The Story of a Band You'll Never Hear
Note: This is a fictionalized version of me in an alternate universe, where my love of music effected my creativity more then writing did, where instead of buying 45's at age 6 I was given a guitar and never stopped playing. This is also me using fiction and fantasy to wax nostalgic on a different era and different mediums of music listening. Enjoy...
I am the lead songwriter and guitarist in a band. We're not huge but over the years our following has become steady enough and loyal enough to sustain a career. We released two major label albums but ultimately went the independent route. We're on Artemis Records and sell about 75,000 units or more of the albums we put out. We're finishing up our fifth album as I write this. We've given up the stadium dreams long ago, still hold out hope for arenas (as an opening act), but are mostly resigned to the clubs in the various regions that seem to like us most: The Southwest, Northwest, and for some odd reason a real cult following in North Dakota. It must have been the song "Stuck In Grand Forks" from our second album.
This band I co-founded with a friend from college (our rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist, Mike...we now fight constantly on a Mick and Keith level but nowhere near as bad as the Kinks or the boys in Oasis) is called "The Cassette Sides". We kicked around all kinds of names but Napoleon's Apple seemed too alternative; Vice Versa too poppy; and The Understudies too much of a nod to one of our key influences, The Replacements. We settled on The Cassette Sides one day while browsing some used CD bins. At the time both of us were upgrading all our favorite tapes to CD. Neither of us are or were old enough to own much vinyl. We grew up with cassettes, also known as "tapes". I remarked to Mike that the only thing I didn't like about CDs was that they took away the experience of album sides and, in what turned out to be one of the last things we would ever agree on, he nodded in approval. In the car on the way back to campus we kept talking about it. We laughed at Tom Petty's cute little trick on the CD version of Full Moon Fever, where he included his voice midway through saying "Attention CD listeners. We're going to take a break here to mark the time it would normally take you to flip the album over." And despite picking up a stack of used CDs, both Mike and I agreed we would miss our tapes a little. We'd miss the little hiss on cassettes and having to flip them over, to which I commented, "Yeah, I'll miss cassette sides". And that was our Edison moment. Kaboom! We had a name.
Ironically, only our debut album, Another Case On The Floor, actually saw the light of day on cassette. Everything else has been put out on CD only. But even then we've always tried to divide our albums into distinct "sides" and we've always insisted that the art work for the back cover reflect that so that, for example, Tracks 1-6 are listed on the left and tracks 7-12 on the right. It was always our way of trying to distribute the strongest songs throughout the album, just like the tapes we listened to growing up. Most of the cassettes we listened to growing up had ten songs on them and you could always count on the first 2-3 songs of Side A being killers and then, depending on the strength of the album, a "filler" song coming in at 4, then something better at 5, thus giving the listener the incentive to flip the tape over. Sometimes Side B wasn't even close to being as strong as Side A but usually the first song on that side would be pretty good. From there an album could taper off into filler or continue kicking your ass.
These days I don't think a lot of bands think about "sides" or pacing their albums out. A weak album blows it's wad completely on Tracks 1 to 5, with no consideration toward putting one of those stronger tracks in as Track 8 or 9, just to spread it out. I suppose it makes sense though because CDs, unlike cassettes, reset themselves every time you change players. So listeners to CDs start all over again at Track 1 when they move the disc from the car to the home stereo. Cassettes were different and even distinct from vinyl in that respect. The cassette was where you left it last time and each time you moved it you had to make decisions. "Am I going to rewind it? Fast forward it? Listen to Side A or Side B?"
