Elvis Costello- Spike
Brad Mehldau- Your Mother Should Know: Brad Mehldau Plays The Beatles
Al Di Meola- Casino
Paul McCartney & Wings- Band On The Run
Demolition 23- S/T
The Easybeats- Absolute Anthology: 1965-1969 (Sides Two & Four)
Paul Stanley- S/T
7 comments:
OK, why in the name of all that's holy would you pop on The Easybeats and listen to sides TWO and FOUR?
Why is that so odd? It's not a concept album. I felt like hearing those 20 songs.
I just can't wrap my head around it. I never ever listen to just one side of an album and certainly not, say, side two. I know there are albums where say side a is great with all the hits and side b is meh. Or that Rod Stewart album where one side was fast and the other side all slow ballads (which is my idea of awful arranging of tracks). I'm just an automaton who if I'm listening to an album I feel obliged to start with track one and go to the end, no skipping over songs or sides. (I couldn't listen to just side one of The Ever Popular Tortured Artist Effect -- I'd feel like Todd was judging me, saying, it's not over, putz!) I think it's a carry-over from movies and books. I know people who love to jump to scenes and analyze them or just play them and laugh. I gotta watch the whole movie or it's cheating. It's all on me! My sister used to make me skip over "boring" songs (slow ones) in the car and I was always wracked with guilt and or felt I wasn't actually hearing the album the way it was meant to be heard. Billy Joel's gonna be pissed, I'd think.
I need to see a movie from the opening frame until the last credit. But, if 45 minutes into a two hour hasn't done anything for me, I am walking out or turning it off. I have no desire to watch or listen to crap just to say I did. My old friend Richie Grappone who owned Vinyl Mania in the village and on the UWS, used to play new 45s for me. I remember about 45 seconds into an early Depeche Mode song telling him I had enough and he let it play because "if I listen to all of it, I won't ever have to listen to it again." That's another strategy.
Also, four of the five songs on that Todd record are garbage. I'm using valuable time for another record by wasting it on something I don't need to hear everv again.
I definitely don't feel the need to listen to an entire album or read an entire book or watch an entire film any more that's new to me. But if it's worth watching or reading or listening to again, I generally like the album enough as a whole to listen to it all. And I totally get the finish it so you never have to listen to it again thing -- I do that on stuff that's really well thought of, because there's enough of a consensus among friends or others that I should. But 98% of the time, I just stop and walk away. I felt this was more like you saying, I feel like hearing Side Two of that album today (not, oh I love this album except for three or four songs). If it's all just skipping sides you really don't like, I grok that. I guess for me if I don't like an entire side, I'm prob not going to like the album as a whole enough. I'm really into albums, hence my question about the Easybeats. My instinct is to start with whatever someone says is the best album of an act, not a hits collection or anthology.
I admit it, I'm a nut! It's why you like me.
"I felt this was more like you saying, I feel like hearing Side Two of that album today (not, oh I love this album except for three or four songs)."
Ok nut, why isn't that the same thing? Side One of that Todd album has four songs I absolutely love. Side Two has a bad Small Faces cover, a 90 second novelty song and Bang On The Drum All Day, which no one ever needs to hear again. Are you suggesting depriving oneself of hearing four brilliant songs because a bad Side Two deems the whole record not worthy?
As for The Easybeats, aren't you the guy who loves Greatest Hits records? "Volume 3" and "Friday On My Mind" are both excellent, but like most 60's bands, the albums tend to be uneven. Good just not great. If I had listened to all 40 songs instead of 20, that would have been ok? What if I was just playing 45s? Would I have to have played both sides of 20 Easybeats singles? Couldn't I have just listened to six?
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