A night of explorations: Miles in ’73

Exploration from Miles Davis and his band. Click the image for more of Miles Davis’ music.

Dave Liebman is featured in this excerpt from a live performance of the Miles Davis band in 1973. Liebman is on flute and sax. With Peter Cosey, Reggie Lucas, Michael Henderson, Al Foster, and James Mtume Forman.

Calypso Frelimo

Not much info about this clip. Year is easy to place. The tune too.

Amazing story about Liebman and Miles. Miles just called him up out of the blue and told him to “show up.” Liebman did and with no instructions of any kind was told “just play.” Imagine that! In the foreground, you have Miles’ wasp-like trumpet, Dave Liebman’s sax and flute and the inspired to the point of insanity fretwork of Reggie Lucas and Pete Cosey, whose wailing guitars shrieking through pedal effects rise up for a moment and then scurry away. Bassist Michael Henderson, drummer Al Foster and percussionist James Mtume keep the music from fragmenting into atomic particles. Everything is in service of an utterly monstrous cosmic groove here. Even the guitars are often used in a sort of percussive manner—not rhythmic—giving the music a dangerous, propulsive edge that occupies the spot where the Venn diagram intersects spacerock with Fela Kuti’s deepest, darkest funk workouts, Can, The Pop Group, and Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys