Tracks you never listen to
I know that there's probably a thread on here about albums you have in your collection that never see the light of day, but what about individual tracks?
To conserve battery power on my rather ageing iPod, I took off the shuffle function (top tip, folks) and started listening to albums from start to finish again - gosh, how revolutionary!
The other day, I happened across Terence Trent Water Authority's debut album Introducing The Hardline... and reminded myself of how bloody good it is.
And then I got to that weird acapella track, the penultimate one on the album, called As Yet Untitled and realised I'd hardly ever listened to it, because I always press 'FForward'.
Surely, there must be other tracks that make us habitually press the 'Skip' button to avoid hearing all the way through?
Any takers?
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Stuff I Never Listen To
This is what I did: I compiled a smart playlist of all songs with a play count less than 1 or 2, called it 'Stuff I Never Listen To' and put it on random whenever I was allegedly bored of my own music. It shrunk and shrunk and then went away.
Good Idea
Nice one Lucas, just did that for my Itunes, making a playlist of tracks I had listened to once or never. Rather shockingly there was 21 days worth of barely listened to stuff. Can't really justify buying any new stuff until I've trimmed a few days off that. Wish I had the same kind of device that counted how many times my lovely lady wife wore a pair of 'must-have' shoes.
Yup, nice idea
I've done that on my iPod and iTunes, but I suppose I was thinking more about the album tracks that you deliberately never listen to, rather than the ones that never come up on Shuffle.
There's something about acapella tracks, definitely, because I always used to skip the music-free Tracy Chapman one on her debut album.
I've got a great album by Barry Adamson called Oedipus Shmoedipus but there are a couple of totally unlistenable tracks on it, so when I ripped it to my iPod, I deliberately left them off
Nearly all hip hop albums...
...are padded out with a couple of comedy "skits" that seemed uproariously funny to the guys when they were making them and are now skipped over by the entire human race.
I was listening to Kanye West's "The College Dropout" this morning and wanted to slap him every time one came on.
Skits - the exception
I like the skits on the first Dr Octagon album, which are often revolting and always surreal:
"Dr. Octagon, please come to the office, come now! Oh f**k! Patient just died in room 105! Cirrhosis of the eye! Nurse come in, please! Where are you? F**k it, he's dead. Oh shit! There's a horse in the hospital!"
Etc.
Agree
Comedy Skits on Rap Albums are terrible, is it just rappers that do this...and if so...why?
Deserter's Songs
If you ever make it to the end of Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs, there is the most godawful noise after the last song. I haven't been near it in ten years. About three good songs on the album, but that's it.
Mercury Rev; hip hop skits and collaborations
I like most of "Deserter's Songs" (though not the godawful noise after the last song). Lullabies for adults, if that doesn't sound too pathetic. (Yes, it does.) Unfortunately every subsequent album of theirs seems to be a lesser version.
The ONLY hip hop skits I don't skip are the ones on De La Soul's "Three Feet High and Rising". Though maybe I should boycott these for inspiring so many embarrassingly rubbish imitators.
In his review of the new Coldplay album in today's Independent, Andy Gill mentions his hatred of "hip-hop album tracks entitled "Intro", "Interlude" or "Telephone Skit".
Collaborations are another blight on hip hop; so many add up to far less than the sum of their parts. The quality of a hip hop album is very often in inverse proportion to the number of guest artists.
Downloading is such a blessing for hip hop fans; we've mentioned before how few great albums the genre produces.
By the way, I'm trying to track down a rap album I once had that included a funny song/skit called "Da News" and included a weather report with the bizarre rhyme "...Thanks Harold; put away your winter apparel...". Any ideas as to what it was would be gratefully received.
albums from start to finish?
I think I remember such things. I have strange dreams at night where I watch myself in a room just listening to this big flat round thing that spins round. Unexplicably, after about 20 minutes I see myself stand up, walk up to the big flat round thing and turn it upside down. Other nights i hear myself saying things like "Side 2 track 3".
In all seriousness, a whole album from end to end (in the same order that the artist intended) is actively discouraged by the makers of IPOD and the like. Why else would they fit such an easy to use "Can't be arsed with this" button.
Artists and producers are fully aware of this button and so feel totally guilt free about putting "fillers" in to make up the 50 minutes or so that for some reason we insist upon downloading. (Knowing full well that some of this "data" is destined never to become a genuine soundwave.)
Martin
REM
On Automatic for the People, there is New Orleans Instrumental No 1, a pointless inclusion to an otherwise flawless record.
Nonsense!
That's a beautiful piece of music, and far more in tune with the mood of the album than 'Ignoreland' or, as Lucas says, 'Sidewinder Sleeps...'
Light and shade
Ignoreland and Sidewinder provide upbeat contrasts to the totally beautiful ones that we all love. New Orleans adds nothing, just pads out the album unnecessarily.
The flaw on Automatic For The People
For my money, it's The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight.