Paging Edward Excellent

6.13.11

3:54 pm

I've just finished reading a huge interview with John Linnell regarding, for the most part, the presence of computers in his life.

At one point the seemingly inevitable question of how computers have affected the distribution of music came up and Linnell mentioned that he feels less people are listening to albums, preferring to buy individual songs from iTunes and other such digital marketplaces. He talked about how more people would prefer to have a playlist of songs rather than a related collection they would sit and listen to.

And I'll agree.

You know why?

Because bands, chiefly because of this recent development of the ADHD way of listening to music, have stopped putting effort into the whole album.

They think, "Well, there's three singles...it doesn't matter what else we put on here" and thus another musical turd is born.

I hate the word 'turd', by the way. 

As I was saying, I don't think this is the band's fault, it's our fault as consumers with the attention spans of a hummingbirds.

I didn't grow up with LP's, so I never had that whole "listening to a record is a ritual" thing, but I did have cassettes and, more often than not, I would listen all the way through. Because, even if one particular song on the tape wasn't my favorite song, it was still by this band I was listening to and I like them enough not listen to the rest of the album, so why would I skip this one? And plus, a song is, what, four minutes? What's the big deal?

Granted, I have lost that respect of a lot of music.

I have just as many playlists on my iPod as the next person, but I will often still slap on the first track of an album and let it play, because that's how these artists intended it to be.

How could I call myself a fan of a band if I only like three songs per album?

The issue is, as I said before, that these bands I like seem to think that no one is listening to their albums as albums anymore and have started putting less effort into the music as they used to.

And then fans only listen to three or four tracks per album.

And then bands make albums with three or four good tracks.

It's a vicious cycle and it fucking blows.

And it's never going to stop until either: a. fans start taking time to listen to full albums as full albums or b. bands start making albums that are so enthralling that people have no choice but to listen to them in their entirety.

Now, people are stupid and fickle and hummingbirds etc. as I said before, but these bands (technically) are artists.

So, sadly, I'm going to have to put them blame on them.

How do you get people to listen to more than three or four tracks off your new 13 track album?

MAKE BETTER SONGS.

BETTER SONGS THAT FORM A BETTER ALBUM.

This feels obvious...is this too obvious?

I mean, has anyone called the VP of Music and told him, "hey, fucko, tell them to make better music and people will buy more music"?

Am I really out on a limb here?

Whatever the case, there are at least five bands that I listen to whose albums I will gladly listen to as wholes.

I might pick my favorites and put them on a playlist, but that doesn't mean I'm going to discard the rest of them.

It's disrespectful.

Now THAT sounds weird coming out of my fingers...

Hm.

I might be rambling, pointing out the obvious, but, seriously, things aren't going to get better.

 

Switching things up: I am almost done with The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.

I decided, now that I'm near the end, to watch the trailer for the Fincher remake and see if I could match scenes with scenes.

I can.

Then, I watched the trailer from the original Dragon Tattoo movie to see just how necessary this remake is.

Seems that the answer is: not very.

I can clearly see some guy in a suit in somewhere in Hollywood (perhaps the VP of Showbiz?) meeting with David FIncher and laying it on the line for him:

Okay.

Some people will never see a movie, not matter how great, as long as it has subtitles.

So.

We like money and are running a tad short on ideas at the moment, so we'd like to replace the all Swedish cast and crew and script of the original The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo movie with James Bond, the cute, smart chick from The Social Network, that German doctor from Thor and the Avengers movie, have the director of Fight Club shoot it and get hot, new Oscar Meat©® Trent Reznor to do the score.

What do you think?

And I suppose that David Fincher said yes.

Anyway.

I saw The Hangover 2 this weekend with Jeannie, mostly to try and catch the Dragon Tattoo trailer, you know, the one specifically engineering for theatrical presentation, but it wasn't there.

Movie wasn't bad though, so, whatever.

Have no idea how they are going to top themselves for the third Hangover movie...quite frankly, I'm a little frightened.

All right.

Enough talk.

9:22 pm

Just finished The Girl etc. etc. etc.

Planning on watching the original film in a few days.

I think I may jump into the second in the series as soon as I've finished typing this.

I hope to Christ that there is less research and coffee drinking in the second and third books.

One thing I will say, I am greatly looking forward to a Trent Reznor/Atticus Ross score for this movie more so than I was for a movie about the creation of Facebook.

For as good as that score was...SO incongruous.

In fact, I'm hoping some Nine Inch Nails fan with more initiative than I sets certain scenes from Fincher's Dragon Tattoo with some of the Social Network score, as I've always felt that stuff on that would have been perfect for a rape/murder type movie.

Dark Side Of The Network?

Social Side of the Moon Tattoo?

Certain scenes in particular have such potential for perfect pairing with Reznor and Ross' stuff...

Anyhoodle.

I was thinking about picking Song of Fire and Unfinished Manuscripts back up, but...I'm not going to.

Eat it, G.R.R.M.

EAT.

IT.

10:46 pm

 

Only three chapters into The Girl Who Played With Fire and I'm hanging on every word.

I do so enjoy the second book in a series that doesn't take twelve chapters to catch you up on what you missed.

As long as this book revolves around these events and has nothing at all to do with Swedish economics, government, agriculture, mining, binary thought engines or anything else...I'm set.

I even enjoy the stuff about Salander and math.

I've always been a numbers kind of person and her new obsession is wonderful and fascinating to me.

Man, I hope these first few chapters are good indicators...