Miles Davis – Get Up With It

This record was ahead of its time… and even today, we a still trying to catch up. Absolutely 5 stars!!

genuinely how does this even fit on a 2 lp

My best Japan First Press in my Miles collection. 0 complaints. The runtimes are fine; great art. Miles Didnt miss the entire album!

Probably the definitive vinyl version, kills the original. Mtume comes across strong on the congas.

It's a surprisingly good pressing! You definitely have to get a very clean copy because even light scratches are intrusive, but it's a pretty killer sounding pressing for having over 30 minutes squeezed in on sides A and C. Rated X is incredible -- cream of the crop acid funk. Just a monster track. All around there is a bunch of outstanding music here and a lot of it is very up there in the Miles discography. Reviewers threw shade on this album because it's pretty much impossible to come into this sonic space and leave undisturbed. However, if one listens to Miles starting with the second quintet and later, I'm not sure how anyone can have a light/entertaining musical experience or why they would come to this music expecting something that can be even remotely "pleasant". Mid- and late period Miles is not light music and this album is made by a man who was on the verge of death for years and somehow didn't die. Belongs in the top 5 best Miles albums without question along with In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Kind of Blue, and Sketches of Spain.

Dont let people scare you with their talk about 30 minutes sides. Its music and it is wonderful music indeed. Some of the best electric miles there is. I really like it highly disagree with the negative review by srcosmo. I got the US original LP and it just sounds fantastic.

I inadvertantly played Rated X at 45 rpm. Highly recommended.

In the annals of Miles Davis's electric period, On The Corner ('72) was the last high-concept studio album. The releases that came after were either live recordings of varying quality, or compilations.

Get Up With It ('74) is definitely a compilation. It's a grab bag of recordings from the four preceding years. Scan the personnel list and you'll count some 5 guitarists, 3 drummers, 3 percussionists… you get the idea. This being a compilation, I feel no guilt reviewing it track-by-track.

Starting with the truly bad. "Red China Blues" is filler, an embarrassment. Whoever did the brass arrangement on this should be shot. File it away with Miles' corny '80s work.

Then we have the able tracks, like "Maiysha", a big slice of '70s latin fuzak. After hearing the more energetic live version on Agharta, there's no reason to listen to this studio snoozefest. Even decent soloing from Miles and Cosey can't save it: it's just too drawn-out and dull. Likewise, "Billy Preston" is a long, formless jam. All the players chug away on their own wavelengths, hardly interacting with each other, as 12 minutes crawl by.

That brings us to the decent stuff. "Honky Tonk" is cribbed from the Jack Johnson sessions (a chunk of it had previously appeared as a segue on Live Evil, too). It's a taut blues number with great playing from John McLaughlin and Miles.

"Rated X" is truly bizarre. Al Foster's relentless beat, and the start-stop muting of the rhythm section, propel this tune 20 years into the future, where it somehow succeeds as a proto drum-n-bass track. Having said that, it's so brutal I can rarely sit through all 7 minutes. Teo Macero's hands are all over this insane little diversion, so kudos to him.

"Mtume" is another long jam, but a tight one. It sounds as if every member of the band is playing to a different rhythm, yet working together as a unit in a way that "Billy Preston" could only dream of. "Mtume" has enough oopmh to hold toghether for 15 minutes, and it foreshadows the stellar live work that this this lineup (sans Gaumont) would go on to record in '75.

That leaves two marathon-length tracks, which happen to be the best ones. "He Loved Him Madly" is a dirge for Duke Ellington. "Funeral funk" is probably the best way to describe this. Miles' organ adds a weird, etheral atmosphere to the proceedings.

"Calypso Frelimo" just tears into a fiery latin groove. Miles' trumpet is top-notch here: very sharp and aggressive. The piece descends into a subterranean middle section where Dave Liebman gets in some great flute work, while Henderson's repeated bass motif forms the bedrock for the rest of the band to improvise over. Miles plays one of his moody blues solos drenched in wah-wah, and every note is brilliant. Then the band goes berserk again and he leads them out. Outstanding.

Despite those highlights, Get Up With It is still a mess. A more focused record would've likely been better received. Imagine a single LP, with "He Loved Him Madly" on one side and "Calypso Frelimo" on the other. When the dust settled, it would've been viewed as a bookend to In A Silent Way: a symbolic closure to this phase of Davis' career. But a mishmash of random odds & ends, padded out to 2 hours by weak tracks? Not so much. Even contemporary critics have had trouble making sense of it.

Since Columbia released 12 hours of Jack Johnson and On the Corner sessions in the 2000s, the arbitrary selection of this album's tracks feels even stranger. Why "Billy Preston", not the stronger "Go Ahead John"? If they wanted commercial dreck, why "Red China Blues" and not the disco ballad "Minnie"? Who knows. Get Up With It seeks a common thread among many hours of disparate studio jams. It's a thread that ultimately doesn't exist.

Surprisingly a really good sounding record! Yes, 30 minutes are essentially squeezed onto each side but the music still retains solid dynamics and sound quality. I'm sure that if the record were spread across 4 LPs', the record would sound even better. But this original pressing was an enjoyable listen all the way through.

They really didn't see a problem with putting 30 minutes on a side and making a 2-hour album on 2 LPs. Overall this time was quite a fun one in pressing.