Poetic.
i was feeling Kind of Blue while getting off work today.
Miles Davis's (?) Kind of Blue never was my favorite album of his. i tend to prefer Sketches of Spain or Miles Ahead and sometimes Porgy and Bess, as well as that one album my dad has of him playing with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. i like the orchestral sound of the Gil Evans albums and the strong melodies.
All that said, i'm just realizing how much i connect with what Miles was tryinng to do with this album, simplify simplify simplify. It sounds like he moved to modal songs for this album to rebel against the complexity in jazz at the time. im guessing Bebop was in full swing at this period. That would make a lot of sense.
Lately i've been thinking about what i call the Postmodern Dilemma of too much choice. and i'm drawing heavily from others on that statement. i've heard it best described in a podcast put out by RadioLab called "Choice." Also, i've drawn a bunch of inspiration lately from 37signals. Their software and ideas raise simplicity up as a high principle in order to have their software do important tasks well and easily. They go so far as to say "less is less" in rebellion to the idea that less should serve "more."
There is too much choice available (or is there?), but at the same time, i like having all these choices. i think it just forces grappling with adulthood a little more. For someone like me who tries to have a million concurrent hobbies and is very interested in the world around me it's easy to get caught up.
i'm starting to see how Miles constructed the songs in Kind of Blue to take away a bunch of complex chord changes to allow for a beautiful melody to emerge.
