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As I saunter into Bruno’s tiny brick-walled lounge and blend into
the red-eyed hipster crowd grinning over manhattans and martinis, I'm
instantly transfixed by the eight-man band in the center of the room, sweating out an eruption of sounds my ears and my brain can't quite
reconcile. With the force of a tornado, the music spirals through a potent progression of infinite rhythmic textures and melodic cycles, and as the words Bitches Brew simmer in my mind like a steaming cauldron of sensations and evocations, I lapse into dreamtime and find myself enveloped by the arcane, intoxicated spirit of Miles Davis’ labyrinthine jazz/electro/fusion voyages of the 1970s. It only takes a moment before I realize that in this room tonight a revival of the fittest is taking place: this music, branded radical and visionary at its inception over twenty years ago, has found its audience here and now, at the end of the millennium in
San Francisco. Somewhere above, Miles no doubt finds himself reluctantly impressed.
The truth is, the music that inspires this Y2K incarnation of Davis’
pioneering electric collective was indeed lightyears ahead of its time. After the 1970 release of Bitches Brew, the first of several dense, groove-drenched textural experiments, Miles was widely panned by jazz purists who claimed he had sacrificed the structured,
harmonic significance of his earlier post-bop work in favor of a diluted pop-jazz crossover. After witnessing the collective passion
and unquenchable drive of the players in this modern interpretation of
Miles’ concept, I can safely say that this music’s time has come. Embodying the multi-layered rhythmic tapestries of electronic
downtempo and drum’n’bass and the exploratory spirit of improvisational rock, Bitches Brew the band picks up where Miles and his legendary group--which included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, John McLaughlin, and others who went on to become legends in their own right--left off more than 20 years ago. The players in Bitches Brew, mostly young guys freshly born around the time of Miles' original work, have brought the fusion form into a modern context, and in doing so proven that now its dark, intense urgency and funk-laden groove are more relevant than ever.
With heavyweight hornman Jab on trumpet (electrified and spacey with wah-wah and reverb effects), the band tore through a dizzying array of vintage Miles compositions, spanning several of his most ambitious, funktified fusion albums. Dueling guitarists Ezra Gale and Ken Kearny traded furious, white-hot licks, leading to an impossible turntable scratch-sounding jam played on the tuning knobs at the top of their guitars. Jack Chandler blazed through solo after solo, rocking alto, tenor, and baritone saxes throughout the night. Mitch Marcus swung on sax and switched to wailing organ for some of the more bluesy numbers, while Billy Wig on bass, Steve Dodds on drums
and John Merril on percussion managed to anchor the heady solos to a
foundation of alternately dynamite/delicate beats and counter-rhythms. The overall sensation the group produced was one of being washed over in a cloud of sound, with a well-timed solo offering the only beacon of clarity amidst swirling sonic chaos. It was clear that each member of the group is a suprememly confident player, each making his instrument a vital and powerful voice within what might be considered an unbreachable wall of noise. The key to enjoying to this kind of music is to check your presumptions about jazz at the door, since often there seemed to be several solos going on simultaneously, making for a very challenging and thrilling listening experience. But once you succumb to the sound it becomes an almost intuitive groove that you can't deny...
It took more than twenty years for this mystifying music to return to the popular idiom, and fortunately the players in Bitches Brew not only sincerely love the form but also have the guts and the skill to handle it and make it something totally their own.
Set I:
Agharta, Bitches Brew, Mtume, Billy Preston, Gooey Dooey, On the Corner
Set II:
Ife, Spanish Key, Rated X, Coagulation, Hidden Shadows, Silent Way, Sivad
Jonathan Zwickel
JamBase San Francisco Correspondent
Go See Live Music!
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