4/5 - when good isn't good enough

[bondegezou]

Over the years, how I (we?) listen to music has changed enormously. I don't just mean in technology (vinyl/cassette -> CD -> digital -> 5.1 Surround?), but in terms of habit, of when/where I listen, and going from being a young fan with less than 10 albums to having shelf after shelf after shelf of CDs, from being limited by how many albums I can afford to being limited by how much time I have to listen to them all.

One of the things that struck me about this journey is how I used to want to get good albums. So, on a typical 5-star scale, I wanted 4* or 5* albums. But these days, I get albums that are fine, they're good, they're a solid 4*, and I soon stop listening to them. Instead, I find I go back again and again to a smaller pool of the real stand-outs.

And so I'd rather have an album with one great 5* song, even if the rest is lousy, even if the album overall is 3* or 2*, than an album that's consistently 4*. I crave finding those flashes of genius. An occasional diamond in the rough matters to me more than reliability and consistency. (In terms of music, at least!) Anyone else feel the same?

[bill g]

I think I agree. Trying to think of examples. When the album was young, I felt that way about Abacab, where 'Me and Sarah Jane' was 5* and the rest 2* or 3*. But the one brilliant song was worth the price of the album. Later, most of the album grew on me, so that several tracks are 3 or 4 stars. Consistently good (but not great) albums are pretty common, but flashes of brilliance are preferable to me than none at all.

[MYSTERIOUS TRAVELLER]

Since 70% of my collection is on LP, I often do my own 'in house' digital remasters of an artists catalog and I leave out the weak stuff. Sometimes I will have 3 albums on one CD so, in effect, it is *all* "flashes of brilliance". I've been going through my collection alphabetically lately and so far have got

Jan Akkerman's first three albums on 1 CD cause his first was more of a 60s Pop Rock thing and I was able to leave a bunch of that off and his 2nd and 3rd had a number of Lute thingies that I put on a seperate CD with his Ogerman/Classical album.

The Bar Kays (post-crash) first two albums on 1 CD. Not to be confused with the pre-crash Soulfinger and the posthumous Gotta Groove which were more like Booker T & the MGs on amphetamines. The post-crash Bar Kays were a bit more like Funkadelic (of course there's no Bernie or Eddie) the dude on Guitar can definitely hold his own as witnessed in that 20 minute jam on the Shaft soundtrack. For those who don't know, the band who plays on that album with Isaac Hayes is the (post-crash) Bar Kays.

The Crusaders first one on CD; which BTW I am loving *very* much and am shocked since I'm not a big fan of recorded Jazz. But then The Crusaders *do* have at least a couple pieces with Rock style backbeat drumming. Though they really do not have the overall Rock bombast of Coryell/11th House, RTF, Cobham, MO or even Ponty, so they are closer for sure to real Jazz, especially since they have a Sax player... but I'm actually liking this stuff A LOT!

[Sputnik]

I'd rather have an album with one great 5* song, even if the rest is lousy, even if the album overall is 3* or 2*, than an album that's consistently 4*. I crave finding those flashes of genius. An occasional diamond in the rough matters to me more than reliability and consistency. (In terms of music, at least!) Anyone else feel the same?

That's an interesting perspective. I'm not sure I ever heard an album that for me was basically 2* or 3* but had one 5* track. Usually the best albums like that can muster for me is one that is 3.5* to 4*, and generally speaking albums like that I have no trouble getting rid of. But if an album had a track that I really felt was that good, I would probably keep it, and would likely try to find a way to incorporate that track onto a CDR that I'd be more inclined to listen to than an album I don't really like.

Lucky for me, when I hear those 5* moments, they usually come on albums that are chock full of 5* moments. I'm also pretty happy with a consistently 4* albums, of which I have many in my collection.

Bill

[JKL2000]

Like how I listen to Fly From Here just for Bumpy Ride?

[boilk]

Well, I know that for my Ipod, I went through my entire CD collection and picked only the best songs from each album. Any 'filler', or average songs just aren't going to make the cut, so there are very few complete albums on there. I tend to agree with Bill, that a lot of my 4-5 moments come on albums that have their share of them, but then again, there are a number of, well....let's say 'second tier' Italian bands, for example, where only 1 or 2 songs made the grade.

neil

[Trane]

Ever since buying albums even before high school, i got rid of what i considered average or poor albums (didn't have a bigger brother to tell what to choose from)... Only keeping albums that were above three stars (or 6/10)... And even then, when I needed the space and decided to prune was stacks of albums, I did XLII-S compilation tapes with the better tracks of a few albums of the same artiste >> that way, I got rid of Amigos, Festival, Inner Secrets and Welcome... having my fave tracks from each of them on a tape that was played in the car... Did the same thing with Wright's Wet Dreams and Gilmour's debut albums >> both albums alone were not good enough to be on my shelves, but teamed together on an XLII-S tape side, it was definitelmy very often played...

