Search - Miles Davis :: Live at the Hollywood Bowl 1981

Early Steps Under the Bright Spotlight

Mr. Richard D. Coreno | Berea, Ohio USA | 07/05/2010

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Only about five months into his stage comeback, Miles Davis has a band that can play all night - Bill Evans (sax), Mike Stern (guitar), Marcus Miller (bass), Al Foster (drums), Mino Cinelu (percussion) - and he provides ample space for each member to stretch out while getting his performance chops back.



The CD is part of an ongoing series of previously unreleased live gigs that are recorded from a variety of sources, with the 63:51 from the Hollywood Bowl very "flat" in parts and probably taped by a third-party source. It includes a long-winded speech mostly pulled from a proclamation by Los Angeles Mayor Thomas J. Bradley making September 25, 1981 - the day of the concert - "Miles Davis Day."



The event was split into two sets, with three of the six cuts - Back Seat Betty, Aida, Fat Time - being pulled from The Man with the Horn. KIX and Jean Pierre were quickly becoming setlist fixtures, with Miles in his best form on My Man's Gone Now, which he recorded in 1958 for the album Porgy and Bess. Stern is sailing hard and fast with solid solos, while Cinelu provides special flavor through his incredible creativity.



The same lineup is featured on the 1982 Grammy Award-winning double live album We Want Miles - which features four of the tracks on here - and is a far superior chronicle of the early concerts for the vast majority of collectors. But for fans in search of "new" releases - and are not picky on the sound quality - this is a neat niche before the road show really got cranked up."