McComb-Paterson correspondence

[jimjamtwo]

I'm not sure I'm with you, I just think it's a strong point theoretically. I don't know if it's really possible to have a great album if you don't have tracks that are just plain great on their own!

As for TBS, I think the experience of having heard the songs in demo form over a long period of time - and not liking any of them - has stamped me for good. I'm not sure I could even begin to get a sense of TBS as an album in the same way that someone might who heard the songs all together in their present form and order at the first time.

The first stumbling block to me is Too Hot, which has no organic connection with anything else on the album at all and therefore seems 'tacked on at the beginning' to me, the second is Bottle of Love, which I personally have a very low opinion of, and the third stumbling block is a bunch of other songs that I heard many times and never succeeded in liking. I think I would have to experience some kind of Orwellian reprogramming before I could listen to it 'as an album.'

[Urpal]

I understand that your personal interest colours your view, James.

But Gazza's point is spot on. It was the same point I was making in suggesting TBS was a brilliant compilation.

It's like a theatrical play in my mind. There are scenes which do not have the peak drama of others, but all hang together to make for a unique and satisfying experience I come back to again and again without losing freshness. And that really is something unique to this record in my experience.

The same cinematic/theatrical overall consistency might be true of BSD & Calenture, but the fact that the scenes in TBS are more varied yet still somehow hold together is simultaneously brilliant and confounding.

The reason I say The Seabirds would not be included on my "best of" collection is related to this idea of The Triffids albums as "of a piece". The Seabirds makes for an extraordinary opening scene to that record, but wouldn't work for me outside its context, if you see what I mean. It belongs where it's found and nowhere else.

[jimjamtwo]

The Seabirds makes for an extraordinary opening scene to that record, but wouldn't work for me outside its context, if you see what I mean. It belongs where it's found and nowhere else.

Well, surely the song's good enough to work anywhere, anytime! I couldn't possibly be satisfied with a compilation that didn't have the very best Triffs track on it. (In the days of LPs, the problem could have been solved by making it an opener on the second side, but unfortunately second sides are redundant now.)

What did you think of the idea of revising the track order? I'm tempted to try it myself, as I've often argued that albums haven't been as successful as they ought to have been because the track order was all wrong.

[Urpal]

The Seabirds works as an opening song on a record. It wouldn't work as a single and it wouldn't fit anywhere else on a record. You could put it at the front end of a compilation, but I'm not sure it wouldn't lose its impact as a song if it wasn't followed by the sucessive "scenes" of BSD. It would be stranded out of context in a mish mash.

Changing the track order might create a greater consistency of "song moods", so that might be worth looking at for TBS. Fuel's alternative tracklisting would move towards that. It works for me as it is pretty well, but might be improvable for others by re-sequencing. Again, I cant' imagine Too Hot/American Sailors working as other than the opening "scene setter" (reversed or otherwise) or "New Years Greetings" working except as part of the third act and "Fairytale Love" as the grand finale (after all, it's an "If We Only Had Love"-type anthemic chorus that pulls all the players on stage for a final bow and draws down the curtain).

[fuel]

If I'd been a hard nosed exec at Island and known of the band's history I would have gone further than alter the track listing in trying to create a unified feel for the LP: Side one American Sailors, Too Hot To Move Good Fortune Rose, New Years Greeting, Fairytale Love. Side Two Goodbye Little Boy, One Mechanic Town, Spinning Top Song, Blackeyed Susan, The Clown Prince.

The rest I would have saved for b-sides to go with Too Hot to Move, Goodbye Little Boy and The Clown Prince.  Then I would have made the band re-record old, relatively unknown but great stuff stuff like Spanish Blue and put out an LP that brought together b-sides, unreleased material and new versions of older songs and promoted it similar to how Hatful of Hollow was promoted. Would it have made a difference?

[vps]

If I'd been a hard nosed exec at Island and known of the band's history I would have gone further than alter the track listing in trying to create a unified feel for the LP: Side one American Sailors, Too Hot To Move Good Fortune Rose, New Years Greeting, Fairytale Love. Side Two Goodbye Little Boy, One Mechanic Town, Spinning Top Song, Blackeyed Susan, The Clown Prince.

That would've worked for me. Particularly the side 1. 

[jimjamtwo]

My girlfriend does a strange tango/waltz with our 2 year son to The Clown Prince and has turned the song into a family favourite.

When do we get to see this on YouTube?

[Urpal]

If you want to create a "light" and "shade" or "white" and "black" album - that is, one in which the song moods are uniform across each side - without losing the totality of the piece then Fuel's latest might work with the following changes:

1. Reinstate Falling Over You after Too Hot as the morning after the night before song its placed to be.
2. Shift Goodbye Little Boy & One Mechanic to side one.
3. Reinstate Bottle Of Love and Butterflies Into Worms on either side of Spinning Top - or at least keep those in there somewhere with the three other tracks remaining on side two after the first two are lifted.
4. Maybe shift Fairytale Love to the end of side two so there is a single "play".

So that would then stack something like this:

Side one: American Sailors, Too Hot To Move, Falling Over You, Good Fortune Rose, Goodbye Little Boy, One Mechanic Town, New Years Greetings.

Side Two: Bottle Of Love, Spinning Top Song, Butterflies Into Worms, Blackeyed Susan, The Clown Prince, Fairytale Love.

I'd tend to favour side two, but I'm a miserable bastard.

Of course, this takes no account of song length and how unbalanced the sides of the record then become.

[KrieB]

$$$ Everyone, don't put your fecking fingers on it or thou shalt be blessed and showered with heaps of swan poop. Black, brown, all shades and colours – each one’s flavour – can be produced and readily unleashed… $$$
Lo! and behold…
Black Swan spread its **** and **** You wish it was the night that came one!

Ah those good old fairytales!

[fuel]

My girlfriend does a strange tango/waltz with our 2 year son to The Clown Prince and has turned the song into a family favourite.

When do we get to see this on YouTube?

When I no longer need my balls.

[vps]

Oh, c'mon fuel, you already have two kids, how many do you need? 

[fuel]

Oh, c'mon fuel, you already have two kids, how many do you need? 

Gotta ave summat to do during those long, freezing winter nights.  My contribution to this thread shall now end as I fear I'm marring its excellence.

[perrymonkey]

Well I was initially very puzzled when TBS came out. I didn't know WHAT it was.  But I listened and listened and grew to love it front to back. Then again, the Triffids music just works for me, all of it. It gets in my DNA, it is a constant soundtrack in my mind now for 22 years.

That being said, I just checked a playlist I have called "Triffids Sampler" which I have used a couple of times to burn a sampler CD of The Triffids songs. It is meant to represent the Triffids music as I found that making a best of was too hard. It was very difficult to narrow the list down to fit on one CD -- but I did. Out of 22 songs, the only song from TBS that made it was "Too Hot to Move, Too Hot to Think".

Now if I pull that list down to 14, I get this (in this order too):

Wide Open Road
Save What You Can
My Baby Thinks She's A Train
Trick of the Light
Seabirds
Estuary Bed
Lonely Stretch
Tender is the Night
Beautiful Waste
Hell of a Summer
Suntrapper
Too Hot to Move, Too Hot to Think
Region Unknown
Spanish Blue

[Urpal]

That's a good looking compilation, Perry, but both the tracks you chose for the films you did were from TBS as I recall.

[mark t]

Back to the cover, I love the photo of the black swan on the LP insert- it's a startling shot. It may have worked for the original LP release cover, I think it would be perfect for the smaller format CD release.
I also love the photo of our host on the back, someone managed to get you looking evil Graham .