Sooooo, no... i tend to prefer keeping albums that are fairly even in terms of excellence, rather than uneven albums with one awesome track and the rest relatively mediocre "filler tracks" (IMHO, of course) ....
I'm thinking of Going For The One >>> all I wanted was Awaken >> soooo I stuck it on a XLII-S and put two tracks of Tormato, one from Drama, and two from their Yesterday compilation (S&G's America cover was one of them ), which I also got rid of as well

While I did recup a GFTO vinyl (saved from my cousin's shelves that were going to waste), I've never bought back any of these albums, except for Yesterday... (I borrowed from friends if I wanted to)

[Plasmatopia]

Albums that I rate as 5/5 are very rare. I have several albums I'm listening to right now that give me plenty of enjoyment, but I don't have any illusions about rating them as a 5/5. They are mostly between 3.5/5-4/5. I don't bother trying to rate albums on ProgArchives very much any more because it seemed like I tended to rate every album the same. Albums I really don't like don't get much time from me and therefore I don't feel right chiming in and being negative when there's always the possibility I didn't put in the required time. The good albums are...good...but like I said I wouldn't rate most of them as 5/5. So everything I'm familiar enough with to justify an accurate rating comes out as 4/5 or pretty close to it. I wish they would allow one more decimal point on that site...

[Yanks2014]

I love the fact that with iTunes I can keep what I want. But I'm not quick to delete a song unless it's just truely bad, just in case the song ends up growing on me. I can think of many albums pretty much saved by one or two strong songs. And thanks to technology, I never have to hear the weak songs ever.

A couple years back I downloaded a whole bunch of Rick Wakeman albums, mostly out of print or nearly impossible to find from a not terribly legal website. I've managed to replace several titles legitimately on CD, and will continue to do so. It's the overly prolific Wakeman, so many of these albums pretty much suck, but most still have some very worthwhile songs. Total keepers, so they stay in i-Tunes.

[soundsweird]

I'm kind of on the same page with the thread originator. Out of all of the 2500-3000 albums in my collection, only about 3 or 4 percent of them are albums that I like all the way through. Seems like there's always one or more tracks I don't like. On the other hand, I have hundreds of albums that only have one or two songs that I like, but in my opinion they're worth keeping because I really like those songs. I have sold hundreds of albums that were pretty good, but if they didn't have any really great tracks, I got rid of them. My time is too valuable to listen to music that's pretty good, even if every song on the album is pretty good. As for those of you who transfer your favorite tracks, then get rid of the album, I've changed my mind about liking or disliking a certain track dozens of times, sometimes years later. As long as I have room, I'll keep the album.

[Trane]

Albums that I rate as 5/5 are very rare. I have several albums I'm listening to right now that give me plenty of enjoyment, but I don't have any illusions about rating them as a 5/5. They are mostly between 3.5/5-4/5. I don't bother trying to rate albums on ProgArchives very much any more because it seemed like I tended to rate every album the same. Albums I really don't like don't get much time from me and therefore I don't feel right chiming in and being negative when there's always the possibility I didn't put in the required time. The good albums are...good...but like I said I wouldn't rate most of them as 5/5. So everything I'm familiar enough with to justify an accurate rating comes out as 4/5 or pretty close to it. I wish they would allow one more decimal point on that site...

I understand... I have not used the Gnosis 15 rating at all (the PA ratings have become a bit more trustworthy with time, but since they don't have half-stars, I don't care anymore).... In most cases, the best albums are 4.5* >> which translate in a Gnosis 14 & Gnosis 13...

[sonic]

I'm perhaps the opposite. I used to be a 5 star only guy, but now that I have 'completed' my 'must have' collection most of my listening now is exploring the '80s, '90s and obscure recent bands. I listen to a lot of metal that might be considered 'samey' but if it rocks I'll keep listening. Another consideration is cost. Prog is a collectable genre as is jazz & fusion (at least over here) and thus not that cheap even second hand, so I'm pretty fussy about what I buy and what I keep. '80s & '90s pop & metal is dead cheap to pick up for the most part, so I'm less fussed about choosing only 5 star material.

[Hobo Chang Ba]

I'd prefer to have the consistent album that was 4 stars overall than an album that had one track that was the bees knees (as the kids say) but 5-10 average at best tracks on it.

[erik_1099]

I find now that I've been doing most of my listening via iTunes for almost 10 years that I find myself doing more of what Henry suggests. Mind you I've upgraded my collection in iTunes to Lossless (all re-ripped from my CDs). Very little of my iTunes library is directly purchased digital files like mp3 or aac from itunes. Maybe 400 tracks out of approx 14000 tracks.

