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Thread: Pointless tracks!

  1. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by progeezer View Post
    Ken Forssi was the bass player on Da Capo, and most of the drumming was Michael Stuart, with a little bit of "Snoopy" Pfisterer before he was sacked.
    Ah, you're right - Forssi played bass, not drums. But Don Conka ("Signed DC") was the initial drummer who got fired when his morphine addiction became too evident, right?
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

  2. #77
    Quote Originally Posted by Zeuhlmate View Post
    Art Zoyd - Phase IV tune: "La musique d'Erich Faes" (0:11)
    That one was an internal poke at UZero's "La Musique d'Eric Zann" from Ceux du Dehors - and thus served a purpose of hidden sorts!
    "Improvisation is not an excuse for musical laziness" - Fred Frith
    "[...] things that we never dreamed of doing in Crimson or in any band that I've been in," - Tony Levin speaking of SGM

  3. #78
    Member Big Ears's Avatar
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    Do you remember that old habit of 'reprising' a track on vinyl to fill the space? Mott the Hoople practically reprise a whole track on Brain Capers! It was not pointless to the band, who were either lazy or devoid of ideas, but it was pointless to everyone else.
    Member since Wednesday 09.09.09

  4. #79
    Member Zeuhlmate's Avatar
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    @Scrotum scissor
    Often the 'pointless tracks' serves some kind of purpose, but in this case not musically
    All this is because we think of albums as a coherent entity.

    People under 30 buys single tracks... what would a filler be like? Could you sell a pointless track? (well yes obviously, most music sold today is hardly music IMO)

  5. #80
    Profondo Giallo Crystal Plumage's Avatar
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    Recently there was a "filler" thread and to me, this thread is about the same.. Any track on an album has its purpose for the artist (or label?!) . Either because they like it or they had to fill an album. For instance ending with an instrumental version of the title track or adding live stuff. Lots of different musicians, lots of different tastes.
    Some tracks are just fun experiments which can be fleshed out during concerts. I like it. It's artistic freedom..
    The best ideas come from experimenting with different sounds and noises. Every musician does it. I can make sounds with my Saxophone like a whale or airplane. I can make it "talk". It's fun to do, and I have used it in concerts. Not to everyone's taste, but exploring your way of music making is essential for a musician. Adding a bit of uniqueness to it that lots of other musicians lack.
    HuGo
    "Very, very nice," said a man in the crowd,
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  6. #81
    Profondo Giallo Crystal Plumage's Avatar
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    Oh, in the days of single tracks, the "pointless" tracks will only be added to the Japanese Limited Edition Gold SHM (or something similar..)
    HuGo
    "Very, very nice," said a man in the crowd,
    When the golden voice appeared.
    She was gold alright, but then so is rust.
    "Such a shame about the beard."

  7. #82
    Quote Originally Posted by The Silent Man View Post
    The short extract from Seven Seas Of Rhye on the first Queen album. Made even more redundant when the completed version appeared on Queen II (complete with its own pointless singalong of I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside at the end I may add)
    1. The original plan was that Queen II was going to open with Seven Seas Of Rye. Hence, the bit at the end of side of the first album was meant to serve as a bridge, as it were, connecting to the second album. I think Frank Zappa called this "conceptual continuity". Unfortunately, as the material for Queen II developed, the idea of opening Queen II with Procession was put forth, and the rest of the program got re-jigged, with Seven Seas Of Rye ending up as the last song on side two, again. So that makes the bit on the first album a bit of a non-sequitur.

    2. The sea shanty coda on the Queen II version, here again, serves as a bit of conceptual continuity as, that's what the fairground organ is playing at the start of Brighton Rock on Sheer Heart Attack.

  8. #83
    Quote Originally Posted by Progmatic View Post
    This seems to be a perpetual issue for most people, nobody bothers to read about the track but they hear what they want to hear…btw, making the notion that Irene should not be respected singer because she recorded Infinity...well I find it perplexing, to say at least...

