Ratner's Star frontman Johnathan Foster Frantzen sits in a quiet corner booth of the Dirty Bastard's bar with his bandmates Alexei Wright, Mike James, Daniel Byrne, Jack Lee and David Nicholas. They each have tall glasses and gin and tonic, a deep dish of peanuts, and pieces of paper with all the titles of songs in contention for inclusion on the band's forthcoming fourth album printed out on them with lots of scribbles and question marks all over them. The band are talking about the final tracklisting for the currently untitled album which they are in the final stages of mixing and editing.Frantzen: "Let's face it, guys. Whatever songs make the final cut and whatever order we put them in, this is not going to be an immediately accessible and commercial album."
Wright: "It's not? How am I going to afford champagne to drink and douse fit women in while I'm having sex romps in penthouse suites across the world...?"
Frantzen: "We didn't start this band to fund your taste in expensive foreign cheese and champagne for drinking and pulling girls with, 'Lexi. We're all about the art."
Wright: "True...but for me though, John, it kind of is about just three things: my bass, my booze, and girls. Lots of girls."
Byrne: "Moving on...There aren't many obvious singles here, John, even less than there were for
Fear of Modern Life...do you think we can really afford not be as willingly alternative and averse to getting on the radio and in the charts?"
James: "We'll get more critical kudos that way, we'll be happier for not beign total sell outs, and we'll probably get more sales in the long run. Look at the debut. It was hardly a runaway hit packed full of smash hit singles, but it kept selling for ages and ages. If we make a quality record, people will get it eventually."
Wright: "Like, how people 'got' the eighties electronic music thing eventually when they got past the crappy end of synth pop and the New Romantics?"
James: "Precisely. It might not be appreciated at first, but its critical stock will go up over time...and when its stock does improve, the minor hits will get more airplay because everything else will seem bland in comparison. The eighties might have seemed like a wasteland, but if you knew where to look there was decent stuff, and even the stuff people didn't like much the first time round is being regularly ripped off by bands now because it sound a million times better than a lot of the current contrived and manufactured stuff on the radio."
Frantzen: "Good points..."
Lee: "Yeah...and, anyway, my take on it is that we're much better when we're being subversive and doing our own thing than when we're being moredirectly poppy and straightforward, anyway. And as a guitarist I get very bored playing simple poppy riffs."
Nicholas: "Mmmmm....I just like making lots of noise and buggering around, so I'm happy whatever we do."
Frantzen: Right...but we still haven't sorted out this final tracklisting....."
The whole band downs their gins and munch peanuts for a few sseconds in deep thought.Wright: "Another round? I've got a hunch this is going to be a late night...."
A waiter who brings over the next round and Gin and Tonic's used a camera phone to take a picture of the track titles and uploads it to his personal blog. The track titles in the photograph are listed as:Quote: For Once in This Lifetime...
Some Better Place ['Deep Waters' SUN CHILD RE-MIX]
Born into Chaos (The Madness Continues) [SUNSHINE & LOVE MIX]
Head Checked (Psycho-Analysis in the Modern Age)
Alexei's Song About Planets
Letterbombs and Lethargy in San Francisco
Death of The Afterparty
The Great Collapse
Dry
The Overwhelming
Bush Fires in the Dead of Night
A Little Country
For Once in This Lifetime... [SPARTAN MADNESS DANCEFLOOR MIX]
Deep Pools
Strange Sensations (Deep Waters)
Gaia
Captive States
Born into Chaos (The Madness Continues)
Sunbursts
Edited by moderator 01 October 2009 09:11:50(UTC)
| Reason: unnecessarily large.
