Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miles Davis Available Now

I recently wrote about Bitches Brew. A few excerpts:

The staff may or may not like these kinds of records, but I sure don’t. To be honest, Bitches Brew fits just fine into a section I like to call “albums I can live without.” The world is full of them.

Music is deeply personal. If you don’t feel the need to like what other people like, you and I should get along just fine.

This is music for those who want to be challenged. That’s as true today as it was 50+ years ago when the record came out.

I still don’t care for it though. In my defense, allow me to fall back on the wisdom of de gustibus non est disputandum.

A fellow left me this comment:

Really enjoyed this piece on ‘Bitches Brew’, your take on the album’s density, texture, and restless energy was a great read. It’s fascinating how Miles managed to create something that still feels both challenging and endlessly rewarding all these years later. I especially appreciated the way you framed its impact beyond just jazz, because that’s exactly why the album keeps drawing people back in. I also run a small blog with a few articles about Miles Davis, I hope you’ll take a look, I’d appreciate it.

I thought that it deserved a reply and came up with this:

Dear Sir,

The records we sell must stand the test of time. Can we say that Bitches Brew stands the test of time? In some ways, yes, absolutely. People are still writing about it. People are still buying it.

But is anybody sitting in a room, by himself, facing two speakers with the lights down low, and actually able to enjoy the music enough to get through all four sides of it? Let me put it as nicely as possible: the most likely answer would be “not many.”

We’re looking for customers who will pay hundreds of dollars for an album. One album. They typically do so with the understanding that they will want to play such an album over and over again. Maybe even become obsessed with  it.

How else could they possibly get their money’s worth. The copies of Bitches Brew on the site as of this writing are priced at $249.99 and $699.99. Would you really want to buy a $700 record that you knew you would only play a few times and then store on the shelf?

Bitches Brew is just not one of those records that many music lovers will ever warm to. And why should they? Because critics tell them how important it is? That rarely works on adults who have made the effort to develop their taste in music.

It’s one of those “eat your spinach” albums, and the problem is that few of our customers want to buy spinach at the prices we charge.

If we populated our website with records of such limited appeal, no doubt sales would plummet. It would be like starting a book club by recommending Ulysses or Moby Dick or the 800 pages of The Stand.

That book club wouldn’t last a month. Better Records has been in business for 39 years because our customers know that they can find records that will stand the test of time. Records that can be played and enjoyed for the rest of their lives. Does Bitches Brew check off any of those boxes? Played, maybe, especially in the case of those who write about jazz. But enjoyed?

As I said in my remarks, it’s not my thing but maybe it’s yours. If you want to dig into it, more power to you. I tried and failed. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t worth your time. It certainly wasn’t worth mine.

I leave records with little audiophile appeal to those who wish to write about those kinds of records. Many such writers could have picked up the CD of Bitches Brew for 10 or 15 dollars. Since the CD contains all the music, they have a small investment in the album.

Now imagine that the only version available to such writers comes at the cost of $700. How many of them would write about it, knowing that few of their readers would commit the kind of money that would allow them to ever hear it?

I’m sure you have many interesting things to say about the album, but those of us in the record business have to deal with the tastes of music lovers who actually buy vintage records. The highest quality pressings can get very expensive, as anyone who has been to our site will attest.

Our customers may or may not choose to read what insights critics have concerning the albums they buy, but the one thing they definitely will choose to do is play them for enjoyment. And the better they sound, the more enjoyable they will be. This is fundamentally the secret to our success.

We push albums like Ambrosia or Sweetnighter because we think our customers will, with a little effort, come to appreciate their complexity and with repeated plays find them profoundly enjoyable. Records they knew nothing about.

If we raved about Bitches Brew the same way we rave about Ambrosia, in my opinion we would get a great many returns. Having been burned, few of these customers would want to take a chance on a record we might recommend that they did not already know well.  We have to protect our credibility, if for no other reason than there is money on the line.

As I said in my commentary, music is deeply personal. And personally I just don’t like Bitches Brew.

Thanks for writing,

Best, TP