The Rewind Button is a group blogging project that I’m participating in. We’re taking on Rolling Stone‘s Top 40 albums of all time and writing our own reviews of them. There will be a new album and review each Thursday.

We finally arrive at an album that I’m not that familiar with. After weeks of artists that I grew up listening to, we’ve come to Miles Davis, and a genre of music that has never interested me in the long-term.

I attended the University of North Texas, a perennial institution of jazz studies. If I wasn’t hearing jazz in Kharma Cafe, then I was hearing in J&J’s Pizza. Unlike Nashville country, it didn’t make me run away screaming for the fall of humanity. However, I’m still unable to tell the difference between Parker or Coltrane, Peterson or Mingus. I’ve had plenty of friends try to educate me on the art’s nuances and history. Still, the music never took hold of me the way indie, goth, or punk rock did.

Listening to Kind of Blue, then, is a new experience for me. Yes, after listening to these songs again, I realize that I’ve heard them many times before. As I said, though, they never stuck.

It’s a relaxing album. I’ve been listening to as I work, letting its melodies wash under the Word documents I edit. I feel more forgiving in my proofreading due to this album. (Freelancers, send a copy of Kind of Blue in with your work.) I feel sophisticated when I hear this album. I want to reach for a Scotch and cigar. I want to go to a party out in The Hamptons on a late summer day and dance under twinkling Christmas lights hung above a wide deck that leads down on to a beach.

In all seriousness, Davis’ playing is impeccable, and I appreciate that he arrived in the studio with song sketches rather than completed scores. It’s that part of jazz, the improvisation, that appeals to me the most. Perhaps the music not sticking with me is for the best, because much like improvisation on stage, hearing the songs will seem brand new every time and I can appreciate them in the moment, just as they should be.

Please visit these other blogs participating in The Rewind Button project:

Send to Kindle