Please don't think I'm saying that just because our band strategizes where our best songs will appear on the CD that we are a better band then anyone else. Hell, we've had filler on our albums, especially over the last couple where the market demands 12-14 songs and/or over an hour of music with each release. Truth be told, I think Mike and I would get along better if I only needed to write or co-write 10 "good" songs each go around, instead of 6 or 7 I'm really proud of, 3 or 4 I feel pretty good about, and 3-4 I never want to hear again by the time they go to pressing. I mean, really, what's the point of writing a song you are going to shaft to Track 11, never play live, and never really want to hear again all so that the buyer can feel like they're getting their $16 to $18 worth? I think if we could promise our fans (or would-be fans) that our new album, with a mere 10 songs on it is really, really good and they will never want to skip a track then maybe we wouldn't do the whole "sides" layout. As it stands, we do that on the album itself and on the artwork as kind of a "heads up". Still, if you own one of our albums and really like one of those Track 4's or Track 11's I'd love to hear from you. Maybe something like "This Won't Stand" (track 4 from our album Things We Said Last Night) has a resonance I never heard in it.
So now we have a new CD coming out in a few months called Northwest Hours and our first single "Getting Over Emily" is going to be on i-Tunes before the album comes out. And the album itself will be our first album in the new age of i-Pods and what not. This afternoon Mike and I were laying out the song order, same as we've always done, and he suggested ditching our past concept and just putting the songs in order from best to worst and then shuffling them just a little bit, so that the best song is Track 2, the third best Track 3, and the second best Track 1, and so forth. His argument is that fans who preview the album online or download it are most likely just going to scan the first handful of songs so 1-5 or 1-6 need to be really strong. "They're going to cherry pick, J," he said. And for once in our relationship it was hard to argue with him. All I could come up with for doing it the old way was to go back to where we started. I said, "Mike, we called ourselves The Cassette Sides for a reason. We wanted a little nostalgia in our name as well as in our sound. If we ditch that now, then what are we?" When he couldn't answer I knew things in the music world had changed, that he would win this fight, and that our name that once seemed so great and meaningful to me is now just our name.
So the moral to the story is this: When Northwest Hours comes out download tracks 1 to 5 (legally, please) because I like them a lot. I worked my ass off on them. Track 6 is pretty good and I am kind of fond of Track 8. As a concession in our argument, Mike let me put one of the strongest cuts deep in the album. Track 10 is about my wife, it's not a ballad but still little sappy and happy, but in my head it sounds great on car stereos at full volume and you can sing along, just like I did with all those old cassettes I loved so much.
J
********************
Question of the Day
What pop culture artifact of the past do you miss?
Thanks.
I am the lead songwriter and guitarist in a band. We're not huge but over the years our following has become steady enough and loyal enough to sustain a career. We released two major label albums but ultimately went the independent route. We're on Artemis Records and sell about 75,000 units or more of the albums we put out. We're finishing up our fifth album as I write this. We've given up the stadium dreams long ago, still hold out hope for arenas (as an opening act), but are mostly resigned to the clubs in the various regions that seem to like us most: The Southwest, Northwest, and for some odd reason a real cult following in North Dakota. It must have been the song "Stuck In Grand Forks" from our second album.
This band I co-founded with a friend from college (our rhythm guitarist and lead vocalist, Mike...we now fight constantly on a Mick and Keith level but nowhere near as bad as the Kinks or the boys in Oasis) is called "The Cassette Sides". We kicked around all kinds of names but Napoleon's Apple seemed too alternative; Vice Versa too poppy; and The Understudies too much of a nod to one of our key influences, The Replacements. We settled on The Cassette Sides one day while browsing some used CD bins. At the time both of us were upgrading all our favorite tapes to CD. Neither of us are or were old enough to own much vinyl. We grew up with cassettes, also known as "tapes". I remarked to Mike that the only thing I didn't like about CDs was that they took away the experience of album sides and, in what turned out to be one of the last things we would ever agree on, he nodded in approval. In the car on the way back to campus we kept talking about it. We laughed at Tom Petty's cute little trick on the CD version of Full Moon Fever, where he included his voice midway through saying "Attention CD listeners. We're going to take a break here to mark the time it would normally take you to flip the album over." And despite picking up a stack of used CDs, both Mike and I agreed we would miss our tapes a little. We'd miss the little hiss on cassettes and having to flip them over, to which I commented, "Yeah, I'll miss cassette sides". And that was our Edison moment. Kaboom! We had a name.
