For tonight’s decisions, I decided that I needed to pick Mira up so she could choose something from a higher shelf. At the girl’s current height, the bookshelves would have quickly become top heavy. Celia chose The Beatles, and Mira went for the shiny ‘Seven Steps’ Miles Davis box set (the period on Columbia Records between his group with Coltrane that produced ‘Kind Of Blue’ and the famous Quintet.

I could talk about how great this music is… I could talk about how influential The Beatles’ seven years of recorded output was to the history of pop music. I could talk about how these transitional years of Miles Davis’ career produced some great performances while a new group slowly came together. But I could fill books with that kind of talk, and my guess is that if you are reading this you don’t need to be convinced about The Beatles or Miles Davis. So, I’ll talk about packaging.

I don’t think I have any memories of music in my life pre-Beatles. Ever since I have known music, I have known The Beatles and there are two visuals that come to mind – the cover for Sgt. Pepper and the Apple / half-Apple record labels on the later LPs. I can’t tell you how sad I was to see the CD cover for Sgt. Pepper when it first came out. The original LP that folded out, had lyrics printed on the back (first pop record to do this!!!) and the Sgt. Pepper cutouts were as much a part of the record as the music was. The White Album and its four full color photos that my dad hung in the garage. And the 12 x 12 cover of Abbey Road. The size mattered, and so did the way the album covers wore with time. They were old when I got to know them, taken in and out of shelves over and over again to be played. The jackets aged the more you played the LPs they conyained.

So much was lost with the compact disc. 98% plastic standardized jewel cases. The yellow spine for R.E.M.’s ‘Automatic For The People’ seemed special when it came out, that’s how boring and homogenized the packaging was. Especially after the death of the long box, which was meant to just be thrown away anyways (though I would save them and plaster them to my teenage walls). So when a company DID do something different with packaging, it caught attention. After some time, there were even awards for it. Packaging! Did it matter what was on the discs? Nope – just awards for packaging… and I think that shows just how bad it got.

The packaging for the Miles Davis Columbia Records compilations won several of these awards. ‘Seven Steps’ has a metallic silver spine, surrounded by a grey canvas-like sturdy box. You can’t open the booklet to save your life, and the cardboard sleeves inside certainly can’t be good for the discs. But they look sharp, especially when they are all lined up in a row on a shelf. Well… now there is one less on mine.

Included in ‘Seven Steps’ is ‘Live In Berlin’ (pictured above). I originally bought this one disc for about half the price of this box set as a Japanese import. It is still one of my favorite live discs. The group as it stands on this recording probably existed for 6 months or so, and they are mostly playing music that was written and performed when John Coltrane and Bill Evans was playing with Miles in the late 50s. There is tension there, and often the tempos are faster. They are exciting performances, but you can hear that the players realize there are ghosts on the stage. They were following greatness, and at the time were probably wondering if THEY were the next great group, trying to prove to the audience and Miles that they could make the cut. Well – this isn’t the Quintet to come, but this isn’t to slight them at all. These are some fine performances… and I’m glad I got the import version when I did. The extra cost was well worth the extra time I had with this music.