onhifi.com's
2001 Gift-Giving Guide
This year's choices are as obvious as any since the
Beatles broke up. If you're looking to make an audiophile extremely happy, try any
of these four choices.
Miles Davis: Kind of Blue
Classic Records CS 8163 LP
 Kind of Blue is one
jazz masterpiece everyone seems to agree upon. Musically, sonically (the original, at
least), artistically, it represents a pinnacle of creative collaboration. And it's
arguably the most popular jazz record ever made -- a statistic aided, no doubt, by the
tendency of certain audiophiles such as myself to grab extra copies of it whenever
possible.
Classic's new reissue of KOB is the best-sounding
version of this LP I've ever heard -- far superior, in fact, to any Columbia six-eye I've
heard. Classic says that all they've done is change the vinyl formula (the latest version
sports a sticker that says Classic Records Quiex SV Super Vinyl on the wrap). If
so, that seemingly minor change had unbelievable consequences!
The disc sounds sweeter and more extended at the frequency
extremes than any other LP of this material I've heard to date -- and I thought Classic's
last version was pretty darn good. This one's head and shoulders above it. It doesn't
matter whether your audiophile gift recipient already has this LP, this version is
better sounding and quieter.
Miles Davis: The Complete In A Silent Way
Sessions
Columbia/Legacy 65362 3-CD set
Mosaic 209 5-LP set
 In A Silent
Way was a far more revolutionary recording than Bitches Brew, the recording
usually cited as having established Miles' electric sound. It was quiet, subtle, and short
-- a scant 36 minutes. But it took six months to make and it marked Miles' transition from
the classic second quintet of Davis, Hancock, Tony Williams, Wayne Shorter, and Ron Carter
to a two-keyboard band that included Chick Corea, replaced Carter with British bassist
Dave Holland and, in the ultimate farewell to Miles' old sound, added of John McLaughlin
on electric guitar.
IASW was sparse, tight, and almost transcendentally
lyrical. What the complete sessions show more than anything else is the process of
creating that sound, which for the first time in Davis' career, was as much a matter of
Miles' and Teo Macero's editing as it was what went down in the studio.
The complete sessions begins with several tracks from the Filles
de Kilimanjaro sessions, left off Columbia/Legacy's definitive edition of the second
quartet's output because of the addition of Corea McLaughlin and Holland's replacement of
Carter. This material ("Freon Brun" and "Mademoiselle Mabry") has
never been released in any form -- and it's immediately clear how Corea, McLaughlin, and
Holland had turned the band's sound around. There's also a slew of songs that have been
issued on other albums (Circle in the Round, Water Babies, and Directions),
albeit edited, all welcome of course.
But it's the IASW material that is the payoff here.
In their complete, unedited forms, the songs are revolutionary enough -- the massive
keyboard sections (Joe Zawinul had become the third pianist) created shoals of drifting
sound, and McLaughlin's guitar alternated between floating chords and slashing solos.
Texture is constantly shifting in these recordings -- from thick, opaque walls of chords
to single lines floating by themselves. And through it all, Miles comped and vamped and
created a new, sparse vocabulary that was instantly recognizable as his own and nothing
like anything he had done before.
And finally, we get the sparse, tightly edited suites that
Davis and Macero created out of all that raw material -- a masterpiece that incorporated
everything that came before it and sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before. It
was the announcement of Miles' incandescent third flowering. And it has never sounded
better.
Buy this for an audiophile (in either CD or LP format) and
prepare to be venerated.
The Grateful Dead: The Golden Road (1965-1973)
Rhino/Warner Archiv 74401 12-disc set
 This is a 12-disc box that's as packed with unreleased goodies as it
is with the releases it supposedly recapitulates. Included are all nine of the Dead's
Warner Bros. Releases. In addition, the box includes a two-disc compilation, Birth of
the Dead, featuring studio recordings by The Warlocks and Emergency Crew, and the
earliest surviving recordings of the nascent Grateful Dead from 1966. Remastered HDCD
versions of all of the original recordings are joined by generous slathering of live and
unreleased studio material -- in the case of Live Dead, there's almost as much new
material as the original release contained on its own, and it's a stronger record for it.
The packaging is superb. Each release is housed in a
cardboard "mini-LP" sleeve and there are not one, but two, booklets -- a
15-pager that contains the liner notes and a 75-pager filled with photos and an essay by
Dead biographer, Dennis McNalley.
This is a superb gift for anyone who was ever moved by this
quintessentially American band.
Led Zeppelin: Physical Graffiti
Classic SS2-200 2-LP set
 Sprawling,
ambitious, monstrously quirky, Physical Graffiti was Zep's magnum opus.
Nowhere near as focused as any of its predecessors, PG's appeal lies within the
multitudes it contains, from the galloping funk of "Trampled Underfoot" to the
acoustic eclecticism of "Kashmir." "Houses of the Holy" proves that
Page and Plant actually paid attention to that other rock'n'roll band from old Blighty,
while nothing can match the ponderous epic, "The Rover."
Disc two is more like a collection of oddities than
anything else, but oh, what delightful oddities! There's the nasty "Sick Again,"
the tear-jerking "Ten years Gone," and the superlative acoustic romp of
"Boogie With Stu." Filler? Absolutely not -- most groups couldn't come up with
stuff this good at all.
And best of all, this Classic sounds better than the
original pressing -- well, mine anyway. And Classic has now reissued Zep's catalog from Led
Zeppelin to Presence, including Live at the BBC. Not a clinker in the
batch, but trust me, everybody needs a new, better-than-ever Physical Graffiti.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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