you, It ain't necessarily so, Blues for pablo

*** for Sid's ahead

CD3 (1962-1969) sees Miles making the move from modal jazz to jazz rock. Many important albums are anthologized but the selections seem random: we get "The pan piper" and "Will o'the wisp" from the classical/Spanish folk-inspired Sketches Of Spain, presumably because they are the shortest tracks, a few pretty ballads, the bossanova-tinted "Aos pes da cruz" and "Corcovado", and an excerpt from "In a silent way". But some of his best music of that era is conspicuous by its absence.

***** for I fall in love too easily, Will o'the wisp

**** for Aos pes da cruz, Baby won't you please come home, The pan piper, Corcovado, Circle, In a silent way

*** for Mood, Pinocchio, Vonetta, Fall, Frelon brun

CD4 (1945-1958) contains his oldest recordings. The vibe is atmospheric and romantic, what we sometimes call "nocturnal jazz". Bebop opener "Now's the time" a Charlie Parker tune with Miles and Dizzy Gillespie guesting. We get two songs from his iconic Birth Of Cool album ("Venus de milo", "Moon dreams"), the heartbreaking ballads "It never entered my mind" and "My funny valentine", solo-laden "Walkin'", vibraphone-heavy "Bags' groove" and "Generique" from the soundtrack of French film noir Ascenseur pour l'Échafaud. Doesn't get any cooler than that sight and sound combination. "Blue Room" meanwhile sounds like it's mastered off a scratchy old 78. Musicians guesting here include such luminaries as John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Max Roach, Thelonious Monk and Art Blakey. Jazz fan or not, it's impossible not to like this particular CD.

***** for Now's the time, Dear old stockholm, Venus de milo, It never entered my mind, Walkin', My funny valentine, Bags' groove, Generique

**** for Tasty pudding , Moon dreams, Green haze, Four, In your own sweet way

*** for Blue room

CD5 (1969-1976) deals with his most experimental period, during which he gave birth to so-called Jazz rock. He's often accompanied by that subgenre's dream team including John McLaughlin (guitar), Chick Corea, Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock (keyboards), and Wayne Shorter (sax). Unfortunately two of the selections from his iconic album of the period Bitches Brew ("Miles runs the voodoo down" and "Spanish key") are featured in severely truncated form. Another truncated jazz rock opus is "Prelude pt.2" from the live Agharta while we also get two songs from the influencial street-wise funk of On The Corner ("Take 4" and "Black satin"). I was very pleased to discover a few gems from relatively obscure albums: "Water babies" from the same-titled album, "Duran" from Directions and the straight blues "Red china blues" from Get Up With It, surprisingly introduced with some downhome harmonica.

***** for Red china blues, Miles runs the voodoo down, Prelude pt.2

**** for John mclaughlin, Black satin, Spanish key, Water babies, Duran

*** for On the corner take 4, Honky tonk, Sanctuary (live), Willie nelson/the theme (live)

All in all, this may not be the "ultimate" collection it might have been but it does contain a whole lot of great jazz. But while it certainly works well as an introduction to the various sides of this mercurial artist, I'd suggest newcomers to try the more concise Essential Miles Davis. More about that in a future post.

The Merrymen "Caribbean Treasure Chest" 1962(?)***

I thought I'd continue with summer sounds, since I'm in that mood. I know that for most people summer is almost over, but I'm preparing for my summer vacation - September, after all, in Greece is late Summer rather than Fall. Last year I presented an album by Barbados' Merrymen, which proved one of my less popular posts.