Ironically, only our debut album, Another Case On The Floor, actually saw the light of day on cassette. Everything else has been put out on CD only. But even then we've always tried to divide our albums into distinct "sides" and we've always insisted that the art work for the back cover reflect that so that, for example, Tracks 1-6 are listed on the left and tracks 7-12 on the right. It was always our way of trying to distribute the strongest songs throughout the album, just like the tapes we listened to growing up. Most of the cassettes we listened to growing up had ten songs on them and you could always count on the first 2-3 songs of Side A being killers and then, depending on the strength of the album, a "filler" song coming in at 4, then something better at 5, thus giving the listener the incentive to flip the tape over. Sometimes Side B wasn't even close to being as strong as Side A but usually the first song on that side would be pretty good. From there an album could taper off into filler or continue kicking your ass.
These days I don't think a lot of bands think about "sides" or pacing their albums out. A weak album blows it's wad completely on Tracks 1 to 5, with no consideration toward putting one of those stronger tracks in as Track 8 or 9, just to spread it out. I suppose it makes sense though because CDs, unlike cassettes, reset themselves every time you change players. So listeners to CDs start all over again at Track 1 when they move the disc from the car to the home stereo. Cassettes were different and even distinct from vinyl in that respect. The cassette was where you left it last time and each time you moved it you had to make decisions. "Am I going to rewind it? Fast forward it? Listen to Side A or Side B?"
Please don't think I'm saying that just because our band strategizes where our best songs will appear on the CD that we are a better band then anyone else. Hell, we've had filler on our albums, especially over the last couple where the market demands 12-14 songs and/or over an hour of music with each release. Truth be told, I think Mike and I would get along better if I only needed to write or co-write 10 "good" songs each go around, instead of 6 or 7 I'm really proud of, 3 or 4 I feel pretty good about, and 3-4 I never want to hear again by the time they go to pressing. I mean, really, what's the point of writing a song you are going to shaft to Track 11, never play live, and never really want to hear again all so that the buyer can feel like they're getting their $16 to $18 worth? I think if we could promise our fans (or would-be fans) that our new album, with a mere 10 songs on it is really, really good and they will never want to skip a track then maybe we wouldn't do the whole "sides" layout. As it stands, we do that on the album itself and on the artwork as kind of a "heads up". Still, if you own one of our albums and really like one of those Track 4's or Track 11's I'd love to hear from you. Maybe something like "This Won't Stand" (track 4 from our album Things We Said Last Night) has a resonance I never heard in it.
So now we have a new CD coming out in a few months called Northwest Hours and our first single "Getting Over Emily" is going to be on i-Tunes before the album comes out. And the album itself will be our first album in the new age of i-Pods and what not. This afternoon Mike and I were laying out the song order, same as we've always done, and he suggested ditching our past concept and just putting the songs in order from best to worst and then shuffling them just a little bit, so that the best song is Track 2, the third best Track 3, and the second best Track 1, and so forth. His argument is that fans who preview the album online or download it are most likely just going to scan the first handful of songs so 1-5 or 1-6 need to be really strong. "They're going to cherry pick, J," he said. And for once in our relationship it was hard to argue with him. All I could come up with for doing it the old way was to go back to where we started. I said, "Mike, we called ourselves The Cassette Sides for a reason. We wanted a little nostalgia in our name as well as in our sound. If we ditch that now, then what are we?" When he couldn't answer I knew things in the music world had changed, that he would win this fight, and that our name that once seemed so great and meaningful to me is now just our name.
So the moral to the story is this: When Northwest Hours comes out download tracks 1 to 5 (legally, please) because I like them a lot. I worked my ass off on them. Track 6 is pretty good and I am kind of fond of Track 8. As a concession in our argument, Mike let me put one of the strongest cuts deep in the album. Track 10 is about my wife, it's not a ballad but still little sappy and happy, but in my head it sounds great on car stereos at full volume and you can sing along, just like I did with all those old cassettes I loved so much.
J
********************
Question of the Day
What pop culture artifact of the past do you miss?
Thanks.