Miles Davis proto-prog

Mandrakeroot wrote: today it is difficult to clearly divide the Jazz by the Jazz Rock and understand the real differences. However, it is clear that Miles davies should be included in PA. But he created or only been a member of the Jazz Rock movement?   In my opinion miles Davies should not be included in the PA as well to see he has not created the Jazz Rock, but only helped to be born and more for the presence of certain musicians in the line-up of his discs. I must admit that include Miles Davies, I would ask you to insert even Ray Charles... And this would not be a good thing. And all this because even Ray Charles has influenced Jazz Rock movement  and the contemporary Jazz scene (As Chat Baker or Count Basie, for example...).

Eh?

Wasn't Miles shunned by the jazz community when he went electric?  Miles is probably just a genre unto himself. 

Edited by Slartibartfast - May 04 2008 at 01:35

If the intention of this site is to be comprehensive, I think this question answers itself.

The decision whether or not to include Miles Davis (or any artist) ought to be made based solely on his musical output, not on the difficulties posed by his addition, or the can of worms it might open, or the people it might upset. Particularly unhelpful are the arguments 'If artist X is added, then artists Y and Z ought to be added too' and 'Since we've added artist X, we now have to add Y and Z'. Artist X either has at least one album generally regarded as progressive, or s/he does not.

My understanding is that Miles Davis has a sequence of albums considered progressive jazz/rock fusion. I've listened to a couple of them and can't hear it myself: great stuff, though for me the jazz motifs dominate the other styles. But my tastes are irrelevant. If this is generally regarded as progressive, he must appear on PA.

And yes, I know it's easy for me to say, given the extraordinary amount of work required to put him here. But it could be done incrementally, surely?

debrewguy!

I know you're making a serious point, but it's just a reprise of the 'if X, then Y' argument. I don't care about 'then Y'. I only care about 'If X'. Everyone has a line beyond which they find something unacceptable, and in many cases our views are different to the 'generally accepted' view.

Of course, if there's no generally accepted view, we'll have to debate it endlessly ... In the case of Miles Davis, however, the generally accepted view is that a significant portion of his output was progressive jazz/rock fusion. In my view that ought to be the end of the matter. (But not of the debate, of course, debate is healthy.)

This is the conundrum with Miles Davis - he made more than a few jazz fusion albums. However, he also made quite a few other albums that were not . Some musical groups have been included in PA due to 2-3 "prog" albums out of 7 or more releases . fFor some of our Prog Icons  - 5, 6, 7, or 8 are easily classified as "prog" out of a 20 records or more career.
But we have also seen a few groups excluded because they only had a few albums in their career that could be considered prog.
In this fist group, we've seen Split Enz, Sabbath, Styx. In the second, our prog gods like Genesis, Yes, Rush and even Jethro Tull could be argued (I'm not making a point for or against) to have more "non-prog" albums than pure prog records; this being mainly because they've enjoyed long careers with 20-30 albums to their name.
With Davis, my arguement is that while he may have put out more than a couple of albums that influenced or were considered jazz fusion , this does not represent the majority of his output, nor for the most part, do these LPs serve as the main basis for his status as a legendary musician.
I don't remember if anyone picked up on my comparison to Joni Mitchell. While clearly a folk singer, she did have an extended jazz influenced period. Do we include her in jazz fusion or prog folk based on these records ?
And if we argue that Davis is a major influence on Jazz Fusion, does that mean Metallica has unjustly been excluded when you consider that many prog metal bands look to Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, and And Justice for All as templates for the direction their own bands took music in ? How about Stockhausen and Edgar Varese ? Do the Avant-Garde owe more than a little to their pioneeing efforts ?

Maybe the thread that needs to be initiated, or rather the subject that needs debate is how to "quantify" requirements for inclusion at PA, whatever the genre. In the sense that, do we say that the majority of a group's music must be related to prog to justify its' place ? Do we allow groups that had a continuous period where their output was clearly prog, and is or was considered of some importance to the genre or subgenre ? Do we consider that most musical acts progress as their career advances, and may at a certain point become "unprog" (now there's a word fer ya!) ? How many albums, or what percentage of output do we set as a threshold ?
 
Using the recent example of Judas Priest's being considered for Prog Related because of their first 3 LPs; I remember a few reviews that considered Rocka Rolla more blues based than later releases, Sin After Sin showing the first signs of the JP "sound, but being spotty quality wise, and then Sad Wings of Destiny being the album that could fairly be considered "progressive" in concept & composition without much arguement. After that, Priest becomes the Metal God, and progness is not even a memory.
Then, flipping to the other hand, and using a fave of mine - Split Enz - that was included based on their first 2 albums, and one or two mid period releases out of some 10 studio records.

The hard part would be determining these numbers without resorting to citing such and such a group's contribution. And it may be pointless, because then some resenters (i.e. sore losers) would have cause to revisit past defeats. And God knows there are more than a few intense debates that are best left done & decided.

P.S. or maybe we add a very general sub-genre named porg (sic) that we could assign the iffy candidates so to make sure the purists cannot argue about the "progginess" of said acts.


