PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT

Obviously not the material covered in the book, but still worth owning...

MILES DAVIS AND THE COMING OF THE SECOND GREAT QUINTET

SEVEN STEPS: THE COMPLETE COLUMBIA RECORDINGS OF MILES DAVIS 1963-1964 TRACES CREATION OF HIS ‘60s GROUP WITH WAYNE SHORTER, HERBIE HANCOCK, RON CARTER, AND TONY WILLIAMS

7-CD BOX SET INCLUDES ENTIRE SEVEN STEPS TO HEAVEN SESSIONS AND UNEDITED MILES DAVIS IN EUROPE ANTIBES FEST DATE

PLUS: NY PHILHARMONIC HALL CONCERT RESTORED TO ORIGINAL SEQUENCE; FULL MILES IN TOKYO AND MILES IN BERLIN DATES, NEVER AVAILABLE IN U.S. CATALOG UNTIL NOW

47 selections - 7 previously unissued performances, 3 in newly unedited form

92-page booklet with liner notes written by 3-time Grammy-winning reissue producer Michael Cuscuna, and 2-time Grammy winner Bob Blumenthal

7th box set in Miles Davis Series, newest addition to series that began in 1996, will arrive in stores September 28th on Columbia/Legacy Jazz

Paraphrasing its title from the 1963 LP that introduced the first three new members of the quintet on half its tracks (Hancock, Carter, Williams, working with Miles and tenor saxophonist George Coleman), this lavishly-packaged seven-CD box set methodically delineates the chronological evolution of the group over the course of six distinct albums:

Seven Steps To Heaven, with four previously unissued performances from the sessions in Los Angeles (in April) and New York (in May) that produced the LP;

Miles Davis In Europe, with two previously unissued tunes – and three more heard for the first time in unedited form - from the Antibes jazz festival in France two and a half months later in July;

My Funny Valentine, a ballads LP with the previously unissued “Autumn Leaves,” the first of two albums culled from two long concert sets at NY’s Philharmonic Hall in February 1964;

Four & More, the follow-up LP from the Philharmonic Hall date, emphasizing uptempo material;

Miles In Tokyo, in which Sam Rivers replaced Coleman for an historic set at Kohseinenkin Hall in July 1964, never available in Miles’ U.S. Columbia catalog until now; and

Miles In Berlin, in which Shorter finally enters the lineup for this September 1964 concert, also never available in Miles’ U.S. Columbia catalog until now, with the previously unissued “Stella By Starlight.”

WE ALL KNEW THIS DAY WOULD COME

I'm finished.

Typed the last sentence of the re-edited first draft last night, burned it to a CD-R. Gonna print a copy tomorrow, and mail it to the publisher.

The breakdown:

13 chapters, an introduction, a bibliography, and a discography.

440 pages of actual text.

(I contracted for 300, but come on. All of Miles Davis's electric music, from 1968 to 1991, in 300 pages? Really, now. Maybe it'll shrink when they determine the book's font, but I don't honestly know how much I could cut if asked.)

What's next, you ask? Well, there are two possibilities.

1) A bio/critical analysis on Sly Stone.
2) A novel.

Right now, the smart money's on #2, because three books about music-related subjects in a row feels a little too rut-like to me. I want to be able to write about any damn thing I want, and sell the results, and if I stick to one thing for too long I'll limit myself in others' eyes. So, probably fiction next. A totally different set of skills are required, which means the results will inevitably be as knackered and ridiculous as my first book was, if not worse.

But you gotta get out on the dance floor and give it a whirl, right?

I CAN SEE DAYLIGHT! KEEP DIGGING!

Three chapters left to revise. I should be done this week. All that remains, after that, is to gather all the bibliographical and discographical data and type it up. What's more fun than typing out album serial numbers? Plus, I'm trying to keep the discography more or less chronological, which should be fun, too, considering it includes a bunch of bootlegs and unreleased stuff as well as the commonly available material. And do I put things chronologically in the order they were recorded, or the order they were released? And if the former, do albums get listed by the earliest date of recording? Gah.

I sure hope the publisher gets someone else to put together the index.

WORKING, WORKING...

I'm literally at the midpoint of revisions. I allotted myself two days per chapter, but so far they've only taken one day each, so I might have a chance to go through the whole thing twice before sending it to Backbeat. I suspect that Chapter Seven ("Michael Henderson"), which I'm working on today, will take longer, though, for two reasons.

1. I wasn't all that happy with it when I finished it six months ago, and made a mental note to fix lots of things when I got around to revising. (This is also true of Chapter Eight, "Guitar.")

2. I do a lot of work at night, and The Shield is on tonight.

Back to work.

BULLETIN

I'm on the brink of completing the first draft of the manuscript. Either tonight or tomorrow night, I'll be done. (I have to be - I've slated the whole month of June for revisions.)

This past Thursday, I went and saw Burnt Sugar perform at the Vision Festival. Met up with Greg Tate beforehand, and we talked briefly about some unreleased live stuff (the material taped at the Cellar Door club in Washington, DC in December 1970, some of which was edited down for Live-Evil) I'd sent him. (I got it from a guy who downloaded it off the web.)

It's killer stuff - six CDs' worth, only two of which feature John McLaughlin on guest guitar. The other four are just the regular touring band of that time - Miles, Gary Bartz, Keith Jarrett, Michael Henderson, Jack DeJohnette and Airto Moreira. Listening to Discs 5 and 6 (the ones with McLaughlin), it's almost impossible to pick out where Miles and Teo Macero decided to slice out a chunk for Live-Evil. There are many moments when I find myself thinking, "Oh my God, that wasn't an edit - they did that live!"

Anyhow, Burnt Sugar's set was really good. It was live funk with a guitarist, two drummers, three bassists (two upright, one electric), a cellist, a violinist, a pianist, a keyboardist, and a percussionist. And two vocalists, a man and a woman. The man was great; he sounded sort of like Mos Def, and scat-sang along with the band in a very cool way. If you've ever heard the Leftfield track "Afro-Left," from Leftism, his vocals sounded something like that, only more hip-hop-oriented. The female rapper, though, was annoying. She was freestyling, but her subject matter was clichéd braggadocio, and didn't mesh well with the band's groove at all. I was wondering why Greg (who was conducting) didn't shut her down, but I guess his tactic is more to indicate where someone should come in; what they do once they are in is up to them. In the liner notes to Burnt Sugar's first CD, Blood On The Leaf, he compares himself to Mickey Mouse in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" section of Fantasia, and that's somewhat accurate, if excessively self-deprecating.

I'm sure that next month is going to bring many shameful realizations, and many mad scrambles for the dictionary and/or thesaurus as I realize how very, very many clichés and half-baked ideas I've relied upon in the last 14 months or so. I can't wait. Writing this thing has been a thrill-ride. It's opened my ears, and my mind, a little wider just about every day. I've been forced to re-think ideas I held onto for years, and to think about entirely new things. I've had to teach myself not to be a knee-jerk naysayer, but not to be a yes-man for received wisdom and dogma, either. That's a balancing act that has made me wonder, more than a few times, whether, if I agree with so much of what everyone else has already said, I should have bothered writing a book at all. But I guess that's for someone else to judge. I've gotta finish the aforementioned revisions, and then figure out what I'm gonna do for my next trick book...