Minstrel

Thanks! I got pretty busy in work and personal life, so had less time to devote to things like online forums, but I recently felt an urge to read and talk about music with people again. It's nice to see you again, too.

It's not about never doing so, or always doing so. I actually like to listen to full albums most of the time. But I can also enjoy extracting the best songs from certain albums, tossing them together in a playlist and hitting random play. From that "mix" perspective, getting more good songs is good, even if they come with more bad songs and make the overall album too long. IMO, anyway.

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"Blow your tuneless trumpet, the choice is yours / We don't want the glamour, the pomp and the drums / The Dublin messiah scattering crumbs"

Guybrush

But if you only include a few good songs from an album into your playlist and say that's a good album because it's got 3 good tracks, then you obviously have little basis for that statement.

Did that make sense? What I'm saying is if you only like 5 songs from a double-album that has 30, of course you may get a feeling of overall positiveness from that album. You focus on what you like and why spend time on the rest? But I still think that if you review an album, you should base your final opinion on all the songs and not just the ones you like. Otherwise, what you're reviewing are really just a few songs, not an album.

I use the word review but what I really mean is whenever you wanna make up your mind about the whole thing. Some people don't care about the whole thing which is fine of course .. though they're missing out a bit I think. And when they state opinions on albums, they have a strong bias towards describing a smaller part of the album which is of course a weakness.

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Something Completely Different

Minstrel

If it only has 3 good songs, I doubt I'd call it a good album. But if it's a choice (for the same price) between:

Album A: 10 songs, all of them good
Album B: 15 songs, 12 of them good

I'd take album B. Sure, it may be "too long" and have some stuff I'm not wild about...but I'm 2 good songs richer, as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, I'm okay with an artist putting more on, even if the "extra" is mostly not that good. Whatever IS good, I benefit from. Whatever isn't, I can ignore in future.

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"Blow your tuneless trumpet, the choice is yours / We don't want the glamour, the pomp and the drums / The Dublin messiah scattering crumbs"

Janszoon

For me it depends a lot on what the format is. Having some crappy songs in the mix on an album I have as MP3s isn't that big a deal but on vinyl it becomes a totally different story and I would absolutely go with album A in your example. I guess because I grew up in the vinyl and cassette era have a lot of holdover feelings that filler really does detract from my listening experience quite a bit.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Minstrel

I can see that. As I recall, we're around the same age...as a kid, it was all vinyl and cassettes, but I was about 12-13 when CDs really began to be the dominant form (around 1990 or so), so the majority of my music-aware life has been with CDs. Even prior to mp3s, it was possible to program past weaker tracks.

I understand the preference for "pristine albums," but, especially at this point when I listen to almost everything in iTunes or on an iPod, I just want as many good songs as possible. I still have an automatic connection to album format...most of my listening is done on a per-album basis, rather that mixes of disparate tracks. But I feel no remorse in cutting out weak tracks on an album.

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"Blow your tuneless trumpet, the choice is yours / We don't want the glamour, the pomp and the drums / The Dublin messiah scattering crumbs"

Janszoon

Sounds like we're pretty much the exact same age (I was 13 in 1990). But I didn't own a CD player until I was 15 and I had tapedecks in my cars, which were the main places I listened to music, all the way into my early 20s (at which point I stopped owning cars) so the impact of cassettes on me was pretty substantial throughout my formative years.

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A Night in the Life of the Invisible Man

Time & Place

25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

last.fm

Guybrush

I agree with you although I think I could possibly pick B and still say that overall, A was the stronger album. It's just nitpickings about what makes an album good and I think the parts that don't shine pull the end result down a bit. I know I do put more weight on the good tracks though (probably human nature), but I sometimes try to at least minimize that slight human error

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Something Completely Different

Urban Hat€monger ?

What if the 10 song album lasts longer than the 15 song album? Do you then think 'oh it's more music so i'm getting more money's worth'?

I've heard many 'unreleased tracks' of songs that were left of albums & given as extras for re-masters. And I would say 99 times out of 100 there's a perfectly good reason they were unreleased, that was they weren't very good and would have added nothing to the finished article.

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Minstrel

Possibly. It depends on whether the songs are longer due to simple repetition. Any song can be extended arbitrarily long by repeating the hook more times. So, it depends on whether the 10 longer songs really feel like they're giving me more music experience.

Leaving aside percentage hit rate on "potential album material," my opinion is, feel free to stick it on. If it's any good, I'm better off. If it's not, I'll ignore it. No-risk proposition for me, as far as I'm concerned.

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"Blow your tuneless trumpet, the choice is yours / We don't want the glamour, the pomp and the drums / The Dublin messiah scattering crumbs"