What's your favorite album? Is it filled with a lot of songs you really like individually, or is it a total musical narrative only to be consumed in its entirety? If the latter, could you really not do without track 4? You know, the one where the basist gets to "ruminate" with little to no assistance for a good six and a half minutes, probably because the band felt bad for him after 3 CD's of relative obscurity. I'm not saying track four isn't "a compendum of rhetorical longing" and everything, but is it really an essential step in the listening process? Do you never get 3 minutes into track four and consider skipping it? Ever?
Track 4 could be ANYWHERE!
If not, I don't understand you. Really. I respect your artistic satisfaction, and I believe that you really do want to hear every second of track 4, but I'll be honest: I think the CD would be just fine without it. Not that I've encountered many track 4's. I don't have enough whole albums I know of that I'd like to listen to all the way through (which, I guess, could mean I've encountered countless track 4's in disguise) but on the one's I have enjoyed start to finish, there are always things that lose me. And by lose I mean I would be fine listening to Marky Mark instead of what's happening at a certain moment on one of my favorite CD's.
I suppose one of my problems may be that I tend to look at an album as a narrative. I am, for example, intensely confused when a closing credit song on a movie soundtrack winds up as track 7, meanwhile the one they played while everyone was trying to fix the protagonist's computer closes the album. Why? What in the foggy hell could be the reason? What alterior perspective could someone have, for example, on pieces of score written specifically for a motion picture? I don't care if Spielberg put it at the end, I say it's an interlude piece!
Why, on All That You Can't Leave Behind, one of U2's best CD's, do all the best, most absorbing songs come all at the beginning? Really. Like, start on Beautiful Day, sure, but don't you think saving "All That You Can't Leave" for later might have been a good idea? It's kind of elagic like that. Do you really think "Wild Honey" would be a good enough 2nd-half pick me up? U2 tends to do this kind of thing a lot, winding it down the whole album then tossing out some 2nd rate charger on the next to last track ("New York" sucked guys, I'm sorry) only to close on Bono mumbling about how love is blindness or your enemies will outlast your friends - the final words, in fact, on their most recent CD. Thanks guys. Awesome.
And lets be honest here, part of the task of making an album is keeping the beginning away from the end: you're trying to fill a track number or running length, even if you really do have things to say about the Chechnyan working class. There are songs the album is sold on, songs that are good anyway, and songs that...also come with the CD. I'm not accusing all artists of rubbishing it now and then, and I know an album needs high points and low points - that it can't just be a string of top 10's - but sometimes the best thing about a tune is that it comes after or before another tune. You squint through it and believe that there must be something important going on...somewhere. Be careful, this may mean that you've switched to AM radio on accident.
I suppose one of my problems may be that I tend to look at an album as a narrative. I am, for example, intensely confused when a closing credit song on a movie soundtrack winds up as track 7, meanwhile the one they played while everyone was trying to fix the protagonist's computer closes the album. Why? What in the foggy hell could be the reason? What alterior perspective could someone have, for example, on pieces of score written specifically for a motion picture? I don't care if Spielberg put it at the end, I say it's an interlude piece!
Why, on All That You Can't Leave Behind, one of U2's best CD's, do all the best, most absorbing songs come all at the beginning? Really. Like, start on Beautiful Day, sure, but don't you think saving "All That You Can't Leave" for later might have been a good idea? It's kind of elagic like that. Do you really think "Wild Honey" would be a good enough 2nd-half pick me up? U2 tends to do this kind of thing a lot, winding it down the whole album then tossing out some 2nd rate charger on the next to last track ("New York" sucked guys, I'm sorry) only to close on Bono mumbling about how love is blindness or your enemies will outlast your friends - the final words, in fact, on their most recent CD. Thanks guys. Awesome.
And lets be honest here, part of the task of making an album is keeping the beginning away from the end: you're trying to fill a track number or running length, even if you really do have things to say about the Chechnyan working class. There are songs the album is sold on, songs that are good anyway, and songs that...also come with the CD. I'm not accusing all artists of rubbishing it now and then, and I know an album needs high points and low points - that it can't just be a string of top 10's - but sometimes the best thing about a tune is that it comes after or before another tune. You squint through it and believe that there must be something important going on...somewhere. Be careful, this may mean that you've switched to AM radio on accident.
By Dave Beauchene
No comments:
Post a Comment