Member:
Chuck AzEee!
(Profile)
(All Album Reviews by Chuck AzEee!)
Date:
2/24/2003
Format:
CD (Album)
Man, for those of us who were alive at the time at the release of Miles Davis's On The Corner, at first was taken aback, as the Jazz icon, totally went and changed his musical direction. During it's initial release, On The Corner was critically panned as some said that Miles Davis completely sold out, the album was devoid of any type of improvisation, the modal direction that made his mid-Sixties line-up so influential as well as beloved. On The Corner, was considered the last straw to Jazz critics, but yet the album had a small following, and in the coming years would be one of the most influential recordings that Miles Davis's had ever done.
Groups like Living Colour, Primus, Fishbone, Material, Public Image Limited to name a few had revered this album onto acrophobe-like status, in which years after its release posthumously was given its due as not only for it influence on Jazz-rock and Funk-rock bands, On The Corner is now considered a work of genius.
Although the album is listed for having eight songs, in actuality is really two side long jams, which is two complex to pass for your normal Funkadelic/Parliment/Earth Wind & Fire funk band and too lacking in improvisation to have been taken serious by Jazz fans. Like all of the albums released by Miles in the early Seventies, the album contained no less than six musicians, the album's linear notes list sixteen musicians (although not all played at the same time) with no musician stealing the spot light from each other, and Miles himself barely playing his trumpet, instead whistling over funk vamps provided by his backing band, and even making noises on the electric keyboard.
Many of the Jazz rock albums of the Seventies have not aged well, some due to their pretensions, others to poor engineering, but On The Corner sounds just as great now as it did when it was first released back in 1972.
Charles
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