If you've ever seen the movie "High Fidelity," you might remember how three of the main characters were music snobs who worked in a record store and spent a lot of their time there thinking up seemingly random Top 5 lists related to their music fandom and arguing about them. I love both the movie and the book it came from, even if I haven't seen the whole thing in at least a couple of years. But I remember one of these Top 5 lists was titled something like "Top 5 Side Ones, Track Ones," in which these guys argued about which songs did the best job of opening their respective albums.
I could relate to the idea of top 5 rankings (though I was raised in a family that communicated through Top 10s), but the idea of that list in particular connected with me. I'm a firm believer that an album -- whether it be on CD, vinyl, cassette, digital download or even 8-track -- is intended in its ideal form to be taken in as one whole work of art. The best albums seem to be planned out to have a cohesive structure, almost an emotional narrative that builds a thematic connection between the songs. That connection might be something that the listener needs to interpret individually and it might wind up meaning something different to every person who finds it, but it exists all the same. The order of the songs on an album is neither random nor accidental. Someone at some point had to decide the final order was the best of all possible choices, and in making that decision they found a way to insert the memory of emotion the songwriters and musicians tried to communicate into a medium meant to be widely shared and experienced. I'd argue that the song that closes the album is just as important as the one that opens it. That last song is the culmination, the narrative climax, the terminal punctuation mark at whatever story has been told.
When I download music now in our 21st century online world I usually go after the whole album instead of just cherry-picking a few songs that I know. The problem is that too often downloads include what I'm sure is meant to be a good thing -- "bonus tracks." Bonus implies getting something extra, sometimes even for free. As a music fan, wouldn't this be a great thing?
Not so much.
Here's what I'm thinking: Why didn't these songs make the cut to be included "officially" on the album? I can remember the first CD I bought with a bonus track -- it's really too embarrassing to name here, so let's just say I bought it in 1988 and leave it at that. The last song on the album was a minor hit and a favorite song of mine and a perfect closer, but then the band went and included a bonus track. At first I thought, "Cool! Extra music from a band I like!" Then I thought, "Wait, what? This extra song is on the same CD I'm buying... how is this a bonus?" Then I played it and found out -- it was a crap song. And as it happens, most bonus tracks are crap songs: Songs that didn't make it on the album because they didn't measure up, or weak remixes or radio edits or unnecessary acoustic versions that are only included to give the record company a reason to charge two bucks more for a Deluxe Version of the same album without the bonuses. Back in the 80s and 90s, these bonus tracks would have been farmed out to the kind of cash-grab movie soundtrack compilations that featured a collection of songs either wedged into the movie's background noise by appearing on a radio some character was listening to for five seconds (yeah, I'm looking at you, "Twister") or would play over the final credits.
The only reason for bonus tracks to be released is for the money. And I know the music industry is more industry than music, but it bothers me that a band or an artist can have a vision of how they want their work to appear, and then whatever emotional resonance is supposed to bring it all to a satisfying ending is broken up by some jarring and unnecessary musical asterisk. And don't even get me started on the damage bonus tracks do to concept albums. It makes me shudder....
In the days of digital libraries we can shuffle through, or playlists we can create that are dozens or hundreds of songs long? Maybe the idea of a cohesive album isn't as important as it once was. But speaking for any other music nerds out there who still respect the idea of the album, I'm usually happy to see when the standard version without the bonuses appears side by side with the deluxe version on release day. And more times than not, I know which one I'll be getting.
(I never said every May post was going to revolve around world issues....)
