Haha, here's the shiny new recruit, sorry I'm late. I only read music feeds once a week so only just saw my name. That's right Luka, I've got a pencil and paper out and here I go.
The first Miles record I heard was The Man With The Horn which in any mention I've seen just gets slagged as a bad record. I've never been able to hear that. Turn up the first two tracks Fat Time and Back Seat Betty loud and they're beautifully dark and thrilling - a great mixture of jazz and rock. And I'm saying that as someone who's not that into rock. The rest of the album isn't quite as good, but it's all intense and richly textured. Throw in the wonderfully cheesy title track that could sit very happily next to Everybody Loves The Sunshine and I'm a happy man. And that's just Miles' first record of the '80s.
I wish they'd do box sets of his 80s albums like they did for the 70s ones, but it won't happen because the music's seen as a sell-out (exactly what he was accused of with his '70s electric jazz) and doesn't fit neatly into a nice genre. Reviews mock You're Under Arrest because Sting pretends to be a policeman briefly on it, but who cares? Miles was using the studio, creating musical short stories and ending with armageddon by way of covers of Human Nature and Time After Time. I think he earned the right to those, but apparently they're not comparable in quality to the 50s show tune covers (which I also love), but why? There's that Naked City track Jazz Snob Eat Shit which is a sentiment I can get with. .
I agree with you CrowleyHead, Tutu is brilliant, but it's also part of a trilogy with Marcus Miller that also includes the soundtrack Siesta and Amandla which are just beautiful. There's so much great music throughout that last decade of his, including the amazing 20 cd Complete Miles at Montreux.