And, another surprise. Is it my advancing years? Is it, finally, growing up? But, in a word, Jazz. What never made sense when I was young, now makes sense. I blame it on the turntable, and its ability to extract, forensically, the soul of the music. I blame it on the gorgeous packaging - albums produced at the peak of the jazz boom - 1950s to 1960s - look at “Kind of Blue”
or Coltrane’s “Blue Train”
I suppose it was called “Cool Jazz” at that time for a reason.
And there’s something about the way that these albums were recorded. An immediacy, an emotional commitment. Perhaps it was tied in with the improvisatory nature of the music. A Kylie Minogue performance will always sound the same, so there is no need to capture its fleetingness; it’s not fleeting. But John Coltrane never played a tune twice the same way. Whoever captured it on the recording cared about that.