I'd put A Series of Sneaks in the 100%, everything else in their catalog in the 75%.

So, you'll pass on 7 great songs just because you don't want to have to sit through or skip 3 bad ones? Isn't that the audio equivalent of throwing the baby out with the bathwater?

Welcome to the 21st century, where you can press skip or just leave it off your ipod. Option B.

I don't know if Option A exists.

Why do you hate babies Billy G?

I almost made that very same argument, except "Standing at the Board" and "Chloroform" are mini-clunkers, while every other song on that album is PERFECT. I thought about putting GCT in the 75% camp, but "1020AM" is the only clunker on that one. KTM could be 75%, but i would only consider "Small Stakes" and "Paper Tiger" clunkers on that one. GF definitely has a few clunkers, but not all of the remainder would be great. It's a mixture of great ("Sister Jack") and good ("The Beast and Dragon, Adored).

In reality if I think at least half of an album is good to great, I'm not likely to dislike more than a song or 2. I might be ambivalent or meh about 1/4 of the songs, but I'm not likely to dislike 'em.

I regularly trade stuff in where I love a handful of songs though and dislike a handful of songs. I'm not a song person, I'm an album person so if I don't like the bulk of an album I'm not listening to it.

It sounds better on vinyl, MAAAAN!!

You can hear all the Orange tones flow through the 12 grams so much better. You just don't GET IT DO YOU?!!?

Poetry, man, poetry.

baby killer

option b.
it's rare that there are perfect albums.
while i wouldn't buy a cd for one song i will keep a cd with one good song on it.
that's why i still have that hal cd.

Hal Plays The Hit?

si.

See here is the root of our disagreement. Even though I don't like spoon 1/10th as much as you do, I'm not sure if they have any clunkers.

i would rather have some great songs and a few clunkers...those are the albums i listen to over and over vs. some cometent but sometimes boring albums.

Band of Horses' album is going to be in the 75% category for me. I just got in the mail. mmmm. new music.

I too will keep albums that have one or two great songs on it. I like to think of this as How It Feels To Be Something On by SDRE. I don't just dislike the rest of the album I borderline HATE it.

However, I will buy a cd for one good song, like The Walkmen's first album.

I think that Elliott Smith's Roman Candle is one that falls into the 100% category for me. It's not that they all blow me away, but they are all about a 6 or 7 in my opinion.

I tend to listen more to the albums that are 100%.

The other albums usually get culled into comps or a greatest songs mix of that particular artist.

I picked Option B, because I really like The Replacements.

Albums that are just good all the way through tend not to grab me. I had this exact feeling when listening to The Joshua Tree a couple weeks ago. It was consistently good all the way through, but nothing really got me movin'.

I think I favor a band or artist that's willing to go balls out, even if sometimes you miss. This also plays into my idea about cds being too long and needing to be edited down a bit.

EVERY band (even the precious almighty Beatles) has at least a few clunkers, when you evaluate their work on a song-by-song basis. There are some bands (like Spoon) who don't have any albums that could be considered clunkers, but everybody's got some songs that fall short.

I was just thinking of this specific example, which is why I was leaning more towards the 2nd choice - 75% great/25% shit. Joshua Tree is a good CD all the way through, but I'm so ridiculously bored with it.

I don't have to LIKE every song to like an album, but if I DISLIKE a few songs it ruins an album. Most of the bands that I like a lot, I don't DISLIKE anything they do. Sure I like some songs more than others, but that doesn't mean that I think the ones that aren't personal favorites are clunkers. That's all I'm saying. and no I don't dislike any spoon or beatles song. And I'm not a huge beatles fan by any stretch and am much less of a spoon fan than you.

and with that post:

[img][300:300]http://coh.upallnightgaming.com/content/heroimages/deadhorse_1024x768.jpg[/img]

I'm done with this thread.

The Beatles comment wasn't directed at you, they are just the default example of greatest band ever, even though I'm also only mildly interested in any of their stuff at this point.

I think where we differ is you are taking clunker to mean only the extreme instance, when it's just a terrible and almost unlistenable song. But to me, a clunker can just as easily be a song that really isn't bad so much as one that fell just short of the mark. A song that is considered filler should probably be classified as a clunker, even if it isn't full-blown "hit 'Next' as fast as humanly possible" crappy.

I hope I wasn't coming off as too contentious or anything. I'm probably not putting forth my position as clearly as I should, and in my awkward effort to do so, may have inadvertently rubbed you the wrong way. No hard feelings, beeg...you know I love ya, man!

The closest to an example of type 2 I can think of is "I'm Your Man" by Leonard Cohen.

Most of the album is extraordinary, but I almost always skip Jazz Police.

If I could suck some of the greatness out of Everybody Knows or Tower of Song and inject it into Jazz Police to make the album more consistent, I certainly would not do so. I guess that means I prefer type 2?

Bobby B - of course you didn't rub me the wrong way. I just think we both would irritate the crap out of GAR and most likely everyone else if I continued to debate what you meant by clunkers.

filler don't bother me...bad songs do and probably more so than they do most. I don't go to things like coachella because its more important to me to avoid seeing the bands I really don't like than to see the ones I do.

Other than that there's really no mathematical formula to predict what I'm going to like best...I like what I like....some are albums with less great and more good others are a handful of great and some filler. I don't know that I have a preference between those two ...just keep me away from stuff I think is bad even if it comes paired with some good to great.

B, because 100 percenters are so rare, that if one comes along, bonus

but in the mean time, I need some stuff to listen to

I'm with B. I rip my albums anyway and usually dump the ones I don't like.

But another question that begs to be asked is how many "good" songs does it take for you to decide to buy an album. would you buy an album if you know it only has one good song or does it have to have a few?