This time I thought I'd bring out the big guns: see if you can resist the charms of Emil and The Merrymen's international big hit "Big Bamboo". It's the song that put the band on the map, hell it put Barbados on the map. Jamaican and Trinidadian music were already getting known outside the Caribbean, but who knew anything about the music of Barbados? The Merrymen formed in the early 60's, playing an amalgam of calypso and acoustic folk music reminiscent of Harry Belafonte and The Kingston Trio. They recorded their debut Caribbean Treasure Chest in 1962 (1966 according to discogs, but that doesn't sound right) and went on to have a really long career (they were still going strong until at least 2011) even getting to play for British royalty. Their single "Big Bamboo" was a no.1 hit in Holland a few years later, probably because of the big Antillean community. It's a traditional island tune full of delicious sexual innuendos, which the band don't seem to acknowledge at all - at least in this 1962 version, unlike the one that charted in Europe circa '69. It keeps the hilarious lyrics and cheerful melody, while The Merrymen gave it a charming folk reading and added the "working for the yankee dollar" chorus from the famous Caribbean song "Rum And Coca Cola". Next up is the Belafonte ballad "Island In The Sun" and jaunty instrumental "Take Me, Take Me", followed by their take on The Kingston Trio's folk "Wreck Of The John B" (I just realise how spot on I was spotting their influences). Side One closes with a "Calypso medley" of traditional songs (If You See Me Little Brown Girl/Millie Gone To Brazil/You Say You Young/Sly Mongoose). Here we get a glimpse of Emile Straker's specialty, a whistling solo. Side 2 opens with a popular song from Trinidad (Roaring Lion's "Mary Ann"), continues with another instrumental "Caroline" and then with "Island Woman" a calypso ballad with pretty harmonies. They follow it with a happy tune recounting the story of local pirate Sam Lord, and then with Mexican standard "Cu-Cu-Ru-Cu-Cu (Paloma)" and another tinny-sounding instrumental called "King Ja-Ja". On the whole this is a nice collection of Caribbean folk and calypso songs by one of the genre's top bands, however forgotten they may now be. If it has a flaw, it's being a bit too white- (or, if you prefer, European-) sounding for Calypso - compared, say, with the likes of Lord Kitchener or Mighty Sparrow. Pleasant listening in any case. The album hasn't, to my knowledge, been reissued since the 60's, but there are original copies out there as well as some Merrymen compilations on CD. Enjoy the sample below...

**** for Big Bamboo, Wreck Of The John B, Legend Of Sam Lord

*** for Island In The Sun, Calypso Medley, Mary Ann, Island Woman,

** for Take Me Take Me, Caroline, Cu-Cu-Ru-Cu-Cu, King Ja-Ja

Santana ‎"Salsa, Samba & Santana" 1971-1987(rec) 1991(comp)***

This is the hottest summer I've experienced in my 9 years in The Netherlands, and by far the longest one, too. It used to be we got 2-3 weeks per year of sun and temperatures around 25°C, but now it seems like we've been having true summer weather for the third month in a row. Could that "global warming" they've been talking about in the news be true? Donald Trump doesn't think so, and he's the chosen leader of the most powerful country in the world, so he should know. Not that I'm complaining, mind you. I enjoy the sun when I can and keep counting the days until I start my vacations. Two more weeks and I'll be lying on a Greek island beach, gazing at the sea and listening to something appropriately summer-y. Something like this CD for example.

