Ambition makes you look pretty ugly

Ambition shouldn't be the sole and most important consideration of a reviewer, in my opinion. There are plenty of very, very ambitious failures, and I personally refuse to give them credit simply because they tried. I do feel, however, a lot of reviewers do.

I also don't feel that "ambition" is necessarily a degree of difficulty thing. A concept album isn't that hard otherwise everyone and their brother wouldn't have done one. In the specific case of 69LS, even huge fans of the album admit several tracks should've been snipped; same with the White Album. If the ambition leads you to put forth lesser material in pure reach for said ambition, then it's done nothing but detrimented your output, and that's just not a Good Thing in my mind.

Maybe some 'huge fans of the album' think that tracks should have been snipped. I don't.

69LS is an ambitious project that triumphantly succeeded, because it was undertaken by someone with the ability to see it through. Other ambitious projects might be undertaken by less talented people, and fail, and possibly (or possibly not) we can then forget about them, if we agree that they failed.

But I have not answered the question. Does artistic ambition matter?

Yes.

'If we agree that they failed.' I put it to you, Pinefox, you have a terrible time acknowledging the fact that people aren't always agreeing with you that Monsieur M. *succeeded*. You can't claim universal agreement for 'failed' projects just by saying it exists, and you sure as heck can't claim universal agreement for successful ones either.

Obviously _69 LS_ hit you strong and deep, and that's great. _Loveless_ did the same for me. For me *alone.* If others agree with me, great, but I'm not about to force the issue.

One or two more thoughts on this. The question seems to ask us to compare 'ambitious failure' with 'unambitious success'. I'm not sure that a failure can ever be better than a success (though there's no success like failure...); but I think I do prefer an ambitious success (69LS) to an unambitious success (the Primitives' first LP).

Much as I love the Primitives' first LP.

Ally said, in effect, that everyone had made a concept LP by now. Is that true? I thought concept LPs were way out of fashion. Either way, I think (once again) that we need to ask what concept LPs offer, not just to the *listener*, but to the *artist*. If I'm not mistaken, the concept LP is a tool for getting songs written. Choose your concept, and the songs start writing themselves, or at least they come a lot more quickly than if you're trying to write them 'discretely'. Writing 'conceptually' is, among other things, a means to being more prolific. Lots of songwriters would like to be more prolific: and some of them discover this way of doing it.

Snipping of 69 Love Songs? No. Because then there wouldn't be 69 of them.

I undertook a project a couple of years ago, to write about my favourite 100 singles of the 90s. I did it. Some of what resulted was rubbish but it contributed to the project as a whole. You might or might not consider that 'artistic' - I don't think it was but I don't think it's meaningful - but the point is that the "ambition" of the project is part of the overall effect and should be considered as such. Is ambition always a good thing? No, but that's not to say people shouldn't give it a shot.

'Ambition was part of the overall effect' - precisely. The whole as, in a sense, greater than the sum of its parts. Tom E is "on the money" here.

I'm all for ambition mattering. I like 69LS even though I don't like all the tracks, but I don't think it should be snipped. Its a great concept, and the "dud" tracks serve a purpose of setting up the other ones. One of my favorite albums ever is SANDINISTA! (pretty much the only Clash record I still regularly listen to). I don't really like all of the songs (do we really need 2 versions of "Junko Pardner"?!) but at some point I don't mind hearding them. I'm sure some of the songs that other people think suck, I think are tops. I still wish the record was 4 albums! If you're gonna do it, fucking go for it. The Eiffel Tower is cool but does it have to be so big? Yes, it does.

Precisely, Tim. You say it so well.