Track Listed

And another thing about albums... Since when did it become hip to hide the track list? Here's Dark Side of the Moon; arguably one of the best albums ever recorded.

But, where's the track list? It's printed on the cd itself:

Which is fine, unless you want to listen to the cd, and know what song you're hearing at the same time. I guess you'll just have to write down the track list before playing the cd.

Tool is known for having some of the most creative and interesting album covers, and 10,000 Days is certainly no exception. It features some really trippy psychadelic images, which are cool on their own, but even cooler when viewed through the stereoscopic lenses.

But where's the track list? Not on the back cover, not on the cd itself, not even on the inside cover. It's on page 28 of the cd booklet.

Still that's not as bad as The Downward Spiral by Nine Inch Nails. The track list isn't on the special cd cover...

 not on the cd cover...

not on the cd itself...

                                                                                                                                     

It's inside the lyric book. And even then, it's tiny and hard to read.                                                           

But hiding the track list is better than getting creative with it. Take Europe '72 by the Grateful Dead, for example. It's a two cd set, but the track list is on the back of the second cd.                                         

So if you're listening to disc one, you have to have disc two nearby if you want to know what songs are on disc one... This was originally a 3 disc vinyl album. Does that mean there were 6 different lists, one for each side of each album?                                                                                                                                

Here's Monsters by the Meat Puppets.                                                                                                    

                                      

A nice, easy to read tracklist, right on the back of the album. Except, the songs aren't numbered. So, is Touchdown King the second song, or is Light? To find out, you have to open the cover and look at the actual cd, and just memorize the order.                                                                                               

Some bands put the track list around the border of the album, so as not to impede upon the artwork, which means you have to turn the album to read it.                                                                                              

No big deal, really, but it's still kind of annoying.                                                                                        

                                                 

And then there's Ozzy.

                                                                                                                              

He's not called the Prince of Darkness for nothing. Look at his tracklist:                                                        

A circle?! That's just plain EVIL!                                                                                                                 

But the worst offender, at least from my own personal collection, is the Pixies.                                             

 

I love the Pixies, but this track list is just a mess. No numbers, multi-layered tracklist... Do you start with      Motorway to Rocswell, and just make your way around? No. Although that makes the most logical sense,    the first song is actually Trompe Le Monde, on the top right hand corner. So logically, that should make        Lovely Day track two. But track two is actually Planet of Sound, three song titles away from Trompe Le     Monde on the back cover. Track three is Alec Eiffel, which is actually listed BEHIND Trompe Le Monde on the back cover, which would make you think it's the second to last song, or the seventh song, if this track list made any kind of sense... Thankfully the band was merciful enough to list the track list, numerically and in order, on the first page of the booklet. But I have to wonder if this track list nonsense contributed to the        lukewarm sales of Trompe Le Monde.                                                                                                       

                                                                                                        

Here's what a tracklist should look like:

It's easy to read, numerical, doesn't impede the artwork, and it's right smack on the back album cover, so you can refer to it as you're listening to the cd. Bands could learn a lot from Fugazi, and not just from their coherent track lists. But that's a rant for another time...