This is one of dozens of Santana compilations around. I have a few myself, of which this certainly is the weirdest. As is evident by the title, this is an attempt to gather together Santana's most obviously "latin" dance tracks. As such it is at once a sussess and a failure. It succeeds in shining a spotlight on (often unfairly) neglected deep album tracks, especially instrumentals, but fails to include some of their best songs in this style (e.g. "Jingo", "Oye Como Va") rendering it a flawed representation of even this one particular facet of this band - or artist? seeing as Carlos Santana is obviously the band's  only constant member and undisputed leader, I'd say these are interchangeable. His guitar playing is brilliant throughout, and that's even more evident in the (many) instrumental tracks included here like the fantastic opener "Samba De Sausalito" from the live Lotus album ('74) and the "Toussaint L'Overture" from 3 ('71) the third and last album by the original line-up, which can also be heard on the afro-cuban "Para Los Rumberos" from the same disc. The latter is at the second half of the CD together with most of the "dance" tracks: "Angel Negro", "Maria Caracoles", "Bailando/Aquatic Park", and the 3 numbers from '81's Zebop ("Hannibal", "Primera Invasion" and the pop soul "E Papa Re") - which kind of highlights the absurdity of this comp: 3 songs chosen from one of Santana's less important LPs - and not even the best or most well-known tracks off the album. "Carnaval" is probably the best of the sambas here, but unfortunately it's presented in its live version (from '77's Moonflower). On that album it just segued smoothly into another song, but here it's abruptly cut short after 2 minutes. "Brotherhood" is another live track (from '85 but released as part of the '88 Viva Santana! compilation) advertising Carlos Santana's hippy-dippy utopian philosophies which nevertheless make him so endearing. Another philosophically inclined tune is the closing ballad "Free As The Morning Sun", from a '79 "spiritual" solo album released under the name Devadip Carlos Santana. It's one of the relatively subdued songs in this compilation, which is otherwise very percussion-heavy and dominated by fast latin rhythms. Another atmospheric tune is "Song Of The Wind" from Caravanserai ('72), a beautiful instrumental. The level of the soloists overall is, despite the personnel changes, consistently high for a rock band and on a par with the best jazz rock players around. The keyboards are especially good while the guitar, of course, is pure magic! A curious feature of this comp us that the silence between the tracks has been removed, supposedly to give it a better flow. It works well when one dance track follows another like in a medley or a DJ set, but not every song change is smooth. On the whole, despite some puzzling choices, this cd still contains some great music and manages to chronologically cover all of Santana's career to that point (with the exception of their first two albums). It's recommended if you want to dig deeper into the band's latin jazz and dance roots. Absolutely not recommended as a starting point, as it fails to include any bona fide classics. Oh, and the cover art is shit. 

***** for Toussaint L'Overture

**** for Samba De Sausalito (Live), Carnaval, Song Of The Wind, Angel Negro, Free As The Morning Sun 

*** for Touchdown Raiders, La Fuente Del Ritmo, Brotherhood, E Papa Re, Wham!, Flora De Canela, Para Los Rumberos, Maria Caracoles, Bailando/Aquatic Park

** for Nueva York, Primera Invasion, Hannibal

Roger Waters "Is This The Life We Really Want?" 2017****

I recently saw Roger Waters play Amsterdam's Ziggo Dome. The concert was in the cadre of his Us And Them tour, one of his most ambitious (and certainly most political) thus far. Having already seen Pink Floyd circa '89, Waters again in the 00's and David Gilmour lately, I have enough for comparison and I can honestly say that this may well have been the best of them. Granted, the songs don't sound the same without Gilmour's guitar, and I would have liked to hear "Shine On You Crazy Diamond". But other than that, it was a top band that also featured an unexpected guest: American songwriter Jonathan Wilson whom Waters introduced as the band's resident hippie and who sang and even looked a lot like a young Gilmour. Music aside though, Waters proved he was the visionary behind the band by putting on a whole multi-media performance rather than just playing the songs. This time the concert centered around Floyd's angriest LP, 1977's "Animals" as well as around Waters' latest. Donald Trump was the "guest of honour" given the role of the quintessential Pig during the same-named song, but other world "leaders" also featured as token pigs, from Israel's Netanyahu to Turkey's Erdogan and beyond. The first part ended with a version of "Another Brick in The Wall" featuring a local kids' chorus and finished with a giant "Resist" sign. Waters then proceeded during the intermission to remind us what/whom he thought we should resist. My favorite was "Resist Israel's Anti-Semitism" following another slide defining Anti-Semitism as the practice of discrimination on the basis of religion or ethnicity. Interestingly, only a few weeks after the show, Israeli parliament passed a law declaring Israel "a Jewish State" further downgrading the position of Bedouins and other minorities. Since he began campaigning against Israel's neo-appartheid policy, Waters has been walking with a target  on his back - figuratively, of course, since the Israeli state does not assassinate people. At least not Westerners. Unless they come between their armed forces and the demolition of Palestinian houses, like Rachel Corrie did. Palestine, of course, is only one of many causes Waters is campaigning about at the moment. As a result he can sometimes seem unbearably preachy, since after all the audience comes to his concerts to have a good time, not for the speaches. Hell, even I felt like shouting "Hey teacher, leave us kids alone!" despite agreeing with him in most counts. But when the world is going down the toilet you have to do something better than hold your nose and pretend it isn't happening, don't you?

