It Was A Shame How He Carried On

[alfvaen]

I was listening to Simple Minds "Neon Lights" album a few days ago. It's a covers album, mostly new wave stuff. Kind of hit-or-miss, though I liked their version of "Homosapien". Admittedly, I don't know the original song that well, probably because when I first heard it I objected to the title, which seemed to be based on the fallacy that "Homo sapiens" was not only a single word, but also a plural. Anyway.

One of the extra tracks on the CD was a cover of a song called "Being Boiled", which I'd never heard of before. Imagine my surprise when I started listening to it and discovered that I had heard the song before. It was the first song on Human League's "Travelogue" album, which I've had for years. Except that I thought that song was called "The Voice of Buddha"--that's how I recognized it, because it's right there in the first line. And I'm sure that's what it says on my vinyl copy of the album, since that's what I wrote down on the tape I made from it. Yep, there it is, first song on side one.

So I do a check on the Internet, of course...and discover that the damn song is, in fact, called "Being Boiled" on every Human League discography I can find, every lyrics site, everywhere. Oh, everyone seems to know that "Listen to the voice of Buddha" is right there in the lyrics of the song, but it's not called that, it's called "Being Boiled".

So why does my copy of the album say otherwise? What possesses people to rename songs like that willy-nilly? As someone who has somewhat of an interest in the names of things--how can they just be changed like that? Grumble.

This feels like a good time to ramble about the naming of albums, especially self-titled ones. I've mistaken a good many titled albums for self-titled ones, and a few the other way as well. T'Pau's first album was called "Bridge of Spies" by some, but I never saw a copy that had a title on it, so I consider it self-titled. Garbage's first album I thought was called "G" for a long time, because the library I borrowed it from thought that was the title, but now I've realized that it's self-titled. I've had albums I thought were self-titled until I looked them up and realized I was confused--Dave Stewart & The Spiritual Cowboys' "Honest" and the Golden Palominos "Visions of Excess". Jann Arden's first album was called "Time For Mercy" on the cover, but the spine just said "Jann Arden".

Then there's albums like Led Zeppelin IV/"ZOSO", where the title is hidden in obscurity, and opinions vary about what the title actually is. Frankly, any album that makes you look at the spine to find out the title, or where you can't see it if you happen to have a jewel case whose left-hand edge is opaque, is as annoying as the untitled hidden track after fifteen minutes of dead space it probably also has. And let's not forget to mention Peter Gabriel's first three solo albums, or the two self-titled Duran Duran albums...

Comments

[dawn-guy.livejournal.com]

The first time I tripped across a hidden song in the last track of a CD, I thought it was clever. Soon it became annoying, especially when I wanted to listen to that particular song. That trick reminds me of Monty Python's three-sided LP (http://arago4.tn.utwente.nl/stonedead/albums-cds/albums-cds/matching-tie-and-handkerchief/main.html), which also had usability issues.

[alfvaen]

Ah, yes, good old Matching Tie & Handkerchief. I taped it, so I don't have to worry about, though I suspect I have Side 3 coming before Side 2. Similarly with "You're The Guy I Want To Spend My Money With", which had three tracks on its fourth side, one for each of its contributing artists(William S. Burroughs, Laurie Anderson and John Giorno).

Hidden tracks whose titles you don't know are bad enough. The ones with fifteen minutes of dead air are the worst, especially since my CD player can't do in-track rewind. I've heard rumours that they sometimes come up as separate tracks on shuffle play, which has a different track list. So why can't my CD ripper notice that and make use of it? Of course, it also has trouble with the "negative" track thing, where the lead-in to Track 2 is actually in Track 1...but my CD player somehow knows that it's -0:18 on Track 2.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

That's a definite peeve of mine, too. Writers don't put out untitled novels, what the hell is a musician's problem to pick a damn title?

[alfvaen]

Maybe they think of themselves more as painters, some of whom who also seem to find titles a lot of effort.