Rome ( read Joan Didion on this ), so we actually like to listen to the jazz classics through a faint crackle and distortion . One of the things we find troubling about Blue is exactly that the recording sounds too modern and clear . Its emotional impact , though , is that it sounds like an able vocal impersonation of someone we know very well . It ’ s good , very good , maybe convincing enough to pass , but there ’ s still something about it we can ’ t quite name , an estranging quality . The very fact that we know Kind of Blue so very well , its lead-off tracks at least , means that any tiny difference in a new version is exaggerated almost absurdly . The whole culture of completism , with box sets offering so-called “ alternate ” takes of classic jazz tracks , works on this basis . We recognise the players and the tune , but the count is slightly different , the ensembles not quite what we remember , the solos markedly different . Invariably , having spent serious money on the archival box , we play it once or twice to justify the expense and there ever afterward return to the original .
It ’ s difficult to exaggerate the fame of Kind of Blue . Even people who don ’ t have a jazz collection have a copy ( alongside maybe Dave Brubeck ’ s Time Out and something by Billie Holiday ). For a time in the 1980s when cool jazz vied with power pop and New Romanticism as the soundtrack to a hedonistic and monied lifestyle ( for those who had it , at least ), it was possible to walk from one London fashion store to another , with a visit to a wine bar in between , and hear much of Kind of Blue ( though most often just “ So What ”) murmuring out of the speakers . Unlike , say , A Love Supreme , which in certain circles rivals Kind of Blue in the upper ranks of classic jazz albums , Miles ’ masterpiece hasn ’ t been subjected to the same close musical examination , or at least no longer . Few recent commentators have applied to it something like the Douglas Gordon method , breaking it down to its constituent parts in order to understand how it functions . For most of us , fans , critics , teachers , Kind of Blue simply is , entire
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