i just got the miles davis seven steps: the complete columbia records 1963-1964 box. it covers a very under appreciated period post-coltrane and pre-shorter. it covers the albums:
seven steps to heaven
my funny valentine
four and more
live in europe
live in tokyo
live in berlin

from a historical perspective, at the time miles was seen as in a sort of down period. coltrane had left the group and released some landmark albums like giant steps. miles had been in the forefront as the band leader and innovator for the pst several years, but during the early 60's was shuffling line-ups. also, avante garde was all the rage with the critics, and miles wasn't quite down with it, thinking that many of the leaders of the avante garde weren't really very good musicians, and so was all of the sudden he was seen to be the old line guy instead of the envelope pusher that he had been known to be.

but as i listen to this period, i absolutely love these records. the miles in tokyo session has always been a personal favorite. i have kind of felt that because coltrane had left, miles played longer solos and better solos. during the coltrane years, in concert, he let coltrane play the long involved solos, and tended to play much shorter but very tasty solos. during these years, miles played more during the concerts, than he had in the past to fill the vacuum left by coltrane.

the only problem with the release is that there isn't a lot of unreleased stuff on it. with some of the past releases, there were quite a lot of unreleased tracks. with this one there are much fewer. however, the miles in tokyo and miles in berlin releases are fairly scarce, and so here they are. i think that those 2 were only available as japanese imports here in the states, at least that's how i got them. the highlighs are the recording of joshua. it features miles with harmon mute rather than open horn as the released version has. and there are 2 tracks fron the miles in europe concert never before released.

in the opening i said that this period covers the pre-shorter period. the one exception to that is the last disc consists of the miles in berlin set which was one of the early wayne shorter gigs. it was before he had released a studio album with shorter, but does have him as tenor man on one disc live.

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[Edited 10/25/04 21:48pm]