Miles Ahead (the movie)

[Conchis]

To be fair the film doesn't centre on "drug problems". One of the difficulties with making films about creative musicians is that actually they spend more time making and thinking about music than anything else. So why not just make a film about that? The recent Beatles documentary Eight Days a Week was a good example in that regard. I would defy anyone to watch it and not come out liking them and appreciating their music more than before. One of the nicest scenes in the Miles film was a flashback to studio sessions with Gil Evans where those two are sitting at a piano (very briefly) talking through some technical stuff, without the kind of mindless compromise that would normally result, in scenes like this, from the thought that 90% of the audience aren't going to be able to follow it.

While working yesterday evening I played through the entirety of the Silent Way sessions. I'm not a Miles expert but it seems to me there's a massive amount of valuable material there which never made it onto an official release at the time.

If you haven't already, and can find it, check out the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box (also handy for coshing a burglar with!). Five CDs-worth of jazz-funk Nirvana, with McLaughlin, Scott Heron, Preston et al in overdrive.

Big Fun and Get Up With It are two of my favourite later M.D. albums

[Richard Barrett]

If you haven't already, and can find it, check out the Complete Jack Johnson Sessions box (also handy for coshing a burglar with!).

Yes I do have that, although I haven't yet given it more than a cursory listen - with these Complete Sessions boxes I was always thinking "I absolutely must have this" and then putting it away on the shelf and listening instead to the "official" albums because the outtakes would be bound to be less essential (and for me the Cellar Door set only really gets going on the last disc when McLaughlin turns up)... but I only just found this wasn't true of the Silent Way material.