Miles Davis proto-prog

I repeat my position/admonition. I think it is just an effort to try and somehow add some "hipness" to PA by including a great & legendary musician. As a previous poster mentioned - next do we add Coltrane ? Brubeck's imprint is big, does he fit in here. How about Duke Ellington?  I believe he wrote a few pieces named with "classical music terms". The Louis Armstrong back catalogue could fuel an all night riff reverie, for the musicologist interested in seeing how many musicians copped his riffs, tempos & solos. And yes, that would include blues, jazz AND rock players, proggers amongst them.
Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra ... anyone off the beaten path in Jazz could be crowbarred in if we consider that they may have been even the smallest of influences on prog. Yet, many of those 70s prog guys got off on Elvis, right. So we get Elvis in, 'cause his melding of various american musiques showed the white people what could come about when you put music from various sources - ethnic, genre, period, style, era etc ...
And if we really want to pay ultimate homages to those who contributed to prog history, well , how about Oohg, who invented the 7/4, 13/5, 3/2 and various other strange & exotic meters that get thrown about on these hallowed (digital) pages.
It seems like we sometimes try to incorporate musical acts that have a legendary status or massive hip appeal so as to point out how cool we are.
Judas Priest ? One album that might qualify as proto-prog metal, maybe. Miles Davis, he's got like what , 100 albums, and because 3-4 were jazz fusion, even if Bitches Brew is the only one that gets mentioned most of the time, we should automatically say, YES THIS IS A PROG GUY.
David Bowie ? Maybe, but even then , what a few albums mid-career that were somewhat experimental ...
Hell, BTO had a few jazz tunes scattered through their oeuvre. But it would be a stretch to even begin to say that they were jazz rock (and that's what those tunes were referred to as)
And even some prog folkers are questionable if only because they seem to here due to having put out only one or two albums that happened to have multi-part compositions, with no parts that strayed too far from the folk genre mode. Can we get Dylan in here ? Seems he wrote a few long song poems in the 60s. Proto-prog-folk, any one ?
Please, let's rein in our enthusiasm for certain acts enough to see that they need not be here to be artistically valid.
And while we're at it, let's tell this Debrewguy to rein in the unraveling rants on refusing revered riff meisters entry....

deleted double post.


Edited by debrewguy - May 04 2008 at 20:38

the guy is great, correct me if i wrong but its jazz, pure jazz. 

debrewguy wrote: I repeat my position/admonition. I think it is just an effort to try and somehow add some "hipness" to PA by including a great & legendary musician.

I have seen Miles Davis on pretty much every progressive rock site but this one. Sites that people mention whenever a group like Sabbath or The Who are added. Sites that some fear would mock such inclusions. And yet there he is, mainly because we are the only one with an all or nothing addition policy, so the rest can just cherry pick.

As a previous poster mentioned - next do we add Coltrane ? Brubeck's imprint is big, does he fit in here. How about Duke Ellington?  I believe he wrote a few pieces named with "classical music terms". The Louis Armstrong back catalogue could fuel an all night riff reverie, for the musicologist interested in seeing how many musicians copped his riffs, tempos & solos. And yes, that would include blues, jazz AND rock players, proggers amongst them. Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra ... anyone off the beaten path in Jazz could be crowbarred in if we consider that they may have been even the smallest of influences on prog. Yet, many of those 70s prog guys got off on Elvis, right. So we get Elvis in, 'cause his melding of various american musiques showed the white people what could come about when you put music from various sources - ethnic, genre, period, style, era etc ...

Elvis chiefly mixed gospel, blues, and R&B, three genres which already went kind of hand in hand. No one will ever ask him to be added. You're just being difficult.

Miles Davis, he's got like what , 100 albums, and because 3-4 were jazz fusion, even if Bitches Brew is the only one that gets mentioned most of the time, we should automatically say, YES THIS IS A PROG GUY.

After the briefest of searches, I found 15 full-fledged jazz fusion albums (live and studio) not counting his 80s electronica experimentations, which would also likely count. Throw those in, and you've got around 20. Add in what films you can find and you've got a more than qualified entry (the only qualification is one full prog album, which he has 20-fold).

Please, let's rein in our enthusiasm for certain acts enough to see that they need not be here to be artistically valid.

But why deny someone who by all accounts should have been here from the start just because it would take work?

And while we're at it, let's tell this Debrewguy to rein in the unraveling rants on refusing revered riff meisters entry....

