♫ Your NOMINATIONS for the best songs under 2 minutes poll ♫ (nominations close MARCH 1ST)

NickB can you do me a favor and list the track lengths for all those?

ooh good call on True Confessions, I love that one

Noname - Self (1:35)
PJ Harvey - No Child of Mine (1:13)

oops sorry...

The Beatles - Wild Honey Pie (0:53)
White Lung - Dead Beat (0:58)
Iron Cross - Wargames (1:22)
Moondog - Avenue of the Americas (1:09)
Thin White Rope - The Clown Song (1:11)
West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band - As Kind As Summer (1:11)
Micachu - Lips (1:20)
Metal Urbain - Futurama (1:26)
The Beat - Click Click (1:27)
Cowboy Junkies - Mining For Gold (1:32)
Fugazi - Break-In (1:33)
This Kind Of Punishment - What Can I Say? (1:35)
World Domination Enterprises - Hotsy Girl (1:42)
Throwing Muses - You Cage (1:40)
The Fall - Industrial Estate (1:47)
Syd Barrett - Golden Hair (1:44)
Scritti Politti - Messthetics (1:47)
Tom Waits - Just Another Sucker On The Vine (1:47)
Killer Mike - Go! (1:54)
The Undertones - True Confessions (1:56)
Haruomi Hosono - Pom Pom (1:56)
Tom Rapp - Silver Apples (1:56)
Unwound - New Energy (1:57)
Bill Fay Group - Strange Stairway (1:57)
Mission Of Burma - This Is Not A Photograph (1:57)
James Brown - Think (from 'Live At The Apollo') (1:58)
Essential Logic - Aerosol Burns (1:59)

thanks!

Jimmy Jones - Handy Man (1:58)
The Mascots - Words Enough to Tell You (1:58)
OutKast - ? (1:28)

Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Is This the Best Spot?

Some of these are probably duplicated above.

Bad Brains - Pay to Cum (yellow tape version) 1:26
Minutemen - Paranoid Chant 1:19
Iggy Pop - Dog Food 1:51
Cannibal Corpse - Scalding Hail 1:47
Cannibal Corpse - Puncture Wound Massacre 1:41
Cannibal Corpse - Severed Head Stoning 1:45
Cannibal Corpse - Savage Butchery 1:51
Obituary - Godly Beings 1:55
Rigor Mortis - Grudge Fuck 1:49
The Cramps - The Crusher 1:48
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - History of Sex 1:46
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Lovin' Up a Storm 1:45
Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - The Feeling of Love 1:51

fwiw that version of "Pay To Cum" is different than the original 7" version that I nominated

I'd hate to see it place low from vote splitting.

not a duplicate, but the original, superior version of “the crusher” by the novas was already nominated

xp

xxp I think it would be fair to count them together and then specify the vote breakdown afterwards, as has been done in other polls

Kenickie - Come Out 2nite (1:58)
Buzzcocks - Love You More (1:55)
Sebastien Tellier - Slow Lynch (1:20)
Scritti Politti - No Fine Lines (1:43)
Prince - Venus De Milo (1:55)
Broadcast - Evil Is Coming (0:48)
Karmello Brooks - Tell Me Baby (1:55)
Saint Etienne - Record Doctor (0:53)
David Sylvian - September (1:18)
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Kevin Ayes (1:43)
Gorky's Zygotic Mynci - Bwyd Time (0:47)
The Associates - The End (1:07)
Annie - Intro (0:55)
Bobby Womack - Quicksand (1:41)
Antony & The Johnsons - What Can I Do ? (1:41)
Scott Walker - On Your Own Again (1:48)

This isn't really the place to have the argument, but I've never heard a song that the Cramps didn't improve by covering it.

The Beatles - Wild Honey Pie

― goats eat grandma (NickB)

pixies - wild honey pie (1:51)
chemutoi ketienya & girls - chemirocha (1:30)
swell maps - read about seymour (1:30)
van morrison - ring worm (1:30)
man or astroman? - u-uranus (1:30)
a tribo - peba & pobo (1:31)
jerry porter - 3/4 mostly lovin' (1:31)
phil everly - can't dance alone (1:31)
peter thomas - astral snow (1:33)

This isn't really the place to have the argument, but I've never heard a song that the Cramps didn't improve by covering it.

