‘Miles Davis Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel’ is about eight hours of live music recorded in Dec. 1965, capturing the 7 sets played at the ‘Plugged Nickel’ over two nights (an eighth set was performed without Miles Davis if I remember correctly). It gives a very candid snapshot of Miles Davis and the quintet he is pulling together (with Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter and Tony Williams). While the group had already started to put out new studio originals, this set is mostly made up of tunes from the previous ten years of Miles’ career, reaching back to the ‘Kind of Blue’ days while at the same time the solos and performances are definitely looking ahead to the harmonic and melodic freedom that is right around the corner.

Even more then the snapshot that these discs capture of Miles’ band, you also get a sense of what life must have been like for a jazz musician playing set after set night after night at this time. There are a number of tunes that are repeated (sometimes in the same night) since it was normal for the audience to change between sets. What I hope would catch just about anyone’s attention is the fact that even though ‘Stella By Starlight’ is played twice in one night, solos can be quite different, and even the basic approach to the tune can change. What I get out of this is just how important it was to the musicians to constantly, within hours even, find a fresh approach to a song, and the name of the game when it came to solos was improvisation in its truest sense. These are workouts for the musicians, building strength for the next big thing.

One of my favorite things about these recordings though is the ambience. You hear glasses clinking, murmurs of speech, and something that occasionally gets picked up by the microphone. During one of Wayne Shorter’s solos, someone near the stage can be heard saying ‘Ah Miles… you are so lucky Miles, you are so lucky’.