Edited by debrewguy - May 14 2008 at 20:08

debrewguy wrote: Maybe the thread that needs to be initiated, or rather the subject that needs debate is how to "quantify" requirements for inclusion at PA, whatever the genre. In the sense that, do we say that the majority of a group's music must be related to prog to justify its' place ? Do we allow groups that had a continuous period where their output was clearly prog, and is or was considered of some importance to the genre or subgenre ? Do we consider that most musical acts progress as their career advances, and may at a certain point become "unprog" (now there's a word fer ya!) ? How many albums, or what percentage of output do we set as a threshold ?   Using the recent example of Judas Priest's being considered for Prog Related because of their first 3 LPs; I remember a few reviews that considered Rocka Rolla more blues based than later releases, Sin After Sin showing the first signs of the JP "sound, but being spotty quality wise, and then Sad Wings of Destiny being the album that could fairly be considered "progressive" in concept & composition without much arguement. After that, Priest becomes the Metal God, and progness is not even a memory. Then, flipping to the other hand, and using a fave of mine - Split Enz - that was included based on their first 2 albums, and one or two mid period releases out of some 10 studio records. The hard part would be determining these numbers without resorting to citing such and such a group's contribution. And it may be pointless, because then some resenters (i.e. sore losers) would have cause to revisit past defeats. And God knows there are more than a few intense debates that are best left done & decided.

yes, that is the hard part, i.e. recently we've been looking at New Zealand band Dragon who's first two LPs were prog but went on to make five pop records, and if we are to stick to our guidlines they should be added somewhere (and may very well be)  ..luckily it's self-evident that Genesis, Yes, Rush and Tull made iconic, impactful progressive rock regardless of later pop excursions  ..same for Split Enz , that first record is definitive art rock no matter how you slice it and those early albums must appear at a prog site as this, so the whole catalog is included (this is an archives after all)  ..and Split Enz are in Crossover, a full prog category, Sabbath is in ProgRelated which is an important difference 

Rocktopus wrote: darkshade wrote: debrewguy wrote: 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. Agharta At Fillmore-Live at the Fillmore East Big Fun Bitches Brew Dark Magus Filles De Kilimanjaro Get Up With It In A Silent Way It's About That Time Live at Philharmonic Hall Live At The Fillmore West Live Evil The Man With The Horn Miles In The Sky On The Corner Pangea Star People A Tribute To Jack Johnson Waterbabies We Want Miles Its the pointless whole discography or nothing thing, that keeps this thread alive. Miles 68-74 = yes (I don't know his 80's output). If debrewguy knows the albums in darkshade's post, he would also know that they belong in jazzrockfusion. Its Miles with a very different band or bands. Imagine if he started calling it The Miles Davis Group in '68. Then this group would already been here. Same thing with Herbie Hancock, a couple of years later, starting with the Mwandishi albums.

No no ... my point is how do we qualify a non-prog musician who has a portion of their output that is prog.
Yes, Davis has more than one jazz fusion album. .
My attempt at seeking a "criteria" is meant to see at what point do we say, "O.K. band X put out umpteenth records, and ? percent were or are prog.. there fore we can argue for their inclusion at PA".
Please refer to my examples - Split Enz : 2 out of 9 studio albums, they're in. Metallica : 2 out of 10, not in; Deep Purple 3 out of ???, they're in; Dave Brubeck ? out of ?. not in (yet)
Do you see my point ? If I've put out a hundred LPs,  and 10 of them are heavy metal, and the rest are rock n roll or hard blues rock, am I a metal band ?

Oh, and by the way, live albums, unless comprised of all new material shouldn't count, eh...

The jazz rock/Canterbury group are suggesting that one solution is to permit multi-labelling of bands/artists, e.g. Soft Machine would be canterbury, then depending on albums also be labelled psychedelic, or jazz rock fuson etc. This should permit tags other than those labelling prog bands to be used - but stop such albums being  named other than in a discography - i.e. not being available for open review. Therefore with Miles Davis, by consensus certain albums would be labelled jazz fusion, or jazz rock or jazz funk and be open for review, but others labelled jazz - post bop, jazz -cool school, jazz- bebop wouldn't be reviewable. Similarly I would hope a lot of the early Beatles albums etc. would stop cluttering up the review section .

Dick Heath wrote: The jazz rock/Canterbury group are suggesting that one solution is to permit multi-labelling of bands/artists, e.g. Soft Machine would be canterbury, then depending on albums also be labelled psychedelic, or jazz rock fuson etc. This should permit tags other than those labelling prog bands to be used - but stop such albums being  named other than in a discography - i.e. not being available for open review. Therefore with Miles Davis, by consensus certain albums would be labelled jazz fusion, or jazz rock or jazz funk and be open for review, but others labelled jazz - post bop, jazz -cool school, jazz- bebop wouldn't be reviewable. Similarly I would hope a lot of the early Beatles albums etc. would stop cluttering up the review section .

Yeah, but we wouldn't dare stop the Deep Purple reviews right ?

any update on whether Miles will be added here?

also, to add to the discussion, would it be possible if an exception was taken to Miles and only albums post-1967 be added to the site? that would help a lot, since his music prior, really has little to do with prog rock.