CASSELMAN: On Albums

Trackie (n.) [trahk^ie] - One who prefers individual tracks to albums, mainly due to lacking the attention span required to get through a whole album of the same shit. One who appreciates two to 7 minutes of consistency then must move on, like any normal kid raised by TV. One who got upset in the 90s when cassingles (cassette singles) ceased to be sold. One who then understands the success of itunes. One belonging to the MP3 generation.

I am a trackie.
I say keep your filler tracks and give me your good bangers, one mp3 at a time. Yet bands continue to put out albums.

Though
1. I love album art, and I will never, ever toss my old tapes or CDs (how else would I sing along to Shake Hands With Beef but from reading the liner notes off the opaque plastic shell of my Primus brown album!); but in the end, the tracks are the gems inside I am salvaging.

2. I love Dj mixes (I guess they count as albums) but usually it's due to waiting for the climax (i.e. the key tracks, the buildup to them and the anticlimax thereafter)

3. As a wannabe student of music, I appreciate how some albums (the Black, the White, etc) have a place in history and the context of the genre they changed. However, can anyone name an album in the last 10 years sideswiped a genre? More important, I have individual songs that, upon play, can automatically recall whole scenes, whole seasons, various individuals, or events of my life. Thats context enough.

For the most part, albums are clumps of tunes unrelated save for the fact the band created them during one of their 'phases', usually totally unrelated to creative vision. Perhaps when some band member quit drinking (to the detriment of Metallica) or heroin (ditto to the Chili Peppers), or upped his manic episodes (not so much for Nirvana) thus the tracks will flow together more aptly than, say, a random anthology. However, this 'phase' was that of the creator, not the fan. The listener takes what he/she wants out of an album (Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger was about my teen angst - probably not what they were going for). The fan often disregards what artist intends, hearing what fits their own lives at the time.

In the end what fans do hear: 3 to 7 good tracks and 5 doozies, or any permutation thereof. Years ago, if an album had more than 3 decent tracks I'd consider buying the whole thing. Today, not worth the money. I will instead make a mixed tape, er.. set list on my player, filled with tracks that match the phase of my own life - heroin or not.

In lieu of how much I hate albums, check out my album reviews for Soundproof mag :)