the luminous blog

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Never again will I purchase an album that contains only 2 good songs out of 13 or so - and costs me a whopping 20/30/50 bucks...!

So will say the smart consumer.
That is all wise and good - but not entirely luminous though!
Although I will condone such an attitude, I can just as well decry the unfairness of it, when one applies this to every recording artist there is, without discernment...
The fact is, there are many artists with a CONSCIENCE out there - those who will actually strive to make truly ''complete albums'' - LPs that contain good songs from top to bottom, even if what this means is that, for there to be some return on the investment, 65% of the LP's contents will have to be released as singles...! Prolonging the ''shelf life'' of an album like that makes a new album almost obsolete - and so we find a longer time between album releases to be the norm in the new set of rules the music industry has to abide by...

That is fine and dandy, of course - the bitter pill to swallow is not this one, at all! It is, of course, file-sharing and the loss of revenue it incurs for the emerging artists... Selling each new single on iTunes is one way to counter that - but sales will dwindle if the first twenty buyers start sharing, out of the goodness of their hearts, on LimeWire or some other place...! But I digress...

For, today, my true aim is to share those gems many ''customers with an attitude'' might have missed out on over the years...
All those songs that are ignored by both the radio stations and the public because the masses choose to only lend an ear to the one or two big hits from any given LP - rejecting with the back of their collective hand the remainder of any given album! This is not encouraging ANY artist out there to work hard on the entire album, folks - this will instead encourage all of them to turn into modern-day equivalents of the Average White Band for example, who was in the habit, I do believe, to give their fans ONE single good song per album - a stunning jacket with that too, sure... But 10 lousy throwaway tunes made up the rest of that over-priced package deal! And - where is the AWB today folks - hmm?
I rest my case!

Some of the gems most of you must have missed by going only for the ''hit of the day'' include:

The Chauffeur - by Duran Duran, of all bands...!!!



(It could have been the theme song for horror classic and Trish Van Devere vehicle ''The Hearse'' - but it wasn't!)

Oops - no longer available?!? Here - have a cover version then...


Script For A Jester's Tears - by the under-appreciated Marillion!



I Wish I Cared - by the practically forgotten A-ha...?



Who Killed Mr. Moonlight? - by the definitely forgotten Bauhaus
(well - they're underground legends that way!)





Verily, I tell you; acts like Daniel Bélanger, Frank Black (with or without The Catholics, The Pixies, The Breeders or anybody else!) Delfins and, say, Toad The Wet Sprocket (!) CANNOT be overlooked for even one second - ANY ONE of their tunes can be an unappraised gem in the rough indeed!

They are, in effect, the anti-thesis to the over-rated stars and the one-hit wonders!

So - in this as in everything else in your life - please use discernment! 



























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Labels: Musical Underdogs

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