October 4th, 1981, and Miles paces the stage with his PEPEPEPEPE beret on his head as a message flashes across the TV screen about his six year retirement and then about the problems he has had with his hips and how he has to keep moving around on stage. Mike Stern is there on guitar with all the hot licks and big sounding chords. Looking a little like Meat Loaf in his bulky denim jacket and shoulder length hair there is lots of space to fill on the songs as there are no keyboards.
The band is on a stage in an outdoor area at the West Exit of the Shinjuku station in Tokyo. The concert is shot on video so the images are at times blurry especially when the camera tries to zoom in through the windows of the nearby office buildings and then tries to take in the passing traffic on the streets that run between the sky scrapers.
The opening track is 'Back Seat Betty' and Miles seems very frail. He looks haunted. At times he doesn't look like he has enough breath to blow his trumpet but he has a crack band. Marcus Miller hunched over his bass and Al Foster dressed in an orange jacket with an orange baseball cap on drums are there to support a very young looking Bill Evans with his head band playing saxophone and Mike Stern on guitar.
During 'My Man's Gone Now' Miles smiles at Bill Evans before the percussion solo. It can't have all been hard going. There is some fat chunky bass and then Miles comes in on trumpet and, with a splash of colour on the the cymbals and some ratatat on the snare drum, the percussion solo is rebooted courtesy of some percussion based harmonics that sound like a theremin. Licking his fingers, Mino Cilenu seems to be able to create these strange sonic frequencies before coming to the front of the stage in his rainbow coloured pants. Again, Miles calls time on his trumpet and the band charge in. Miles directs Al Foster on drums who brings the piece to a conclusion with some intermittent crashes on his cymbals.
'Jean Pierre' is the final song in the performance and Mike Stern comes back in a starring role. The fluid lines on the guitar give way to some occasional raunch drenched groans while Marcus Miller keeps things going slapping the strings with his thumb in the background. Miles joins Bill Evans for the melody at the front of the stage before Bill takes his final solo. He is a young man with a lot on his shoulders. But he carries it well. There is a perfunctory end to the video and, without any credits, the dvd goes straight back to the menu.