― grawlix (unperson)

captain beefheart's original of "hard workin' man" is better than the cramps' version

i also think the red crayola did a better version of "hurricane fighter plane" but i guess i could see preferring the cramps' take

anyway the cramps' version is better than nnb's, not as good as sort sol's.

Most all of my 2:00 songs were 2:00 on two different players, so I'll skip those. Salvaged two:

Vashti Bunyan - Love Song (1:58)
Odin - Lost (1:59)

"Lost" is this great garage thing from 1968 that sounds like it could be Beat Happening or some other lo-fi thing.

i’m sure there’s lots of nuggets-style garage singles that are very good and clock in around 1:57 but, as i said in the other thread, it would be disappointing to me if this roll out ended up being predominantly garage 45s and chuck berry and elvis and fats domino.

it’s much more interesting for me when the brevity is an integral part of the songwriting, or on the other hand when the song feels like a sketch, an idea for a song that is just kinda hanging in mid-air and it’s mysterious or weird (e.g. “can you take me back where i came from ...”) — yknow, rather than a conventional song that just happens to be short.

i like those mysterious fragments too (circulatory system - news from the heavenly loom, 0:24; mu - children of the rainbow, 1:12; most allison, young man's blues, 1:27; the android sisters, huh?, 1:27; captain beefheart, dali's car, 1:27), but a two minute song, even if it's a full song, for me has a certain air to it simply by nature of being concise (squirrel bait - black light poster child, 1:55; giles giles and fripp, digging my lawn (b) (from "the brondesbury tapes"), 1:55; ray cathode, waltz in orbit, 1:56)

those songs are all nominations by the way

getting ready to gather everything up into the first draft, which i shall (hopefully) post later tonight. i'm also going to put them all into a spotify playlist. i'll post a link to it once it gets started and then you can just follow it as i add onto it throughout the night

Residents - The Act of Being Polite (1:03)
Melvins - Oven (1:29)
Germs - Lexicon Devil (1:44)
Urinals - Ack Ack Ack (1:01)
Agent Orange - Bloodstains (1:54)
Minutemen - Fanatics (0:31)
The Replacements - I Hate Music (1:51)
Dicks - Dicks Hate the Police (1:59)

I would have nominated "Lexicon Devil"--2:05 on my player.

okeydokey, here is a link to the spotify list of the nominations thread, growing by the minute:

https://open.spotify.com/user/weinventyou/playlist/5NYa3dBthFiDcftI0ObtC3?si=Q4jRj-d-RtqGGIfAnT0QPQ

Piero Umiliani - Mah nà mah nà (1:56)
Hugh Le Caine - Dripsody (1:28)
Johnny Hawksworth - Thames Television ident theme, c.1968-90 (0:07) [The best composition evah, of any length, so...]
Felt - I Will Die With My Head in Flames (1:34)
The Moodists - Where the Trees walk Downhill (1:40)

<3 <2 <3

Thanks for the playlist! I was hoping someone would do it up.

I nominated "Dicks Hate the Police" upthread fwiw

i'll note little things as they come up:

I change Jacquees to Rodriquez Jacquees Broadnax, since that what he went by for At the Club, the album that has 'New Wave' on it.

Spoon - Dismember (1:45)
Spoon - Idiot Driver (1:39)
Spoon - Wanted to Be Your (1:52)
Spoon - Theme to Wendel Stivers (1:58)
Spoon - Primary (1:10)
Spoon - Utilitarian (1:51)
Spoon - Car Radio (1:30)
Spoon - Chloroform (1:10)
Spoon - Staring at the Board (0:54)
Spoon - No You're Not (1:43)

i've entered in about 100 songs so far. average length: 1:36

ok, just finished up the clemenza section (70 nominations!)

a couple things:

neil young - "there goes my babe" - is this the buffalo springfield demo? that one's 1:47. the version that's on neil's archives (the only one i could find under his name) is 2:23

everly brothers - "problems" is a touch over 2 minutes on spotify but the song clearly cuts off several seconds before, so i think it's fine.

jerry lee lewis - "lewis boogie" is the nightmare song. there are about a dozen versions on spotify, and every single one is 2 minutes or more. but the song does cut off a few seconds before. allmusic puts it at 2:02. *throws hands in air, but cares*

kleenex/liliput - "Split" is 2:01, but cuts off a few seconds before.

the luv'd ones - "stand tall" is 2:09 on spotify, and doesn't fade out until 2:05. i am tossing it out. BANNED.

