There's More?

Just been having a moan with Andrew in the kitchen about album length: one of my hobby horses.

There was a point, wasn't there, in the mid-1970s, when filmmakers lost all sense of propriety and discipline and decided that the standard length for a film would be 2 hours rather than 90 minutes? These days, consumers probably feel gypped if they rent/borrow/steal a DVD and discover the film is "only" 90 minutes long. Lake Placid is like an episode of a TV show, it's so short. But it's a great film with absolutely no flab.

I've been reading over at Danny Stack's blog about scriptwriting, all this Hollywood talk about 3 acts. Acts 1, 2, and 3. The film lacks a 3rd act, they say. What they mean is, the film lacks that shite bit at the end where the killer comes back from the dead and chases everybody around for another 20-30 minutes. You know, to make the length up to the full 2 hours.

So I've been listening to the new Brad Paisley record, Time Well Wasted, and good it is, albeit equal parts corn, cheese, and twang. But it is long, very long, too long. It lasted all the way home, for me, give or take a few minutes catching the headlines on the radio. By the time you get to the Garrison Keillor-type stuff at the end, it's past its bedtime.

This problem has been building since some executive decided that CD audio discs should be the length of Beethoven's 9th symphony. Arse. The correct answer, of course, is that audio discs should be the same length as the pinnacle of pop music: Beatles for Sale, which consists of 14 tracks with a maximum length of 3 minutes. Most of them are just over 2 minutes. Speaking more broadly, an album should be between 30 and 45 minutes in length, and should ebb and flow in a way reminiscent of the days of vinyl. Strong opening, easing back, coming back strong, easing back, big finish.

All that's required of the artist/producer is a bit of critical self-discipline, and the willingness to edit, to discriminate, and to know when something is finished.

In the end, I can't decide right now how much of Time Well Wasted is going to stick, and how much I'm going to end up skipping over. I like "Waiting on a Woman" a cheesy song in which an older man reminisces with a younger on about how he's been doing what they're doing (waiting on a woman) since 1952, when his wife was late for their first date, and there are the usual humorous asides and twangy guitar bits. But it's too great a lump to take in in any one listening.

My favourite thing about albums has always been the way they tend to follow patterns. The first track can be good, but the best tracks are often tracks 4 and 6 - one because it's towards the end of a traditional Side 1, and is there to make you want to turn the record over, and the other because it's at the beginning of Side 2. Track 10, of course, should be the big finish: the one with the gospel choir, or the extended coda, or some other musical craziness going on. There's a reason for these traditions, and I don't think having 15 tracks and then some hidden tracks is really the way to go.