A Miles Davis Exclusive Highlights the Record Store Day Black Friday 2025 Releases
This year’s RSD Black Friday list is, as always, overflowing with standouts and must-haves for music fans of every stripe. Labels figured out long ago that limited pressings, alternate mixes, and especially vault/archival gold are the fastest way to a collector’s heart (and wallet), and each RSD event seems to top the last. I’m no exception, even though I rarely buy vinyl these days beyond an occasional one-off. Still, there’s usually a handful of CD releases in the mix that’ll catch my eye and regardless, I still enjoy perusing the releases just to see if there’s something I can’t live without. Lately I’ve been digging back into jazz again, especially older and/or long-out-of-print recordings, and RSD has become a surprisingly rich hunting ground for exactly that. When the 2025 Black Friday list dropped, one of the first things that I noticed almost immediately, was from Columbia/Legacy, a 2LP standalone set titled Miles Davis – Live At The Plugged Nickel: December 23, 1965 – Second Set.
Finally.
To jazz purists and Davis obsessives, the December 1965 Plugged Nickel performances are more than just sacred ground. Each set was a cornerstone performances that sits right at the heart of the canon. These recordings capture Miles and his Second Great Quintet (Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, Tony Williams) at the precise moment they were rewriting the rules of small-group improvisation. Fresh off cutting E.S.P. in the studio, the band had made a deliberate pact, one spurred by the 20 year old Tony Williams, to play “anti-music”. They took the old war-horse standards they’d been performing for years, and not only deliberately turned them inside out, they welcomed the wrong notes, discarded certainty, and let the music lead the way. What spilled out onto that tiny Chicago club stage (tucked under a bakery, no less) was the sound of the Quintet becoming it’s purest self; alive, unstable, and in constant mid-mutation. As Miles later summed it up: “We found ways to make the old music sound as new as the new music we were recording.”
This RSD 2LP set isn’t just a random live pull; it’s the opening salvo in the Miles Davis Centennial celebrations that will run all through 2026. Columbia/Legacy is using it as a teaser for the main event arriving January 30, 2026: The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965, a massive 10LP or 8CD box set that finally brings the entire seven-plus hours of music back into physical circulation after being out of print for nearly thirty years (the previous complete edition was the 1995 Mosaic Records LP box). The new edition recreates the Mosaic sequencing, wraps it in fresh packaging with a slew of archival photos within a 40-page booklet featuring expanded liner notes by Syd Schwartz alongside classic essays by Bob Blumenthal. Schwartz nails the spirit perfectly: “The Plugged Nickel tapes don’t just capture great performances. They document a band revolutionizing improvisation in real time, welcoming surprise, discarding certainty, and turning ‘wrong’ notes into revelations.” Sixty years on, this music still wows, baffles, and inspires. The Guardian once called the original release “maybe the best-ever representation of ‘the Second Great Quintet’ at work… reinventing small-band jazz with an all-but-psychic flexibility of timing and on-the-fly harmonizing”, and nothing about that verdict has aged a day. Given the rarity of the material, the heavyweight historical significance, and the fact that this 2LP kicks off the official Centennial year, the RSD Black Friday Plugged Nickel release feels less like a limited drop and more like a genuine event. It’s an absolute must-grab for collectors, jazz fans, and anyone who wants to hear five innovators actively dismantling and rebuilding an art form in real time. All you’ve got to do is check with your local record shop, or online merchant for availability.
If all else fails, you can find more information on the upcoming The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 1965 box set by visiting here: https://milesdavis.lnk.to/TCPN_Live1965
Enjoy our previous coverage here: REVIEW: Miles Davis “Miles In France 1963 & 1964 Miles Davis Quintet” The Bootleg Series Vol. 8