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Originally Posted by wisdom
Yeah, the problem is mostly with Dio, singing and writing. Note that Rainbow circa Joe Lynn Turner was about shorter songs. By the way, I heard Blackmore doesn't play rock music anymore.
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Dio is acknowledged as one of the most important heavy metal singers ever, and writers, and generally seen as the real "voice" of Rainbow, though of course there are those who don't like him. Not sure what your problem is with him, whether it fits in with your points here or not, ie whether it's because he tends to write longer songs on the whole, but okay that's your choice. Nevertheless, to stop listening to any song after 1 minute just seems weird to me.
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Mainstream exposure, at least. But if they're current and good, eventually I'll probably see the band mentioned somewhere else. Psst, that principle also applies to the Rainbow song.
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Not in any way necessarily. Do you think you've heard every band considered "good" or even "popular"? I hadn't even heard of Sigur Ros until recently, checked them out and really liked them. But you won't find them on the radio or in the charts. Does not in any way invalidate their music though. A band does not have to be popular, or known to you, to be good. Threshold do very well without you, thanks.
But before I move on, can't you see that in listening to the Threshold track you have actually disproved your own premise? You said that if a song starts off one way you don't listen any further as it's unlikely to change (your football --- I stress, I assume American football, I was talking about soccer, the
real football --- reference below) and yet having listened to this track you admit it changed significantly halfway through. You even gave it grudging acceptance. But on the basis of the length of that track, and on only that one criterion, you've already said you would not have listened to it. So now that you have, is it not obvious that there's a reason, even a need, to give longer songs a chance?
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I like "Alive and Kicking" and "Don't Get Me Wrong." (I've tired of "If This is It.") I didn't say I never like uptempo songs, but something long probably has to be emotionally complex yet still scrutable to work for me. (I'm changing my argument slightly as I have new insights.)
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No, I know, that's why I qualified my own response to reflect what you said. You said you don't get any emotional resonance out of them, which is what I said.
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The team that leads after the first quarter usually wins 
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Perhaps in American football, I don't know. But in English and other football, it can go right down to the wire. A team leading 3-0 at half time can very easily be beaten 4-3 or drawn if the right circumstances, luck (dodgy penalty, offside goal given, man sent off etc) occur, or if the halftime team talk is good enough, so no, in football there is no foregone conclusion up to maybe the 80th minute, and there's always extra time. Last year, one team were being beaten 4-0 at half time and came back to draw 4-4 by the end. Yeah, some fans of the losing team left early, but they regretted it and now wish they had stayed for a historic comeback by their boys.
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But this isn't football. Something cohesive enough to be a song probably won't vary much in quality as it runs its course. I base my observation on having listened to at least 5000 songs in my life. I grant you that maybe a longer song demands a slightly longer sample.
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5000 songs? In your life? If I may be indelicate, what age are you? Even a 30-year old, listening to one song a day for 20 years (assuming the first ten years are not spent deliberately listening to music) will listen to more than that. I'd imagine over my lifetime (50 next year) I would have listened to, let me see, on a
very conservative estimate, at least three times that amount. Probably more like ten times, really, and I don't listen to music ALL the time. Now admittedly I may be much older than you, and I probably listen to more music, (or maybe not), but even at that, 5000 songs in your life doesn't seem a sufficient amount to be in a position to be making the rigid demarcations you're laying down for yourself. Don't you feel like you should experience more?
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I don't know what "Fading Lights" is. I'm a big fan of "No Son of Mine" - but it would and could have been better had the repetitive chorus been cut by 30 to 60 seconds. Despite having "We Can't Dance" on CD, I've never listened to the other two. I know they weren't singles and probably didn't get much airplay anywhere, and the album on the whole isn't great - that combination tells me they likely aren't anything special.
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If you have WCD and have not listened to those tracks you're missing out, and without giving them the chance you will never know and can never truly make that claim. As I said before, you can't base your perception of quality on whether or not songs were singles: there are probably better tracks on most albums that were never released as singles than there are single tracks.
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Realistically, everyone needs limits.
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No they don't. Why? Why limit yourself? If you want to explore, say African tribal music and never have before, why not do so? Or Italian disco? Or dubstep? Or death metal? Or grindcore? Why would you limit yourself to not trying these avenues, unless you're actually not interested in them? There are genres I am not interested in, but that doesn't mean I might not be at some point in the future. I don't place a limit on myself, saying you can never explore those genres. What would be the point of that?
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There is plenty of good music in this world - leaving out categories one tends not to like allows more enjoyment for the proven stuff.
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A narrow view if ever there was one.
