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I have been listening to this album quite a bit lately. Wow, what a mind-blower!
These sessions may have been Miles' most influential yet under-the-radar recordings ever. The original album was one of his least popular and sold very poorly, but many, many artists claim it as an inspiration.
The combination of funk, jazz, electric grooves and world beats is infectious. Apparently Miles didn't want his players to indulge in solo flights of fancy, so he restricted them to playing brief snippets which intertwined with each other. The result is a pastiche of sound that overflows with energy.
The guitarists for the Complete On the Corner sessions are John McLaughlin, David Creamer and Pete Cosey. I have to say I am not familiar with Creamer and Cosey, but they are very funk-oriented, in a Hendrix-y way. There are very few linear guitar lines, but a lot of heavily overdriven riffs and noodlings.
Curious what other people think--was this a real standout? Or mostly self-indulgent?
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03-13-2016 09:26 PM
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Oh man, Cosby was the man! He filled Miles' "Hendrix" wants quite well.
Great album.
Check Cosby at his heaviest on "Dark Magus."
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COSBY???? You mean Cosey. Pete Cosey. Chicago blues crazy guitar man. Awesome powerful player. Agharta.
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Must be auto correct!
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Miles was always a bit ahead of everyone else, wasn't he?
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Damn auto correct. Always creating a ducking problem.
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a little ahead??? I'd say MILES AHEAD.
Originally Posted by jpp65
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Spent a lot of time listening to On the Corner as well as DooBop. Great stuff!
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Get Up With It is good too. Same year release as On The Corner I believe. I liked Water Babies as well, but I can't recall how much guitar is in that one.
BTW, I heard that Cosby likes puddin' as in puddin' something in where it don't belong. Hopefully he will pay a heavy price for it.Last edited by lammie200; 03-13-2016 at 10:59 PM.
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Can someone tell me something about David Creamer? For me he's the mystery guitarist of all time who played on On The Corner. It looks like he lives around my area in the Bay Area. But I really don't know anything about him.
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After Bitches Brew Miles was fakin' the funk.
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Pete Cosey all but disappeared too. I think he died a few years ago. I played with a bass player who played with Miles, with Stern and Bob Berg. He was from Chicago like Cosey. When I asked him about Cosey he kind of smirked and laughed. He said he was huge in size and girth and basically just played blues.
I have much respect for Cosey for those Miles tracks.
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Self-indulgent? That's a good question. The high point of self-indulgence for me is the cock-pomp-rock guitar solo where the guitarist goes off into his own little disconnected world for a long time.
I think it was probably a lot harder to be self indulgent in the days of bop because there was a well-defined harmonic structure and a well-defined songbook to work from. Solos were also a lot shorter (at least in the earlier days of bop). And the level of musicianship required to play it was high, so amateur dramatics were rare.
Enter fusion. Anyone who can play pentatonic scales can play fusion badly (I know, I did it for quite a while in my youth lol). AS the OP said, on this album Miles requested short snippets, not long solos, plus it's a heavily produced album; so all in all I wouldn't say it's self-indulgent, but I can understand that a lot of jazz lovers will never like it.
This album is really urban compared to its predecessors like In a Silent Way, Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, Live Evil...which by comparison sound reflective and almost pastoral!
I don't buy a lot of fusion these days; last year a couple of recent albums by John McLaughlin; the level of ensemble playing on these albums is incredible, very far from guitar-god-self-indulgence.
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Self indulgent? Man. That's what --- never mind.
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He pretty much stayed in Chicago, keeping a low-key profile-- he was a founding member of the AACM, and retained that connection. I'm friends with his daughter, and they would often sing and play together. I think he did some low key music education gigs performing in schools and hospitals and so forth. He also played on the tribute album that came out a few years ago of Miles Davis alumni called "Miles in India", Which was a fusion record that Incorprated jazz and Indian classical music. Sadly, Pete apparently died from complications relating to a routine surgery-- which was also apparently how Gerry Mulligan passed away as well . Originally Posted by henryrobinett
I know that his daughter corresponds with Miles Davis's kid, The guy who runs his estate. They seem to be on good terms .
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Thanks for the update. Much respect.
