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Big Fun was roundly slagged off when it was issued in 1974 as holdover material from Bitches Brew. In fact, a lot of the double albums Miles was pumping out at the time were considered holdover material. In the case of this double reissue, that claim is partially true. The original Big Fun featured four side-long tracks: "Great Expectations," "Ife," "Go Ahead John," and "Lonely Fire," all of them recorded with different ensembles, three with 11-piece bands (which included Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Billy Cobham, Bennie Maupin, Larry Young, Ron Carter, Steve Grossman, Airto, Jack DeJohnette, and many others) and one — "Go Ahead John" — with a quintet. All of the material was recorded between 1969 and 1972. The four other tracks here, to round out this double-CD package, all appear on the four-CD Bitches Brew Sessions box set. They are "Recollections," "Trevere," "The Little Blue Frog," and "Yaphet." Some of these were recorded at the same time the original tracks had been and the ensembles match up, as on "Great Expectations" and "Yaphet," and the pairing of "The Little Blue Frog," "Lonely Fire," and "Trevere." What's wild is, even in the same sessions, there are differences in personnel. What all of this points to, other than the savvy of the reissue producers, is simple: Miles was restless his entire career, but never like he was when he discovered electricity. There is plenty of argument to suggest he never found what he was looking for but came very close numerous times. Here, as Miles breaks down the pedal points of his modal language to include Indian ragas — and the musicians who play them — as he does on Joe Zawinul's "Great Expectations" and his own "Yaphet," "Trevere," and "Lonely Fire," Davis opens the door to allowing his musicians to play outside of any jazz convention and still stay plugged in as a band. Listen to John McLaughlin's playing here, with its chunky restraint and aplomb and then — as on the "Go Ahead John" quintet session — fire. There has never been another Miles solo like the one here either; multi-tracked and many-faceted, it is as if he carries within it the history of music in the world. Or pick up the slippery intertwining of Dave Holland's acoustic and Harvey Brooks' electric basses, creating whole-tone drones along with the sitars while pumping rhythmic invention toward the band. Ultimately, amid the drones and the funk, there is the particular brand of lyricism that belonged only to Miles Davis. Listening to either the four original tracks or the two CDs taken as a session edited for one album, it hardly matters — the deep hues and pleasant pastoral wonders that Big Fun provides are as moving, mysterious, and beautiful as anything Miles ever created.&mdash; Thom Jurek

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