Review #31: Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
#31: Kind of Blue, Miles Davis
Okay, I’m about to betray myself as a truly fake music fan: I’m not into jazz at all. At. All. In the words of Bart Simpson, “Ah, cartoons. America’s only native art form. I don’t count jazz ’cause it sucks.”
I’m kidding. Jazz is like fancy food to me. It’s great! But I don’t want it. My taste is much simpler. I just want to listen to Blink-182 and eat veggie chicken nuggets.
Eh, what do I know. Part of me wishes this was a road trip album, because sometimes it’s easier for me to understand what’s great about genres I hate when I’m moving. At the same time, maybe I would have gotten irritated and started to road rage.
Again, the RS blurb isn’t all that helpful (I get it, they’re limited by space), so I had to give myself a little more context by skimming Wikipedia like the methodical researcher I am. Wikipedia says that Davis gave all his performers a set of modal scales to riff in. That is in fact very cool and once I read that, I made a point to try and figure out what their musical personalities all were. I reached no conclusion but I did find that I had more fun that way.
FAVORITE SONGS:
“So What” — I listened to this album pretty passively the first time. I think I was doing an extremely menial work task. I didn’t realize that John Coltrane and Bill Evans were all over it! Not that those are artists I’m super familiar with, but they are names I know.
“Blue in Green” — Pretty!
“All Blues” — Oh my gosh the piano intro, oh yes. This song gave me a bit of anxiety but I feel like it might have been my favorite.
“Flamenco Sketches” — SO slow. Ugh, jazz is just so slow. However, the piano gets so lovely at the end of this song that it made up for it for me. Also this album is mercifully short. Both times I finished it, I thought, “Huh. I could probably listen to that one more time.” The moral of the story is, jazz is nearly as good an art form as cartoons.
LEAST FAVORITE SONGS:
“Freddie Freedom” — Okay but this is just the same song as “So What.”
IS RS FULL OF IT?
Here is the very very rare instance where I feel so absolutely alienated from the subject that I can’t render judgment at all. I guess not. Someone out there who is smarter than me knows what’s great about this album, and who am I to question them? No one.