    Some explanation of the song from internet:

    The words are: "I am to come" and "I was to come" She begins to blend the two together as she gets in to it (the song), and some times, it is more like:
    "I was, I am, I was, I was, I am to come."
    It is the inversion of "Who was, is, is to come" of the Revelation, attributed to the Good. Here, the "Bad", (the Beast, 666) turns this phrase into Ego, (first person), and tries to be born again, or to give birth to another Ego, or to "make love" to is own self and so on. Vicious circle
    Well, that's a nice explanation of what the track is about and why it's there, but it doesn't change the fact that it goes on for five minutes, and is completely obnoxious for pretty much the entire duration.

    Honestly, I don't care what the intellectual explanation for this or that is, I only care about what it sounds like.

    BTW, I didn't mean to imply that Irene Papas shouldn't be respected for her other accomplishments. I just meant to say that you'd never know that she was this established actress and singer from listening to Infinity.

    I suppose it could have been worse. They could have gotten Yoko Ono to do the Infinity vocal.

  9. #84
    Quote Originally Posted by sonic View Post
    I think most posters are getting away from the OPs original intentions for this thread.
    A good example might be those conversation excerpts on Uncle Meat — they're not music and don't need to be there, but I couldn't imagine the album without them.
    I don't know about "don't need to be there", maybe the Suzy Creamcheese monologue, Our Bizarre Relationship, and Ian Underwood's explanation of how he came to work for Frank are superfluous. On the other hand, I rather like If We'd All Been Living In California, as it gives a bit of illumination about the frustrations of being in the music biz and never quite being big enough to make in any serious money. I also like the sort of TV commercial parody thing that Frank does at one point on there, that I've always thought was amusing.

  10. #85
    Quote Originally Posted by Big Ears View Post
    Do you remember that old habit of 'reprising' a track on vinyl to fill the space? Mott the Hoople practically reprise a whole track on Brain Capers! It was not pointless to the band, who were either lazy or devoid of ideas, but it was pointless to everyone else.
    There's a few examples I think of where a band used a musical phrase on another track, I guess again more conceptual continuity. For instance, Procession, the opening track on Queen sort of presages Father To Son. And then on A Day At The Races, the guitar intro thing at the beginning of side one uses the melody from White Man, and then that little scrap of climbing guitars just before Tie Your Mother Down proper begins appears at the end of side two.

    And if you listen some of Magma's music, you can hear certain musical phrases get reused a lot (something I never noticed until someone pointed it out to me back in the RMP days).
    Last edited by GuitarGeek; 06-19-2013 at 03:57 PM.

  11. #86
    Magma recycles motifs and some harmonies but it is constantly evolving. Note the fade on the live Epok V versioon of Riah Sahiltaak- it would normally lead into yet more music (I forget, Tittlebon perhaps?). Never boring to me, never pointless.
    I'm not lazy. I just work so fast I'm always done.

  12. #87
    Almost every Glass Hammer album has a direct musical reference to some other one, but it's often hard to catch unless you know where to listen... I don't think that's true for the two before the last one, but the last one has one.

  13. #88
    That's Mr. to you, Sir!! Trane's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by bRETT View Post
    For that matter, take your pick from "The Beat Goes On"....Voices in Time maybe, if not the whole album...
    Well TBGO album itself tries to make a point (so it's not pointless per se), but it fails miserably... there is only one track I don't dislike.... and it wouldn't even find a spot on a home-made CD-r compilation.

    Quote Originally Posted by JJ88 View Post
    I'm not sure it does, just seemed a 'shaggy dog story'- or hare!- to me. I find that album very indulgent indeed, and never more so than that 'Hare...' bit. I can only imagine what the more hard-rock element of Tull's fanbase made of this at the time.
    I was never a fan of the APP album, but that Hare piece must take more than 50% of the blame
    my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.

  14. #89
    I suppose some will shout me for my love for this group, but nevertheless
    Kowalski V (Das Problem) on Pur - Abenteuerland
    It is basicly a young girl telling, she has a problem, because her name is Kowalski after which the whole group yells: "Kowalski"

    Yes I know, there has been a German group Kowalski, with 2 former members of Hoelderlin.
    And German singer Romy Haag has a song entitled: Kowalski (Das Lied von der veränderten Zuneigung zum Streikbrecher Kowalski)

    But still, I think the track is poinless.

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