Live Evil (Disc 1)  (49:48)
	01	Sivad [Live]						15:18
	02	Little Church [Live]						03:18
	03	Medley: Gemini/Double Image [Live]						05:57
	04	What I Say [Live]						21:11
	05	Nem Um Talvez [Live]						04:04
Live Evil (Disc 2)  (52:17)
	01	Selim						02:18
	02	Funky Tonk						23:27
	03	Inamorata And Narration						26:32

Recorded in Washington, December 18, 1970 & New York, February 6, 1970 Date of US Release 1972 The first in a continuing series of double-LP extravaganzas released only in Japan in the early '70s, Live-Evil mixes four studio tracks from 1970 with four live ones taken from a Washington, D.C. performance in December of that year. Amidst heavy competition, the live tracks - including "What I Say," "Sivad" and "Funky Tonk" - are the highlights, featuring some of Miles' best playing of the decade, plus aggressive work on extended solo spots by John McLaughlin on guitar, Keith Jarrett on keyboards, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Alternating chaotic deep-groove passages with a few more atmospheric, Live-Evil held up for two decades as one of the great import-only Miles Davis albums, until it was reissued in America by Columbia/Legacy in 1997.


Miles Davis
Live-Evil
Columbia/Legacy (65135)
USA 1971

Miles Davis, trumpet; Gary Bartz, soprano sax, alto sax; John McLaughlin, guitar; Keith Jarrett, electric piano, organ; Michael Henderson, electric bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Airto Moreira, percussion; Steve Grossman, soprano sax; Chick Corea, electric piano; Herbie Hancock, electric piano; Dave Holland, electric bass, acoustic bass; Hermeto Pascoal, drums, whistling, voice, electric piano; Wayne Shorter, soprano sax; Joe Zawinul, electric piano; Khalil Balakrishna, electric sitar; Billy Cobham, drums; Ron Carter, acoustic bass

Tracklist:
1. Sivad — 15:13
2. Little Church — 3:14
3. Medley: Gemini/Double Image — 5:53
4. What I Say — 21:09
5. Nem Um Talvez — 4:03
disc 1 time: 49:32

1. Selim — 2:12
2. Funky Tonk — 23:26
3. Inamorata and Narration by Conrad Roberts — 26:29
disc 2 time: 52:06

total time 101:38


Links:
see all miles davis reviews at ground & sky
official site
review at progressiveears
review at pitchfork
miles ahead, the miles davis database
miles davis discography
miles at the gepr
buy this cd from amazon.com




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Even though I was already familiar with (and greatly enjoyed) a lot Davis' fusion music when I bought Live-Evil, my first listen to this album was not a pleasant experience. It was too much for me to absorb - too aggressive, too murky sounding, too much going on at one time. It just sounded a little too mean and ugly for me at first. On subsequent listens, once the shock wore off, I came to appreciate the album more. There are definitely some great performances on this album. It's still not my favorite Miles Davis album by a long shot, but I can at least appreciate it now.
My only complaint is that the album is maybe a bit too long. The four short studio pieces probably could have been dropped (or included on a different album), and the last two tracks on disc two maybe could have been edited down. Together, those last two tracks are just shy of 50 minutes long, and are fairly similar ("Funky Tonk" ends rather abruptly, and "Inamorata" begins with such a similar riff that if you're not paying attention, it sounds like one long piece).

I know this album has a high reputation, and I do enjoy these CDs, but personally I'm more likely to listen to Bitches Brew or Get Up With It or Agharta when I'm in the mood to hear something from this phase of Miles' career.

review by Bob Eichler — 2-26-05 — post a comment (0)




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Though this great album combines two recording sessions (December 19, 1970 live at The Cellar Door in Washington, DC; June 3, 1970 at Columbia Studio B, New York, NY), over 85% of the material is from the Cellar Door date. Thus, while the studio recordings have rotating personnel (including Herbie Hancock, who continued to work occasionally with Miles after leaving to form his own electric band), the vast bulk of this double-album features a stable lineup, the septet of Davis, Bartz, McLaughlin, Jarrett, Henderson, DeJohnette and Moreira.
This music is the most aggressive and multifaceted that Davis' electric band had recorded to this point. The live material sounds to me more like an extension (and abstraction) of Jack Johnson than a development of what his electric band was doing circa Bitches Brew, and since I've always preferred Jack Johnson anyway, I consider this to be a positive. "What I Say" (no relation to the Ray Charles hit) and "Inamorata" are the highlights of this album for me. A combined 48 minutes of electric-Miles bliss, these tracks contain some of the funkiest, swingingest, edgiest and hardest-rocking avant-garde jazz that you're likely to ever hear. Davis had completely digested his latest influences and executed his musical visions on Live-Evil with remarkable success.

