Format talk with Jared Van Fleet: AKA This Luddites LP Battlecry

DISCLAMER: this post got totally fucked which is to say I had 2 windows open and hit the save now button on the less completed one at some point (that point being when i was totally finished) so I had to write this TWICE! WTF!! The first time I write this was much better too but being the stubborn ol' cuss that I am you will recieve this inferior product regardless. anyways...

So last Sunday night Sparrow House (who is Jared who also plays in Voxtrot) played on Local Live and the set was about 30 minutes and then we definately went right on ahead and used the other 30 minutes to just talk about music. The crew was me, his hotness Sir Chris Wiggington (professional gentleman, scholar, radio host), Keef and Jared in the booth. At some point we got to talking about blogs (you may notice a large number of new blog links over there to your right...thats cause i wrote them down...for my blog...which is this) and the conversation shifted again to the ages old debate "the death of the music industry as we know it."

So Jared pointed out that the LP ("Long Player") was originally just a way to sell more singles and he presented well thought out arguements about how smaller formates (EPs and Singles) free up artists to do other things. I think specifically he was talking about the EP once again becoming a viable release for economic reasons (99 cent itunes releases which also shed the overhead of having a physical disc of any sort) but I believe he was refering to Singles as well.

Now Im all for going with the flow and recognizing that the shift to LPs in the first place was made out of economic necessity and the shift in itself is no nobler than the one we are currently experiencing that is taking us back to singles. BUT (but) there will always be room for singles because singles sell (in the short run) and 2. a shift back to singles will encourage any commercially interested musician into some amount of self-censorship in the writing process. Honestly I think we owe it to ourselves as self-concious beings to recognize that the LP format is where our FREEDOM is. We might write singles for ourselves but thats whats paying the bills, and if the bills need to get paid more energy than natural is going to get spent on them and I think we are going to see a much much more conservative music scene, which I am very against. And its not the EP I have something against, there have been plenty of records that I buy for 15 buck that have had 4 (or less) good tracks on it and the rest is trash. But at least then I know the rest is trash and I can take it for what it is.

The thing about singles is you forfeit the right to define your own context. I recently got into the idea of listening to podcasts and I loved it, but the thing about a band that gets played that way and only has the single or 2-3 tracks is that they will be contextualized by the DJ without having a rebuttal statement of their own (aka their music). And the fact of the matter is with singles, they are only 3:30 minutes long. There is only so much you can say, especially when you have to repeat the chorus "yeah x19" three times in that span. Thats why I took 15 seconds in paint to make this and then uploaded it:





also: Check This Shit. My Granddad likes The Eagles