Miles Davis: On the Corner

Miles Davis: On the Corner

On the Corner was the culmination of Miles’ growing fascination with the funk/rock dominating the charts at the beginning of the seventies. He’d been doing fusion for several years by this point, but this was to be something different, this was to be a real funk-jazz album, one that would propel jazz back into the popular mainstream. When it did not, he was utterly mystified, even further so when Head Hunters did. Was this not the same idea?

Well, as with anything regarding On the Corner, yes and no. This is certainly decked out in all the elements of funk, in fact drenched with them. Wah-wah, chunky bass, propulsive percussion, spacey structures. If you had read a book about funk music, but not heard it in practice, this would seem to fit the mold. However, On the Corner, while awesomely funky and futuristic, is not funk, it is a tape-manipulated, manic cacophony of the streets. The title track clatters like tossed garbage can lids, stutters like gridlock traffic with the belligerent honking of horns, and is hot like summer asphalt. We burst into this traffic jam seemingly already in progress, and it is absolutely chaotic, harsher even than the albums that preceded it. John McLaughlin’s guitar stabs, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea’s keyboards boil from underground, multiple levels of rhythm run in all directions. Funk was the spacey sound of the streets, but this was the rhythm of busy, crowded cities themselves translated into music of a highly futuristic, electronic nature.

Critics derided On the Corner as a bewildering mess. It is. That is its greatness.

****1/2

~ by jshopa on August 3, 2008.