and undifferentiated . It has become so ubiquitous as to have become simply part of the sonic background , the way the sound of the sea , or a nearby railway line or a boisterous stream simply become part of one ’ s accepted environment . The words “ icon ” and “ iconic ” are grossly overused , often simply to mean important or excellent , when their real meaning relates to the ability of an image to convey a nonliteral message or narrative within a single aesthetic frame . In this sense , Kind of Blue is an iconic album in the fullest sense .
Even great works and what we choose to consider “ masterpieces ” ( another misused word with a very specific and important core meaning ) are subject to the vicissitudes of time and tide . They belong in a particular moment , even if they seem to have been lifted out of it and offered up to eternity . They are carried to us by intermediary vehicles – which may be vinyl LPs , remastered CDs , shaky cassettes , reel-to-reel versions , fleeting new media like 8-track , MiniDisc and DAT , or as mysterious “ downloads ”, music conjured out of the very ether . The fact is that we never listen to Kind of Blue as such , but to a very particular version of it , and in a strange array of different environments . ( The present writer once excused himself from a table of colleagues celebrating a pay rise to find that the gentleman ’ s lavatory in a Covent Garden wine bar was soundtracked by “ All Blues ”. Odd .) Leaving aside the idiosyncrasies of our playing equipment or our listening environments , which with the arrival of Walkman and similar technologies was becoming ever more subjective and private , we have to face the fact that for much of its release history , the recording was issued at the wrong speed , not an uncommon phenomenon in pre-digital recording , but akin to being told that the Mona Lisa had never been reproduced in accurate colour . This is where experiments like Van Sant ’ s and Gordon ’ s and Mostly Other People Do The Killing ’ s are relevant , for they throw us back to the thing itself , the original album as it was
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