Statements of intent (album opening tracks and the changing nature thereof)

Mothers of Invention - Are You Hung Up (from "We're Only In It For the Money")
The Residents - Boots (from "Meet the Residents")
The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop

But, probably the two best i can think of off the top of my head are:

Capt. Beefheart and the Magic Band - Frownland
Can - Father Cannot Yell (what a way to start a career let alone an album!)

Escalator Over The Hill, of course - the brilliant Hotel Overture which sets you up for the adventure (you can see the theatre lights dimming under Haden's bass solo at the end) and then that great, long backwards choral fade-in and then the world EXPLODES oh it's fantastic!

I think I may be barking at the wrong tree by saying "starts with nothign and builds"... it's the idea of not having an introduction that pisses me off, the idea of things just "starting". A big symphonic opening can be an introduction, noise and impact can be an introduction. But at least HAVE and introduction - just starting a crunchy loud riff that's unmemorable isn't an introduction.

not really, nick!

i'm thinking of some of my faves:

'white light, white heat', 'highway 61', 'the dreaming', 'discovery', uhhh 'middle of nowhere' (not so much the whole LP but the opening 2 tracks), 'for your pleasure'.

Personally, I don't have any preference - some slow intros grab my attention, some just make me impatient.

I know they aren't the first songs on their respective albums (and there's probably a more suitable thread), but I gotta mention two quiet-to-loud song intros that are guaranteed to give me chills everytime: "She Sells Sanctuary" and Donna Summer's "I Feel Love".

And a coupla great ones that begin "in progress": John Coltrane's "Manifestation" and Blue Öyster Cult's "The Red And The Black".

It clears your head and puts you in a different space for the rest of the album.

I mean, the opener for September 000 is just the same, throbbing repeated bass note for about 30 seconds before even the drums kick in. It's hypnotic.

Statement of intent AHOY!

Ahem. I think if you went back and reviewed pop history, you'd find that albums were very often one of two singles and a bunch of filler tracks. And therefore putting the "best" song first was the default position. Certainly more often than say, the third track on side two or whatever. Obviously this changed over time as the album per se became more important, but to ascribe it to "a bigger trend in 21st century pop" sounds like, well, like something a teenager would say.

I actually hear what Nick's saying--it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately as I consider how to sequence the album I'm working on right now. I'm a sucker for the slow builds, too, but I don't think they're required, and tacking one on just for the sake of historical consistency seems questionable.

But if you're a sucker mightn't other people be too? It's not about historical consistency it's about affect and effect.

"Movin' On Up" does "just start" BUT it's a strum, not a BLAM, and the tune grows.

Segues are good. I like them a lot.

but this is true re. toploading, as in 'what will the neighhbours say'.

Otherwise they start out with a brief drum solo.

Maybe it all goes back to Revolver's Taxman intro?

-- Sick Mouthy (sickmouth...), May 23rd, 2006.

mmm right i take the point, but the first say 15 seconds of MOVIN ON UP (culminating in the second "Now I Can See-ee") are as *much* of a blam as the say, first 2 seconds of COUNTRY GIRL. and we were talking about opening *tracks* aren't we not opening seconds here or there?

has to be said that once (a good 5 years after it's release) at an indie disco on a saturday night at sheffield leadmill i decided that THAT intro and that song were literally one of *the best* of each ever. i haven't wavered on that since.

'We had longer attention spans back then,' Danger Mouse continues. 'When we were young we had tapes, and you listened to every track. You didn't fast forward in case you overshot. And songs you didn't like turned out to be your favourites, because the album became a person. It grew on you. Now, if kids don't like the first few bars, they're gone. You've got to grab them. I tell you what the problem is - it's downloading.'

In the few rock/pop interviews I've read recently I've noticed something which might be related - a modern cliche is to say "we want this to be an album of 12 singles" or something similar. As a committed downloader/shuffler/album-hata blah blah I have no problem at all with this, but it may be why Nick's beloved slow-builder opening track is dying out.

I always got the impression though that the slow-build track was designed to work the crowd a bit at the start of a gig, as well as open an album - "I Wanna Be Adored" certainly had that effect.

Unless of course, you end up leaving things in your iTunes and not deleting them, so they come up when you're not expecting them, and you hear them in a different light...

In my experience, it takes about 3-4 months for me to rotate a good track off my regular iTunes playlist (it stays on the computer/iPod after that) - during this time I'll have listened to it 20-50 times, which sounds like "repeat listening" to me, just not in an LP context.

-- Tom (freakytrigge...), May 23rd, 2006.

boy are you not kidding. their comeback at BRIDLINGTON SPA in 95 after 5 years away began with just that, and well i think i'm still getting over it. i'm not even that big a fan.

I'm curious: is it just the "instant" part of the "instant gratification" culture that you have a problem with? In other words, is a culture based on self-gratification ok just so long as it's not instant or too fast?

I just think you need to be a bit more speific in your beefs here, lest it come off crotchety. Let's not even get into k-punk's idea that the french students' protests were inherently good, yoinkers...

-- pleased to mitya

Dude, that's EXACTLY what my Social Studies teacher told me!