Before
Miles Davis recorded
Tutu as his debut offering for
Warner Bros., he worked on a funky, jazz-pop-vocal project called
Rubberband in North Hollywood over a three-month period in late 1985 and early 1986. While co-producers
Randy Hall and
Attala Zane Giles felt satisfied,
Warner Jazz boss
Tommy LiPuma was less enthusiastic. It was ultimately shelved and the tapes languished for 30 years.
Davis performed some of its tunes live, and later, trumpet parts from the sessions were grafted onto "Fantasy" and "High Speed Chase" for the posthumously released
Doo Bop.
Rubberband is almost thoroughly reinvented from its original tapes with full cooperation from the
Davis estate. It was guided by
Davis' nephew and drummer
Vince Wilburn, Jr., who played on the original sessions. The bookend tracks "Rubberband of Life" featuring
Ledisi (it was penned for
Chaka Khan's voice), and a remixed version of the title track (featuring a stellar
Mike Stern guitar break), were previously released on a limited five-track EP. They are easily the set's high points.
Davis' trumpet playing is engaged and tasteful throughout. He delivers funky vamps, tight fills, and sometimes meaty solos -- check his beguiling embellishments on "So Emotional," a fine soul ballad featuring vocalist
Lalah Hathaway. On the punky funk of "Give It Up," he's mixed far above the band, and the
Prince-cum-
James Brown-inspired jam is much better for it. "Paradise" -- a funky calypso number complete with the sound of synthed steel drums -- finds him trilling against layers of percussion punctuated by swampy basslines and acoustic and electric lead guitar as
Medina Johnson's vocal cascades in from the margins. The angular funk of "This Is It" (inspired by
Scritti Politti) is all vamp;
Miles' trumpet sounds stilted as it's casually slotted between layered synths and unimaginative guitar solos. Another highlight is "Maze," which features
Stern and saxophonist
Bob Berg. Its knotty head and drop-funk basslines (actual and keyboard) meld the best musical traits of
Davis' post-retirement bands alongside the inspiration of
Prince. "Carnival Time" is a mashup of fusion and smooth jazz punctuated by Latin percussion. It possesses a lovely harmonic sense, but it's marred by overly compressed production. "See I See" smokes. Co-written by keyboardist
Adam Holzman, it's easily recognizable as the kind of swaggering funk
Davis was playing live at the time. The long "Echoes in Time/The Wrinkle" atmospherically features
Davis on keyboards, with
Holzman playing distorted, jagged vamps supplemented by tasty fills from his horn. It sets up "Rubberband" as the smoking closer. Snippets of
Davis' speaking voice are woven in throughout, but it feels gimmicky. Despite some truly weighty grooves and a few hip tunes,
Rubberband comes off sounding unfocused and somewhat flabby due to
Hall's and
Giles' overproduction. To be fair, no one at the label pretended that
Rubberband was even close to "finished," but the producers' attempts at rendering it "modern" sometimes sound overwrought and generic. ~ Thom Jurek