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@Henry. Maaaaan. The OP asked whether anyone though this was self-indulgent. It's an excellent and intelligent question; so much jazz, and especially fusion, is self-indulgent; and I would guess that people who are interested in more traditional forms of jazz would definitely find this over-indulgent, and probably wouldn't classify it as jazz anyway.
It's interesting that everyone (except 1) who has responded to this thread so far has gushed about it. Yet when it was released it was regarded as his worst album, and even disowned by some of the people who played on it. It's amazing what 50 years of hindsight can do for users of jazzguitar.be eh? ;-)
The main negatives for me about this album is that it's so heavily produced, and not enough space in it. It's like standing On The Corner of a major intersection in a busy city (surprise, surprise).
Also, let's not forget that Miles was not just motivated by artistic concerns; he was looking for a cross-over younger whiter audience with more spending power in those days; maybe he never achieved that until Tutu, which I also like a lot.
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Self indulgent was my comment. This is jazz. Jazz is populated by soloists who can take 5 chorus solos or more. See Coltrane. Only when one plays long meandering meaningless drivel can one be considered self indulgent. Yet this is a term of derision rock and rollers regularly level against jazz musicians. I just take exception to it. Especially on that record. I don't hear a lot of "self indulgence" on it. Not a lot of guitar blasting as I recall. Creamer was pretty understated actually. But I haven't listened to it in many years.
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Henry, I don't disagree with you at all... but many would ok :-) I really liked this stuff when I lived in the big city... now I live on a mountain top...
for anyone here who wants a longer review of this album and a history of its critical reception...
The most hated album in jazz | Music | The Guardian
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But I'm not talking about other people. I could care less about "other people". I never liked the album. Im not even talking about the album.
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About 15 years ago, I was deeply into Miles' '69-'75 period. After Weather Report, Headhunters and Return to Forever, it was my gateway into jazz.
That said, 'On the Corner' is my least-favourite Miles album from that period. I haven't listened to it in over 10 years. Some of that music appears in a much-improved form on 'Panthalassa', an album produced when Columbia let Bill Laswell loose on the 'Silent Way' through 'Get Up With It' tapes. Laswell's touch is subtle but the 'On the Corner' tracks in particular are greatly improved - they just "breath" much more.
(Ignore the 'Panthalassa: The Remixes' set though.)
Anyone seriously interested in Miles' music of this period really should pick up 'Miles Ahead' by Paul Tingen - the best book that focuses on Miles '67-'91 and interviews almost all of the musicians involved.
Pete Cosey's playing on 'Agharta' is the best post-Hendrix freakout-outer space-wah-skronk guitar ever played in my opinion. It's regrettable that he recorded so little afterwards but there is some of the old fire caught on Akira Sakata's 2000 album 'Fishermans.com', which is a quartet with Cosey, Bill Laswell and Hamid Drake. An obscure Japanese release (I got mine via the Downtown Music Gallery in NYC) so I was pleasantly surprised to see it's now on Spotify.
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This album has an advanced dysphonic nature. I love it.
Hey trippy hippies and cool doods - listen to some real dysphonic compositions; come back and tell us what your mums think.
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Great comments! As late as Bitches Brew Miles was still playing melodies--opaque, dissonant, occasionally jarring melodies but still with melodic lines and chord changes. With Jack Johnson he moved more into a groove-based form of playing, then this. Wow.
It's funny that I have not listened to it much despite enjoying the early 80's polyrhythmic stuff put out by Talking Heads, Jon Hassell, Brian Eno, and others. In fact, when the Talking Heads song I Zimbra came out we were blown away by the new sound. We thought they invented it!
Listening to OTC it's obvious where so many folks got their inspiration, in and out of jazz. It seems like Miles was always creating "boxes" for himself--musical structures of his own device--then finding ways to get out of them. That's the mark of a true artist.
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Yeah second that, Panthalassa is great. Basically Laswell took all the best bits of the original records and cleaned up the sound tremendously. I find the original 'On the Corner' record quite muddy sounding, but Laswell's version really kicks ass, especially when the drums come in (sounds like he raised them in the mix as well as improving the sound). Surely this is how Miles would have liked it to sound. Originally Posted by David B
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