It would be nice if you wouldn't use bands that have already been voted down and have nothing to do with Miles Davis to support your argument, yes.

debrewguy wrote: Miles Davis is nothing more than an attempt to try to cash in on his inherent coolness cache.

He was very important to cool jazz.

The rock n roll hall of fame would include him , just the same as some here would - for little more than a few albums where he kind of almost nearly played a type of music that sort of fit in with whatever genre the "wanting to be seen as cool fools" are part of. Or for simpler reasoning - count the number of albums Davis put out. Then count how many, i.e. the percentage/ratio etc ..., actually would meet the clearly loose requirements posited by the wanna be cool by association crowd. give it up, he's a jazz guy.

He is a jazz guy, but he's also a  jazz guy who was very important to jazz fusion/ jazz-rock.  His music is cool, but I'd rather see him in the archives because he's relevant.

I think he should be included in fusion.  I thought he'd been okayed before.

He had  along career, but I think he has more than enough appropriate albums to make him worthy of addition.


Edited by Logan - April 30 2008 at 14:21

debrewguy wrote: I repeat my position/admonition. I think it is just an effort to try and somehow add some "hipness" to PA by including a great & legendary musician. As a previous poster mentioned - next do we add Coltrane ? Brubeck's imprint is big, does he fit in here. How about Duke Ellington?  I believe he wrote a few pieces named with "classical music terms". The Louis Armstrong back catalogue could fuel an all night riff reverie, for the musicologist interested in seeing how many musicians copped his riffs, tempos & solos. And yes, that would include blues, jazz AND rock players, proggers amongst them. Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra ... anyone off the beaten path in Jazz could be crowbarred in if we consider that they may have been even the smallest of influences on prog.

yea but these guys didnt do rock, or at least not progressive rock. all those guys are strictly jazz (though i dont like using the term 'strictly') Miles is the only one who did.

Coltrane might have had he lived on into the 70's, but that's another discussion for another day.

Why would Miles be in Prog Related??? that makes no sense!

the genre of Jazz-Rock/Fusion would not exist the way it does were it not for Miles Davis. I cant believe people would think he'd be put anywhere BUT jazz-fusion section. im going to stop and let other people post now.

Our problem - and has always been a problem - is while being carried away  with too many genres and sub-genres (several made up here and meaningless outside PA), a band or artist gets lumbered with a single genre tag. Yet again I call for each and every artist to to be tagged with more than one genre tag , and best of all, specifically tag an artist's albums, hence we could happily and more precisely indicate, for instance, Kind Of  Blue was 'jazz', Bitches Brew was 'jazz funk' We Want Miles was 'jazz rock', others 'be bop', 'post bop', 'cool jazz', etc. 

Edited by Dick Heath - May 02 2008 at 12:15

Pnoom! wrote: Miles Davis doesn't belong on this site.  He is a jazz musician, plain and simple.  If we include him, we might as well include Beethoven because prog uses classical music.  The point of the jazz-fusion section is for jazz-fusion bands/artists who played songs that are proggy as well.  Miles Davis is clearly jazz-fusion (at times), but in no way is he prog.   That said, The Velvet Underground is long overdue for proto.

Edited by Dick Heath - May 02 2008 at 13:00

The mid to late 60's underground music scene evolved first in progressive music in the UK ('68-'69) . Initially  one of the main sub-genres was 'rock jazz' , which quickly and readily evolved/became 'jazz rock' with more jazz being played in tunes,  and to become 'jazz fusion' in the mid 70's. Zappa's music was 'avant garde rock', Soft Machine's intially and Pink Floyd's were 'psychedelia', and so on, represented  other component parts of 'progressive music'. When Bitches Brew hit the scene when Miles Davis had clearly shifted  to seek out the mass rock audiences by more fully adopting components of rock music, then we had no problem assimilating the album into progressive music. Think about Soft Machine who went from a soul rock band, to a psychedelic band, to an avant jazz rock fusion band in 3 years;they had become the epitomy of an really 'progressive '(music) band. It is that that part of underground music , which was originally limited to Nice/ELP, King Crimson, Renaissance, Yes, Genesis, Gentle Giant (and in that order), that came known by the preferred name 'progressive rock'. It was convenient for a band such as Roxy Music, that lacked some of the component parts of the mainstream prog bands in their music, to use the borrowed name 'artrock' - and because of the stage clothing Roxy Music would have also been part of the 'glam rock 'scene (e.g. Bowie, Sweet, even Gary Glitter, Be Bop Deluxe). 

Edited by Dick Heath - May 02 2008 at 13:40