4. Miles DavisBig Fun
I like a lot of records from this period in jazz and by Miles Davis, but the reason why I prefer this to Bitches Brew or Live-Evil or On The Corner is because this is an album made entirely out of outtakes. He was due an album and this was made from leftover bits. This has become something which is better known about Miles Davis over the last few years, especially with all the reissues. They reissue what they consider to be complete sessions from this period, say Jack Johnson or whatever. And if this is a guy’s outtakes, the stuff that was just left on the cutting room floor, then this blows my mind. Without the guiding hand of Teo Macero [it might not have worked]; the way he edits is just so beautiful. It seems to be so effortless. For Miles who notoriously didn’t trust anybody, for him to put all of his trust into Teo Macero, [to let him] just take this stuff and compile it. He would experiment with tape cutting and splicing, for the concept of that to happen in a jazz format is quite unique. It does break ground and move Miles Davis into a completely different territory to what pretty much everyone else was doing at the time. With Big Fun all the hard edges have been rounded off. It’s not Dark Magus and it’s not Live-Evil; Macero has made this record which is incredibly listenable. It’s a late night record I believe.
