A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
---Robert A. Heinlein
Monday, November 04, 2002
Immediate and urgent need for engaged listeners with exquisite taste in music requested!
For the last year and two months, my band Den of Size has been in the studio working on our second album, Flighty in a genial, friendly sort of way. The album is 99.9% finished - all that remains, artistically, is for us to sequence the songs. We have narrowed it down to two extremely similar orders - our only bone of contention is whether a certain song should be third or fourth. Either way, we all agree that it's pretty good. We just want it to be the best, and we disagree about what that is. Profoundly. After studiously procratinating on this point of contention since August, we finally scheduled an hour or so to resolve our discrepancy about it last night, and we ended up in an extremely heated, inconclusive all-out 4-way tete-a-tete that shamed all the current political debates.
We're all good friends, but we are bitterly divided about this. My husband, Sri J.D. Saladin, keeps calling me and the producer, DJ Monkeybreath, "boneheads" and "meatheads." We're having nightmares about song orders. We keep having to reassure each other that we're still friends. The neologism "band-breaker" has been bandied about. It's getting unpleasant, and we've got to make a decision, and we are locked in a mortal impasse.
That's where you, fair listener, steps in. Although not everybody in the band believes that seeking an outside crit is even a valid creative methodology, we all feel that your feedback counts for something; as we've been working in almost total isolation for the last 14 months, we need perspective. Sequencing an album is not quick work - you have to listen to a record a lot of times to do it - but we'd like your opinion. We really would. What'd we'd do is give you the songs in mp3 or audio CD format, the disputed song orders, and all you'd have to do is tell us: Option A or Option B? and possibly, why? In so doing, you would help us a lot. Maybe even save us.