Inspired by a comment I just made in The Decemberists thread…on their album The Crane Wife, there is a 3 chapter song called…The Crane Wife…on the album, they put part 3 as the first track, and parts 1 & 2 are on the same track towards the end of the album. I never really got the story as to why this was done this way, but they play all 3 parts in chronological order when live, and part 2 flows into part 3 perfectly, so I moved part 3 to after part 2, making The Island the first track on the album. I find that this slight re-ordering makes the album more enjoyable to me.
Another MAJOR reordering I did was back in 2004 when the They Might Be Giants album The Spine was released. The album had some great songs on it, but it also had a couple of unbearable songs. At the same time, there were a couple of EPs and non-album singles that TMBG had released, which were much more album worthy. So I spent about a month straight experimenting with different song combinations and track orderings, until I created what I consider to be TMBG’s best “album” ever, with a perfect song flow, which I dubbed Spine 2.0 … many other hardcore TMBG fans consider this vastly superior to the official Spine release as well:
- The Spine Surfs Alone
- Thunderbird
- It’s Kickin’ In
- Stalk of Wheat
- Spine
- Memo to Human Resources
- Broke in Two
- Am I Awake
- Experimental Film
- The Other Side of the World
- Museum of Idiots
- Fun Assassin
- Spines
- Au Contraire
- Damn Good Times
- I’m All You Can Think About
- Renew My Subscription
- Now Is Strange
- Wearing a Raincoat
- Prevenge
- Ant (2004 horn version)
Total time: 46.2 minutes
so what customizations have you done to albums which you’d recommend?