So here's Waters' new state of the nation address, 25 years after Amused To Death, his attack on media culture and war-as-spectacle during the first Gulf War. As pessimistic as that album was, it still couldn't predict how badly our reality would evolve: the oceans of trash dumped into our brains daily through mass "social" media, the climatic change of pre-apocalyptic proportions shrugged off by the brainwashed public, the rabid hate of religious fanatics and fearmongering of politicians urging us to close the borders to the masses of the "third world" trying to escape the wastelands of our making. As you can imagine, the lyricist behind Animals and The Wall has a lot to say about all this. Mostly he's directly in-your-face about it: "Picture a shithouse with no fucking drains/ Picture a leader with no fucking brains" is a crude but acute description of Trump's AmeriKKKa. But he can also be poignant: The story of mother-and-child separation of "The Last Refugee" can be rejected as corny sentimentalism, but what other way is there to approach a tragedy repeatedly happening before our doorstep? On the other hand he can be sarcastically self-deprecating: If the rockstar of "Déjà Vu" became God he'd start by making faces less affected by age and alcohol. Scattered among the polemic there are moments of evocative poetry and tenderness, like "Wait For Her", inspired by a Palestinian love poem. Together, it adds up to Waters' best writing since "The Wall" - provided you have the stomach for its brutal, singleminded, often way too literal, honesty. Or, according to Waters' critics, hypocrisy: after all, what right does a priviledged millionaire have to critisize "the system" from the comfort of his huge mansion?

The initial idea was a more theatrical concept piece in the vein of The Wall, but producer Nigel Godrich (of Radiohead fame) persuaded him to break it down to smaller, more easily swallowed, song-sized bites. It's still grandiose at times, helped with the use of strings, and evokes all of his post-Wall albums in its excessive use of sound effects, radio samples etc, as well as the theatrical half-spoken vocal. Waters' voice, by the way, is starting to match his looks: weathered and broken, yet defiant. Unlike some of his other albums though, behind every track here there's the bare backbone of an acoustic-based song. Electric guitars (played by Jonathan Wilson) take a back seat: one can explain it as Waters escaping the shadow of his former bandmate Gilmour, but I'm not sure I like it. After the opening ballads "Déjà Vu" and "The Last Refugee", "Picture This" is a more aggressive number with 80's synths and nimble bass. "Bird in a Gale" is this album's equivalent to "Run Like Hell" while "Smell The Roses" sounds like something out of Floyd's Animals. Waters lays down some killer bass lines. It's followed by a trio of rather calm songs: "Wait for Her", "Oceans Apart" and "Part of Me Died" ensure that the album ends on a tender, as opposed to angry, note. Still, the question remains "Is this the life we really want?/ It surely must be so/ For this is a democracy and what we all say goes". And, if it isn't, then what are we doing about it? Ultimately this might well be Waters' best, and easily most accessible, solo album. Godrich's work as arranger/producer on it has been universally praised for making it more down-to-earth, but I'm not sure he was the best choice: Now that Waters decided to listen to someone else after 40 years of authoritarian approach to recording, I wish he had found an associate more sympathetic to his Floydian past, someone like Steven Wilson for example. He might have turned this into a triple-disc prog opera. It wouldn't sell as much, but it'd make Floyd fans happy. Something for the future, probably. If Waters picks up his pace. I'm not sure we have the luxury of waiting another 25 years, maybe this is the final word. In that case, it's not a bad one.

**** for Déjà Vu, The Last Refugee, Picture That, Is This the Life We Really Want?, Smell the Roses, Wait for Her

*** for Broken Bones, Bird in a Gale, The Most Beautiful Girl, Oceans Apart, Part of Me Died

** for When We Were Young