Customer Reviews
one of the several excellent miles davis discs. - By: for whom the bell tolls, 31 Dec 2007 
this is a very good album from miles davis & i think it is one of his best works besides kind of blue even though b^$tches is a bad word, every song on this disc is a masterpiece on this 2 disc set. i'm so sad that he is dead because i would love to see himin concert. anyways, this cd is highy recommended.
Not for the faint-hearted! - By: C. Penty, 24 Sep 2007 I first heard this album about 5 years ago after hearing of its legendary status from various different sources. It was too much for me to stomach back then having only heard miles' earlier cool jazz & modal jazz albums. But on hearing it again earlier this year I immediately fellin love with it & its now easily among my favourite albums of all time! For jazz purists this is often seen as a real kickin the teeth as it breaks away from all the confines of the stereotypical acoustic jazz band & offers a very different aesthetic to most of Miles' earlier work.
The album is driven by a gritty groove very influenced by rock music at the time. To understand where he was coming from here I would recommend his previous album In A Silent Way & perhaps those leading up to it.
not very good - By: Jon, 17 Sep 2007 
This album is very pretentious. I got it as I like birth of the cool & someday my prince will come. They are albums that make you smile as they are beautiful & impressive. However, this is ridiculous. I should have guessed from the photo of miles davis looking like a poser - but I forgive him as he is very talented; this is experimentation, understandable to want to experiment. If like me you like to pick out jazz that is unpretentious & not all smoothy-smoochy, check out django reinhardt djangoloy & louis armstrong hot fives & sevens (and the aforementioned decent miles davis albums). That is real music, & music that is intelligent without falling into the trap of disappearing up your own assin an introverted neurotic pile of vain nonsense.
Again, I'd like to remind that I like miles davis a lot when he's on form.
Great Album - By: Mr. J. Gould, 29 May 2007 This is fantastic, innovative, original & wonderful. This is the first jazz album i purchased & i have to say i couldn't have made a better choice. Everything else i have listened toin this genre has been slightly disappointing compared to this album. The music is either too loud, messy, horrible & simply annoying, or far too subdued to be anything like as exciting as the rhythms & musical interplay on this album. I can see why Miles Davis is so revered; he was one step ahead of the game every time. He also knew who would make good musical companions (i amin awe of John McLaughlin's guitar work) & he could make something musically innovative without loosing melody.
Buy this & you'll never look back.
Jazz is useless? Yeah, but there are some good bits here and there. - By: Pete, 11 Apr 2007 
All I knew about jazz was learnt from the TV programme The Beiderbeck Connection. "Jazz never does anything", as John Lennon once said.
I heard an interesting song during a party scenein an obscure Christian Bale movie called Metroland. It's amazingly offensive lyrics went something like: "Walking along the beaches/Looking at the b*tches." Then some more offensive variations on calling women b*tches. The song turned up again at the start of Sexy Beast when Ray Winstone is sunbathing.
In one of the strangest leaps of imagination ever conceived by a human mind I somehow came to the conclusion that it was a song by Miles Davis, taken from B*tches Brew (I knew of the cover artwork, but obviously not the contents)! I was aware that the rock song I heard was not jazz, but you know, what is jazz?
So I bought B*tches Brew (my first jazz album) & was dismayed to find that it wasn't even remotely like I thought it was going to be. Bloody hell, there wasn't even any vocals! I almost got through the whole thingin one sitting but decided that life was too short to waste it on this random noise.
When I returned it to the shop the next day I said with great understatement, "It wasn't quite what I thought it was going to be."
I checked the end credits of Sexy Beast & found that the song was Peaches by The Stranglers! And I'd also been mishearing the lyrics. It was "peaches", not "b*tches", that was being sung.
I bought a Stranglers Best Of, discovered that almost everything else on it was rubbish & never listened the CD ever again.
About five years passed & I had bought less than ten jazz albums (the good ones were "Birds of Fire" by Mahavishnu Orchestra, "Head Hunters" by Herbie Hancock & "Electric Bath" by The Don Ellis Orchestra).
Eventually I got the 2CD Essential Miles Davis compilation. It was okay. Mostly dull as the tracks all sounded too similar to each other. They getin a groove & just keep at it until everyone's well beyond bored. And then they go at it some more.
The stand out track was Miles Runs The Voodoo Down. The random instruments kept cutting into any grooves that might be developing, slashing them downin their prime or at least complementing them with hard stabs of keyboard or trumpet, thus keeping things interesting. It didn't even sound that avant garde which was very strange as it was from my least favourite album - B*tches Brew.
The randomness was the very thing I detested originally, but it was now its saving grace. The song held my attentionin ways none of the other tracks on the Best Of could before they slid off into background Muzak.
So I sat on it for about four months before giving Brew another chance. I bought it & I liked it straight away. It's not majesticin its brilliance but it's an interesting album. It's quite heavyin places, though I dislike the bonus track on disc 2 as it's a bit too polite & quiet to hold my attention.
These are the comments of a non-musician with no love, or even interestin jazz. As a non-jazz bore I can say that this is a good purchase. It might take a few listens but it is worth it. The three albums I mentioned above are more accessible & entertaining than B*tches Brew so I'd recommend them before moving on to this.
I think you've got to approach it with an understanding that it's not meant to be nice polite music. It's meant to be dark & unpleasant. The great album artwork tips you off to its violent darkness.
I think it's thematically similar to music by Joy Division, Tool & Nine Inch Nails. Dark subterranean horror soundtracks. And as an added bonus Davis himself sounds like the Devil when you hear him speak/croak during one of the later tracks.
At least that's how I think of it; hey for all I know you're supposed to imagine tropical beaches when you listen to it.
