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ivan@stellysee.de
| From | "David Bash" <bashpop@earthlink.net> |
| Subject | Re: albums, albums, where are you? |
| Date | Mon, 8 Dec 2003 08:49:42 -0800 |
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--- In audities@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Kosmicki" <jkosmicki@c...> wrote:
> Even the Beatles, who get so much credit in these "great albums" lists,
> really only put out one album that was not really a collection of
> singles (Sgt. Pepper), and that was really only in terms of some of what
> was done to make suites and pull songs together, not as a single work.
I have to disagree here. While it's true that several Beatles discs had a
few singles on them which were played incessantly on Top 40 radio, I
certainly don't see "Rubber Soul", "Revolver", "The White Album", or "Abbey
Road" as being collection of singles. I was a bit too young to remember
hearing the singles these albums spawned, upon the time of their release, so
I had the "advantage" of not being inundated with these songs. When I
bought all of the aforementioned Beatle albums in 1975, I surely recognized
the singles (or popular album tracks) each of them featured, but as I played
the albums over and over, they definitely developed individual imprints on
my brain as albums. They may not have had as tangible a concept as Sgt.
Pepper, but each of them painted a clear aural portrait.
> Please note that there are albums that I love without exception
> (Rockpile or London's Calling, for example), but when I think of them,
> it's still individual songs that come to my mind, not the album as a
> unified whole. Is there any albums out there that are just ruined by
> people being able to pick their favorite tracks instead of having to
> have the whole?
For me, very, very few of them. During the '70s, when I first started
buying huge numbers of albums, I would tape the ones I liked the most and
play them over and over again in my car. Just as it was with Beatle albums,
each of them created their own aural portrait, even those like Fleetwood Mac
and Eagles albums, which had scads of singles I would get sick of hearing on
the radio. I definitely see your point that some discs are more likely to
be perceived as "singles albums" than not, but for me, the more I played
them in their entirety, the more that perception disappeared.
The intention of the artist or their label never was very relevant to me,
either. I could just as easily see The Four Tops "Reach Out" album as a
conceptualized album as I could a disc that had no singles on it.
No matter how much I saw a disc as an "album", I would still cherrypick some
of my favorites and compile them as part of a "Best Of 19__". Even when I
did that, it didn't ruin the concept, as long as I had previously been
listening to the album as a whole.
Of course, today most of our favorite albums, power pop and otherwise, don't
have any "singles" on them, or at least none that get overplayed anywhere,
so happily (or sadly, depending upon your point of view), we no longer have
to worry about it much.
--
Albums rule!!!!!
Take Care,
David
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