In Praise of Filler

"voices of old people"

Well, my first post on this thread highlights what I think Dr.C is on about: a 3-minute symphony for harpsichord, opera singers and Tom Baker reading Rolling Stones death poetry. Funny but engaging; what more could you want?

Trayce, you'll like this one: Engineers' BOC rip-off 'Peter Street'

I think I have that song ackshully!

...and to round off my list of LJ Faves, the debut Working For A Nuclear Free City record is almost entirely made up of little filler-esque segments. Electro-prog of the most concise, agreeable kind! "England" especially, a segue between "The Tape" and "Over" (two of the stronger songs proper), is utterly beautiful. And the outro to "Forever", aside from being stunning, is once again pitch-perfect BOC-homily.

If a "reprise" counts as filler, then "The Light Dies Down On Broadway" from "The Lamb..." is also excellent. (And, in many ways, better than the original)

but isn't the lamb lies down filler from start to finish?

i'm not happy with any of these definitions of filler. i don't think filler can *ever* be seen to be a good thing. calling a song filler is effectively writing it off, and this thread contains far far too many great pieces of music/silliness for anything to qualify.

when a review slags off an album for containing "too much filler", what it invariably means is "other than the singles, the *overall musical/artistic quality* of this album is lacking".

as noted, some albums are apparently basically *all* filler by nick/dr c's definition! this makes absolutely no bloody sense to me at all. that just makes it a shit record, end of.

The point is that what many people recognise or refer to as 'filler' is actually the good stuff to other people (myself and Dr C, perhaps...).

Badly Drawn Boy gave good filler: little instrumental bits & pieces that went nowhere. His first eps & albums are full of it. It reached its apotheothis with the "About A boy" s/t. Then he stopped & got serious & dull.

There was a small vogue for it in the mid/late 90s (Cornershop, Beck, Beastie Boys etc), perhaps started by Money Mark? "Mark's Keyboard Repair" was ALL brilliant filler

I'll think of a better way to express it...

But sometimes you just know that a band has had to come up with a couple of tracks to fill up an album, so they either go for something with novelty value (different writer, a cover, an instrumental) or just something that repeats their trademark sound by numbers, maybe even sounds exactly like another of their songs. Often these tracks reveal something about an artist that you wouldn't necessarily get from their 'best' work. I just find that fascinating.

something that repeats their trademark sound by numbers, maybe even sounds exactly like another of their songs

ah, now there's the rub.

i think filler can only be a good thing on an album if most songs of the album in question are excellent. the occasional filler track can then be a welcome change or can fulfill the function of a breathing space for the listener.

an example of filler at the end of an album: "after hours" on "the velvet underground". it's an amateurish song i don't like at all but at the end it kind of makes sense. the album is over, it is just a bonus. it's a nice way to say good-bye with a song everybody and his monkey could sing.

what about hidden filler? how can that possibly be justified? eg that stone roses one, and the cure's 'the weedy burton'.

I was going to say that (whether it's filler or not) I am very much in favour of goofy short instrumentals (back when I made tapes side A would always close with Flipside by Breeders, which kind of suffers for being on a one-sided format; the surf closer on Watusi by the Wedding Present is the best damn bit of the whole album), but then I read:

I was just reading about how Boards of Canada kinda like making the little interludes more than the actual songs.

and realised that I couldn't draw the line between the above and roygbiv (short, cheerful interlude, pretty different in sound to the rest of the album, and, y'know, THE track that everyone picks).

But yeah, I like this stuff.
(xposts, heh, only last night I was admiring "after hours" after not really having paid it much attention before. those lyrics...)

The filler is never hidden.

The filler on 3 Imaginary Boys is Foxy Lady - classic filler, that : sung by the bass player, only put on the record at the insistence of the producer, cover version, faux-joky 'chat' before it. Lovely!

yes, hidden filler is a contradiction in terms!

yes, hidden good filler is a contradiction in terms!

fixed.

well yes

The Beatles' version of "Twist And Shout" may be the best piece of filler ever, considering all of their cover versions may be seen as filler.

Are non-album b-sides filler?

if we think of filler as being part of an album which makes sense i think the answer must be no of course. filler can't exist on its own without reference points. it is part of a flow or destroys a flow.

B-sides are in most cases filler in singles though. Or, at least they were back in the day of the vinyl 7 incher.

Are non-album b-sides filler?

almost inevitably.

Semantic interjection: people are seriously privileging connotation over denotation when they say filler is necessarily bad! We have a word for bad songs, and that word is "bad." Filler has more nuance: it is the stuff that fills stuff out! Saying filler is necessarily bad is like saying bread crumbs are necessarily bad, due to their role in filling out, umm, meatloaf.

I prefer Dr. C's notion of filler -- knocked-off, off-topic, "just having fun" stuff used to stretch a record from Six Songs We're Really Insisting On to Ten Songs You Buy.

(Not necessarily fun -- I forgot an "or" in there. Knocked off, or off-topic, or "just having fun," or genre pastiche, or anything where it feels like the band is spacing out the main display by going "oh hey look we made this thing, too.")

all the basement jaxx *ludes

xxpost that's why i said filler isn't *necessarily* bad but i don't think it can ever be good. and yeah in my working def. of the word filler as pertains to the album format might as well be a different word than 'meatloaf' filler, which is integral to meatloaf in a way that filler is not considered integral to an album.
I might be totally totally wrong too, it's just how i've used it and how I thought I'd seen it used since forever. At any rate stuffing like 90% of what constitutes the average modern album into the filler category isn't any more workable, surely.
gosh for someone who never even uses the word i sound like i care haha.

Non-album b-sides are/were my very favourite filler.

I love "Treefingers" on Kid A.

"Flying" by the motherfuckin' Beatles

I liked Madonna filler, especially on earlier albums like True Blue. 'Jimmy Jimmy' and 'Love Makes the World Go Round' etc.