Faust IV > Track 5 > Track 6 >> "Wot The F?"

on the original record side 2 starts with *Just a Second (Starts Like That) /
Picnic On A Frozen River (Deuxieme Tableaux)". (track 4)

so track 5 is "Giggy Smile", and then track 6 is 'Lauft... Heisst Das es Lauft Oder es Kommt Bald... Lauft' -- which on the record, encompassed both the guitar/psalter song (which also appears as 'psalter' on 71 Minutes) and the organ piece that immediately followed. On the CD, 'psalter' is track 6 and the organ piece gets it's own track.

It's a virgin cash in reissue mastered by someone who just couldn't have been listening. The sound is fair, but there's a small detail that really irks me: at the end of Jennifer, at the end when it cuts to the barrelhouse piano, there's a tape speed squirk. It's the sound of a tape splice catching on the capstan as it passes over it, and it wasn't on the original record; originally the huge guitar noise transparently passes into the loud drum hit/piano part, but the virgin CD transfer has that loud unintentional squirk. If you didn't know it wasn't supposed to be there you'd probably think it was just Faust going meta, but it's actually careless engineering.

Though it is inspiring in that it suggests Faust were executing splices direct to the master tape. Which is pretty inspiring... but I wish ReR could gain the rights to this album and do it right...

I only just discovered this track order screw up today. Oof. So many mixtapes from the past are no mislabeled...

*now mislabeled, even!

Never understood what people see in this album. "Jennifer" is great, but so much of the rest is so...dopey?

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7020/6469994171_9581743e8d.jpg

Great album but Giggy Smile is rubbish

What track is actually Giggy Smile though?

I had the same problem with this tracklisting for years. Incredibly irritating.

Never understood what people see in this album. "Jennifer" is great, but so much of the rest is so...dopey?

― Jimmywine Dyspeptic, Wednesday, February 3, 2016 2:33 AM (12 hours ago)

The goofy popness is part of what makes it great. I used to stan for the more overtly experimental Faust (still do on a regular basis, in fact), but over the years this one has just stuck with me.

actual tracklist of side two:

just a second (3:36)
giggy smile (4:00)
picnic on a frozen river (3:46)
lauft... (4:28)
run (???) (3:41)
it's a bit of a pain (3:08)

"run" is a title i've only seen on websites referring to the ambient synth track between "lauft" and "it's a bit of a pain", but track 7 on cds clearly doesn't correspond to any of the songs listed on the record (picnic on a frozen river is instantly recognizable because it's a reprise of a melody on _so far_, giggy smile and it's a bit of a pain are obvious by their lyrics, and lauft... is clearly identifiable by the slate).

i've never seen it confirmed- is "it's a bit of a pain" the same recording as the original single b-side? i'm assuming so.

I have one of those, I'm fairly sure it is. I should check..

The tracklisting on wikipedia confusingly says the on original release had Just A Second/Picnic/Tableux all as one track, and Lauft/Psalter split into two. Except this is blatantly not true, just look at the track numbering on the LP pictured above! I nearly got into an argument with some officious wikiberk about this before I realised was probably too short to spend it arguing over something so tiny. But it still really bugs me.

While we're on the subject, seems to be some confusion over the track listing of the final 4 titles on "So Far":

picnic on a frozen river is instantly recognizable because it's a reprise of a melody on _so far

Except that, on the vinyl version, which is all I own, the melody is part of "I've Got My Car and My TV" and the following track is "Picnic". I suspect this is different on the CD?

... and anyway the putative "Picnic" melodic part on "IV" occurs after the "Giggy Smile" section. Confused? You will be.*cue theme tune*

Oh yeah, when you start getting into the naming of tracks across different releases it gets even worse.

http://www.faust-pages.com/publications/faustiv.mail.exchange.html
Can't remember who was talking about the track listing on Faust IV, but you're right. I can't believe I've never noticed it. On the CD and vinyl LP, the track Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableaux is wrongly listed as being track 5. It should be track 7, next to last track. All the others are in the right sequence. So Giggy Smile is actually track 5, not 6. Not that any of this matters, really........

Adrian Pardoe, 11th June 2001.

However it is, you're right: Giggy Smile at least is not in order, and I'd never noticed either! I suppose it goes to show that both So Far and Faust IV hang together as complete works and not just a collection of bits, which I've generally played through from start to end without worrying about it. As Adrian said, not that it matters, really.....
Mick Scarrot, 13th June 2001

"lauft" and "psalter" are two titles for the same song, like "stretch out" and "do so".

have never been able to understand the long-running pov that "iv" is a "sell-out" record. don't hear anything in it more commercial than on "so far". think that people perhaps overrate the wumme mystique.

I'd figured out that tracks 6 & 7 on the CD were Lauft parts 1 & 2, and Giggy smile was track 5, but I didn't realise Picnic On A Frozen River was actually the end of the Giggy Smile track - that seems to have been misprinted on every issue of the album?

Although this post:

The fifth track is called "Just a Second" and is a kinda rockin' all-to-brief Faust take on funk which leads directly into "Picnic on a Frozen River, Deuxieme Tableau" which is mucho electronic beeps and boops. "Giggy Smile" is the silly track with the lyrics about "lots of naked Germans". The track with the French vocals is the first part of "Lauft", part two being the moody organ soundscapes of Herr Irmler. This all from my vinyl copy - hope that clears it up.

seems to contradict that.

Will we ever know the true story??

Was about to say that's how I've always thought of it... then I checked and found it was me who posted in the first place. Was a long time ago though.

don't wanna admit how much time I spent trying to figure this out, Wikipedia says that "Läuft...Heißt Das Es Läuft Oder Es Kommt Bald...Läuft" is split across two tracks, the first of which is the "Psalter" bit...

I have some recent-ish live discs that have 70's Faust tunes on them under completely different names. either they don't care about song titles, can't remember them, or are deliberately trying to confuse their audience.

I think it's like when some old prog albums would have an overall title, then name parts of the track as well.

So, "Picnic" followed by "tablecloth" then "eating" then "DriveOff" would look like four tracks, but actually "tablecloth" comes first, and even if "eating" contains the words "hey hey picnic" in the chorus..

and so on.

I thought that was done mostly for generating royalties - if an album had under 10 tracks the band wouldn't get their full share, which is why sidelongs like "Tarkus" or "Close to the Edge" have so many subsections. Not to mention all the goofy subtitles on In the Court of the Crimson King.

It could just be a case of whichever Virgin employee tasked with typing out the tracklisting back in 1973 having no idea where each song begins and ends, and just making a rough guess.

xp really? would love to see a link or history for that.

Pretty sure it was Fripp that said it.

for a brief time in the late '60s/early '70s it was done for royalty reasons (see: first two king crimson records), but i'm not sure that necessarily applied to stuff like "close to the edge" or "supper's ready"- larks' tongues in aspic only had six tracks, and that didn't seem to be a problem. also the faust tapes came out with no track titles at all, so i doubt royalties were an issue w/r/t faust's inscrutable tracklistings.

Whereas Jethro Tull's "Thick as a brick" ..

so one thing about the reissue is they fixed the tracklisting. I've listened to the mislabeled MP3s so many times that it almost seems wrong by now to listen to it this way. similarly they fixed the cymbal crash at the end of "Jennifer" so now that bit seems wrong to me too. it feels so weird to complain about this but those idiosyncratic moments are what this band is all about. they definitely knew it too. I used to think it was ridiculous that Klaus Dinger complained about the bootleg reissues of the 1st Neu! album correcting some recording mistakes but I get it now. once your brain hears something a certain way you can't change it