But- about 5 years ago I made it a mission to rate all the tracks in my library as I listened to them and I think I've gotten 80%. Since then I've found that for about 50% of the albums, I'm happy dropping any 1-3* tracks. 4* though stick with me. For a lot of other albums, even 3* tracks often stay in because of nostalgia, continuity, flow, etc. As stand outs the tracks may kind've suck but in the context of an album sometimes they are better. 2* and below are usually out all together.

[olias]

A lot of my listening I would describe as "band binging". For example, after Ray Manzarek passed away last month, I had a sudden impulse to listen to The Doors. Although I had a few Doors albums already, I decided to buy their complete studio catalog, which was selling on iTunes for the special price of $50. I probably spun through the whole thing at least half a dozen times over a two-week period. Now there are albums in that lot which I don't consider 5-star by any means (namely Soft Parade and the two post-Morrison releases), but I enjoyed listening to them nonetheless, and they scratched the itch for that "Doors kick" that I was on.

Shortly after that, my copy of Porcupine Tree's newly re-released Yellow Hedgerow Dreamscape arrived. I probably listened to that about 5 times, and then it prompted the urge to go on a general Porcupine Tree binge, where over the course of a week I spun their entire catalog. And I really enjoyed hearing it all for the first time in probably 2+ years, even though I don't rate all of it on the same level.

I've also got "style binges", where I may spin through 80% of my Italian prog albums to the exclusion of everything else, or listen to Anglagard + Wobbler, who I consider in the same stylistic range.

So my listening is driven less by the need to meet a certain overall quality threshold (4-star or 5-star or whatever), then a) an overall style or band I happen to be obsessed with at the moment, or b) an album which I just purchased, which I will tend to give at least 4-5 listens before filing away. When I'm not obsessed with anything, and haven't bought anything new in a while, I often go days without listening to anything. Or I may pull something out, for say a long car ride, in which case it *does* tend to be more "cream of the crop". So perhaps Wish You Were Here or Sticky Fingers, depending on if my mood was more contemplative or rocking, but almost certainly not More or Black and Blue, until I find myself on my next Floyd or Stones binge that is...

[bondegezou]

We spend so much time talking about the music, that it's been interesting to hear people talking about how they listen to music. Thanks all.

These days, I have a 12-minute walk to work, so 12-minute prog rock songs suit really well!

Henry

[Frumious B]

My physical collection is up around 2,300 CDs. It's all ripped and fits fairly neatly on an iPod Classic with about 900 CDs worth of music on my phone for my every day type listening. My tendency lately is to want to pare back, simplify, downsize, buy less and focus more on the really good stuff that matters. Unless an artist is a long time favorite I don't want to bother with any music that isn't 4/5 or 5/5 for me. For a favorite I'll drop to 3/5, but no lower. Subscribing to Spotify has really helped me to cut down my more impulsive purchases and helped me to separate the wheat from the chaff. I can stream whatever and then buy what I enjoy the most.

[Trane]

A lot of my listening I would describe as "band binging". For example, after Ray Manzarek passed away last month, I had a sudden impulse to listen to The Doors. Although I had a few Doors albums already, I decided to buy their complete studio catalog, which was selling on iTunes for the special price of $50. I probably spun through the whole thing at least half a dozen times over a two-week period. Now there are albums in that lot which I don't consider 5-star by any means (namely Soft Parade and the two post-Morrison releases), but I enjoyed listening to them nonetheless, and they scratched the itch for that "Doors kick" that I was on.

So my listening is driven less by the need to meet a certain overall quality threshold (4-star or 5-star or whatever), then a) an overall style or band I happen to be obsessed with at the moment, or b) an album which I just purchased, which I will tend to give at least 4-5 listens before filing away. When I'm not obsessed with anything, and haven't bought anything new in a while, I often go days without listening to anything. Or I may pull something out, for say a long car ride, in which case it *does* tend to be more "cream of the crop". So perhaps Wish You Were Here or Sticky Fingers, depending on if my mood was more contemplative or rocking, but almost certainly not More or Black and Blue, until I find myself on my next Floyd or Stones binge that is...

Mmmhhh!!!... Doors and Stoines are two bands where I must say studio albums simplty don't do it for me anymore (never really did, outside LA Woman)

Doors... the only studio CD I have is LA Woman... I've made a compilation CD-r of all the rest...

Stones: (no CD at all)... I've kept my Hot Rocks, Made In The Shade and Sucking In The 70's as vinyls... strangely enough I also kept Dirty Work


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I'd have expected this thread to be five pages long by now...