Could there be any more confrontational sound in
Miles Davis
' vast catalog than the distorted guitars and tinny double-timing drums reacting to a two-note bass riff funking it up on the first track from
On the Corner
? Before the trumpet even enters the story has been broken off in the middle -- deep street music melding with a secret language exchanged by the band and those who can actually hear it as music. Here are killer groove riffs that barely hold on as bleating trumpet and soprano sax lines (courtesy of
Dave Liebman
on track one) interact with
John McLaughlin
's distortion-box frenzy.
Michael Henderson
's bass keeps the basic so basic it hypnotizes; keyboards slowly enter the picture, a pair of them handled by
Herbie Hancock
and
Chick Corea
, as well as
Ivory Williams
' synthesizer. Finally,
Colin Walcott
jumps in with an electric sitar and there are no less than five drummers -- three kits (
Al Foster
,
Billy Hart
, and
Jack DeJohnette
), a tabla player, and
Mtume
. It's a four-tune suite,
is, but the separations hardly matter, just the shifts in groove that alter the time/space continuum. After 20 minutes, the set feels over and a form of
Miles
' strange lyricism returns in
"Black Satin."
Though a tabla kicks the tune off, there's a recognizable eight-note melody that runs throughout.
Carlos Garnett
Bennie Maupin
replace
Liebman
Dave Creamer
replaces
McLaughlin
, and the groove rides a bit easier -- except for those hand bells shimmering in the background off the beat just enough to make the squares crazy. The respite is short-lived, however.
Davis
and band move the music way over to the
funk
side of the street -- though the street funkers thought these cats were too weird with their stranded time signatures and
modal
fugues
that begin and end nowhere and live for the way the riff breaks down into emptiness.
"One and One"
begins the new tale, so
jazz
breaks down and gets polished off and resurrected as a far blacker, deeper-than-blue character in the form of
"Helen Butte/Mr. Freedom X,"
where guitars and horns careen off
Henderson
's cracking bass and
Foster
's skittering hi-hats. It may sound weird even today, but
is the most street record ever recorded by a
musician. And it still kicks. ~ Thom Jurek