Good albums are like lineups, there's a reason each song is where it is in the sequence.
My kids have got more interested in the Beatles since the remixes came out. My youngest son and I were in the car one day listening to part of the medley on XM -- "Golden Slumbers" thru "Bathroom Window", I think -- and I went into this long discussion about
Abbey Road, Side Two, and how it was a masterful blending of all this extra material the band had laying around and stuff, and he stopped me. "Side Two?"
I'd forgot CDs are one-sided. And, of course, Limewire doesn't have sides.
When all there was was albums that you had to manually turn over. . . the order was important, first and last song on each side especially. . .
Absolutely. Lots of examples of this.
I was always interested in the last song on Side Two (or Side Four, or Six) especially, the album ender. It was interesting to me how the artist wanted to leave things, until the next (hopefully) LP, anyway.
I remember when Neil Young's
Trans came out, early '80s. A lot of NY dilettante fans hated it, it was computer music kind of patterned after Kraftwerk, unlike almost all his previous output. But I knew he was expirementing, which was important, and I kind of liked the weird remake of "Mr. Soul". . . then one came to the very last song on the album, which was "Like An Inca". . . a gorgeous epic in Young's best tradition, shimmering guitars, lyrics reworked from a song he'd been playing in concert for years, "Hitchhiker", I think it was called. What a reward, and entirely different from everything else on the LP.
When
London Calling was originally released, "Train In Vain" was the last song on Side 4 (and the album), but was not listed anywhere on the jacket or the label. You just had to listen to the whole LP to hear it, unless someone told you beforehand.