Throughout, McLaughlin and Jarrett distinguish themselves. Improbably, McLaughlin sounds thoroughly integrated with Davis' schemes and his bristling leads "belong" in this music more than ever (he was not a regular with this particular touring unit ). Less impressionistic than either Joe Zawinul or Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett sounds tailor-made for this incarnation of Davis' music. He had been playing with Davis' band for a few months prior to the Cellar Door date and he had gelled completely with the band's aesthetic, his playing as funky or as angular as the music demanded.

The studio tracks are shorter and more atmospheric. The "Gemini/Double Image" medley is an exercise in post-Hendrix guitar riffing; the others are of a piece and sound as if Davis had been listening to Ennio Morricone's film scores. In any event, they're all interesting, and their sequencing effectively presents the longer pieces as individual entities as opposed to a continuous jam.

Obviously, music of this sort is not for everybody. Miles Davis had already raised the ire of the jazz community with In a Silent Way and Bitches Brew and infuriated them when he started dabbling with funk influences. The fallout among purists continues to this day: this era of Davis' band was basically dismissed as musically irrelevant in Ken Burns' documentary Jazz. For music fans with open minds, though (most fans of prog, I've found), Miles Davis' electric albums may well make short lists of "desert island" essentials. Live-Evil would make mine and I can honestly say it's an album I doubt I'll ever tire of hearing.

review by Matt P. — 2-16-05




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I've always thought Live-Evil was rather overrated; and thankfully, with the incredibly long-awaited release of the Complete Cellar Door Sessions looming as I write this, it may finally become obsolete as a live document. Live-Evil basically consists of four long tracks drawn from the last two sets that Davis' band played at Washington, DC's Cellar Door in 1970 — incidentally, the only two sets of the band's stint at the Cellar Door in which guitarist John McLaughlin sat in. And while the music is generally very strong, it's marred by some bizarre editing and post-production choices, choices that threaten and in some cases completely destroy any semblance of flow or continuity.
First and foremost are the shorter tracks interspersed throughout; these studio cuts lack the energy and funkiness of the live pieces, and don't contribute much of anything to the album as a whole. Even aside from these irrelevant shorter pieces, all the long live tracks except "What I Say" feature multiple obvious edits courtesy of Teo Macero (whose heavy-handed if not downright clumsy edits can be seen all over Miles' work in this period, though to better effect in albums like Bitches Brew or In a Silent Way). For instance, towards the end of "Funky Tonk" the band is just settling into a killer groove when bam! the wheels fall off completely, as in, Macero makes the inexplicable decision to abruptly fade the recording out. Even more inexplicably, the next track ("Inamorata") then begins with the band in basically the same groove — essentially the jam is cut straight through the middle and placed on record as two totally separate tracks. The end of "Inamorata" is just as bad, with the music fading into the background mid-groove and a lame "Narration" inserted on top. After the narration ends, the music comes back to the fore, but at bootleg-level quality. What the fuck?

Despite these infuriatingly bad post-production decisions, the actual music is at times killer. "What I Say" is unedited, and while the rhythm section stays in the same groove for the entire 21-minute duration of the piece, at least it's a killer groove, with some killer soloing on top. Keith Jarrett is in fine form, and this recording offers a final look at his freer electric playing before he swore off electric instruments entirely. And the whole session is just dirtier and funkier than the more clinical Bitches Brew, offering a good intro to this period of Miles' career. It's just too bad that the whole affair is basically ruined by crappy editing. On the bright side, I guess those crappy edits will at least guarantee some sales for the forthcoming Complete Cellar Door Sessions.

review by Brandon Wu — 9-22-05