Alden Bates' Weblog
Feigning normality since 1973
Interfering with the artistic vision
Filed in: Music.
I've recently been format shifting my music collection, because it's easier to carry a USB drive full of ogg vorbis files to work to listen to than it is to carry a CD-wallet full of discs. I've been wondering how other people deal with albums where the artist's been a bit unorthodox in the way they've presented the music.
For instance, with albums where there are "hidden tracks" with a few minutes of silence before the music starts, such as Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill, I've been trimming off the dead air. Mike Oldfield's 1989 album Earth Moving inexplicibly has the last two songs as one track, so I carefully split them into two ogg files.
Should I feel guilty about interfering with the artistic vision of the composer? This is the sort of question which haunts me late at night.
Posted February 24, 2009 7:43 AM
Comments
Should you feel guilty? Ahhhhh, no, is the short answer. The long answer is nooooooooooooooooo.
Would the LP Dave is referring to be by Tool? One of theirs has something like half an hour of silence before the secret track comes up. Tool are one of those bands that people know, yet no-one can name a single song they've done. Like Frank Zappa - guy put out about 56 albums, and unless you're a fan of his, not one song is known to the gen pub.
Posted by: Jeff Stone | February 27, 2009 9:57 PM
If that's "interfering with the artistic vision", then so is skipping the tracks you can't be bothered listening to... so go ahead and do it.
The writer of this comment refuses to confirm or deny that he owns a CD, the last track of which is about 30 minutes long and contains five songs, plus ten minutes of dead air somewhere in the middle.
Posted by: Dave | February 24, 2009 6:07 PM