When a Legend Lost the Crowd

I tell you, little buddy, this whole island is bewitched.

Just the cops do it.

I lost the seal.

Now I'm feeling all my own.

Standing far from home.

You remember?

We were shipwrecked together.

Welcome to this bonus episode of Sound Opinions.

I'm Jim D. Regatta.

That guy over there is Greg Kott.

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On these bonus podcasts, we each pop a quarter in the desert island jukebox

on alternating weeks.

Playing you a track we can't live without.

Mr. Kott, it is your turn to add a song.

Give us a little hint.

Well, I'm going to play a song from a great artist

from one of his worst-selling albums of all time.

Metal Machine Music.

Because I think it's incredible.

Not Lou Reed.

Okay, we'll find out who that is in a second.

Sound Opinions is supported by the Goose Island Beer Company.

For over 20 years, Goose Island has been brewing their iconic 312 beer

for the best moments in our city.

It's the Chicago thing.

This month we're asking listeners to go to Sound Opinions.org

and leave us a voice message on the most Chicago thing you've ever seen or experienced.

Like this story from Ed on how he scored tickets to a Cubs playoff game in 1984.

Chicago Cubs incredibly made the MLB playoffs for the first time in life forever.

And I was really determined as a Cubs fan to go down to Rigglyville and watch the game.

There was a place on the corner of Clark and Grace.

I got there about an hour before a first pitch

and it was really just me and the bartender there.

I ordered my first beer.

And before you know it, I heard heavy footsteps right behind me.

That is shuffling.

It was this big Chicago beat cop and he goes,

hey kid, you know what he wants?

A ticket for the game?

I go, how much?

Where is it at?

35 box, he says.

Box seat, left feel.

I'll take it.

I tell the cop and in the back of my mind,

I'm waiting for a detective to walk in any moment and arrest me.

Never happened.

So, ended up watching the Cubs win big in that thrilling game.

Another beer in hand.

And that's my most Chicago thing ever.

312 beer.

It's a Chicago thing.

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Welcome back to Sound opinions.

Mr. Katz is going to play one of the best selling artists of all time but his worst record.

What?

What?

One of his worst selling records.

For sure.

Maybe his worst selling record.

You know, there's some contention about that.

But I'm going to play a track by Miles Davis.

Oh.

And the reason I'm thinking about Miles Davis is that he is going to be celebrating.

We are going to be celebrating is 100th birthday on May 26th, 2026.

We have an amazing year of, you know, birthdays.

Two giants, at least.

Two giants of 20th century music will be celebrating their 100th birthday.

They are no longer with us to participate in those celebrations.

But we can play their music and remember how amazing they were.

And no doubt you've been thinking about Miles because you've been digging that flea jazz trumpet solo album.

I just listened to a bit of it today and I am done with flea as a track player.

He should have stuck to acting.

But anyway, you know, Miles was born in Alton, Illinois, 22 miles from St. Louis,

which was where Chuck Berry was born a few months later.

So two giants of 20th century music both being celebrated on the 100th anniversary of this year,

growing up basically being born 22 miles apart in the Midwest.

Wow.

Right.

Both of them would change music forever.

Absolutely.

And Miles did change music multiple times, four or five times by my count,

where you can say that he marked a shift in the way we listened to music and what it is about that music that we love.

His most controversial period, I think without a doubt, is the 70s so-called jazz fusion era.

As soon as some people hear the word jazz fusion, they're like, I'm out of here.

I don't want any more of this.

But as I've said before, when I sort of venture into jazz territory,

I'm looking at this from the perspective of a rock fan and our audience,

which is largely made up of rock fans, I would assume, approaching jazz as outside

or sort of saying, okay, what's really good about this?

Where is my entry points for jazz?

So you think about Miles' period here.

He's coming off Bitches Brew in 1970 and Jack Johnson in 1970.

Jack Johnson, by the way, I've mentioned as a DIJ in the past

and I think it's an extraordinary record.

So that's not a bad jumping end point.

But the record I want to focus on today is on the corner.

He was steeped in the funk of Sly Stone and James Brown.

And he was listening to people like Carl Hunt, Stockhausen, Ornette.

Coleman was suddenly, he really got into Ornette initially.

He was not a big fan of Ornette's music, but he realized this guy's on to something.

I got to check it out.

All these influences percolating.

And so with on the corner, and I've done trips where I've had to drive a few hours

and I put this record on, I just get lost in it.

I just think it's an extraordinary piece of work.

There was no one else in the car with you, right?

Yeah, no.

It's one of those things.

You've got to be careful with whom you play these kind of records.

But there's only four tracks on it.

And when it came out in 1972, jazz critics hated it.

Yeah.

The jazz police was out in force.

And rock critics didn't really get it either.

They were like, okay, this is sort of weird outside.

You know, this is jazz fusion, it's not for me.

But I think it's one of those records that Miles made

that wasn't understood in its time, but you put it down now

and it sounds thoroughly contemporary in the way it anticipated

so many different styles of music and influenced

so many different styles of music.

But you know, Miles took it personally.

He subsequently, after this record came out,

recorded very haphazardly and was mostly put out live albums, basically.

He didn't put on any more studio albums in the 70s.

And basically retired from music in 1975,

because he felt like his music wasn't really getting across

to the public anymore.

It wasn't until the 80s that he came back and started recording again.

But I think it's also the last great Miles record.

His health was deteriorating when he came back

and the records were okay, but not in the class of what he had done prior

to his first retirement.

This record, Tamah Cheros doing some editing,

which is the pattern he'd been working on.

He would get musicians into the studio, work out these jams,

but these were very, very funk influenced.

The guitars are sort of in chicken scratch mode rather

than the big solos.

And Miles' trumpet is filtered through a wawa.

The electronic keys and the cello are filtered through wawa pedals.

This is why they call these filters.

Electric miles.

Exactly.

And you know, he's got some great keyboard players on your

Herbie Hancock-Chick career there with him on his ride.

Extraordinary stuff, in a lot of ways.

The cover art is extraordinary, too.

It was this Quirking McCoy who was a friend of Miles.

Miles employed him to do the artwork on four albums.

Miles said, I want an album about and four Black people.

I want that record to say, you know, I want people to know that I'm making this record

for and about them.

So he's got a cover of Black people hanging out in a corner, street corner.

Geto Delic is what it was the name for this street life that he was creating.

A younger generation of African Americans just hanging out.

And Miles made this record for them.

I love the variety of percussion on this record.

Hand claps, sleighbells, other percussion instruments.

The rhythmic approach, again, everybody's a drum in this group.

And then you got Miles with the wawa trumpet.

I think it's extraordinary stuff and it holds up incredibly well.

In that it is in somewhat ways indefinable.

It sort of straddles multiple genres.

Here's a little bit of Black satin from the Miles Davis on the corner record.

That's Black satin from Miles Davis.

Not for everybody I guess, but man, if you're listening to Slice Stone during this era, James Brown.

You can hear the influence.

I think it's Miles' take on it.

I think it's fantastic stuff.

But, you know, again, out there are Miles, but I think also the Miles that I think has a shelf life.

It has a shelf life far beyond its era.

Someday, I will mature enough to appreciate that.

I like kind of blue, you know?

Yeah.

But that's it for this bonus episode.

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