----

i'm tempted to toss both the jerry lee lewis and liliput songs as well. they're both under 2, if you listen to the song, but if that's the case we're gonna have a shitload of songs that are up to 2:02 or 2:03 but count because they actually cut off a few seconds before that. however, it's late here and i'm very tired, so i'm going to go to sleep and think about something else until i wake up again.

Miss Red - K.O. (1:37)
MacLean and MacLean - Dolly Parton's Tits (1:54)
Knight Rider theme (1:17)

Thanks for the playlist work, Karl - makes for a fun commute on shuffle! Co-sign for a 50 track ballet!

Before you look Stranger Calls - Honeydrum from my noms isn’t on Spotify but is on Bandcamp.

neil young - "there goes my babe" - is this the buffalo springfield demo? that one's 1:47. the version that's on neil's archives (the only one i could find under his name) is 2:23

I nominated the Buffalo Springfield version, yeah. (I don't dig the other versions nearly as much)

Saint Etienne - Dilworth's Theme (0:39)
Pixies - Crackity Jones (1:24)
Altichyre - Autechre - (1:43)
Punch in the Nose - Sebadoh (1:31)
If You're Into It - Flight of the Conchords (1:40)

Since we're going to the Archives...

Neil Young - Birds (45 RPM Single) (1.38)

Blur - Bank Holiday (1:42)
Blur - Chinese Bombs (1:24)
Blur - We've Got a File on You (1:03)
Super Furry Animals - God! Show Me Magic (1:50)
Super Furry Animals - Chupacabras (1:24)
Super Furry Animals - Torra Fy Ngwallt Yn Hir (1:54)
Super Furry Animals - Do or Die (1:59)
Super Furry Animals - Drygioni (1:23)
Super Furry Animals - The Gateway Song (0:43)
The Jam - In the Street Today (1:31)
The Jam - All Mod Cons (1:20)
The Jam - But I'm Different Now (1:52)
Green Day - In the End (1:46)
Green Day - Brat (1:43)
Green Day - Take Back (1:09)
Nirvana - Downer (1:43)
Nirvana - Been a Son (1:55)
Nirvana - Molly's Lips (1:54)
Nirvana - (New Wave) Polly (1:48)
Nirvana - Mexican Seafood (1:55)
Nirvana - Very Ape (1:56)
Nirvana - tourette's (1:35)

Radiohead - I Will (1:59)

Field Music - Front Of House (1:46)
Gong - A PHP's Advice (1:46)
Kevin Ayers - Beware Of The Dog (1:28)
Nat Kendrick & The Swans - Wobble Wobble (1:57)
Queen - Nevermore (1:19)
Tracy Thorn - How Wild The Wind Blows (1:59)
Yes - Five Per Cent For Nothing (0:36)

Bikini Kill - In Accordance to Natural Law (:28)

Digression: anyone got the link to the 10-minute song poll? I'm not being lazy, I just cannae find it. Ta.

My final 3 noms (probably):

Kate Bush - Home for Christmas (1:47)
Pixies - Tony's Theme (1:54)
The 6ths - As I Turn to Go (1:56)

I would have nominated "Lexicon Devil"--2:05 on my player.

That is the (superior, IMO) single version; it’s the album version that runs 1:44. (I thought about nominating this song; but it felt like a “cheat” to name the lesser version, solely b/c it fits.)

Can't believe I forgot:

Descendents - No! All (0:04)

Pretty sure a lot of mine aren't on spotify sorry.

it’s much more interesting for me when the brevity is an integral part of the songwriting, or on the other hand when the song feels like a sketch, an idea for a song that is just kinda hanging in mid-air and it’s mysterious or weird (e.g. “can you take me back where i came from ...”) — yknow, rather than a conventional song that just happens to be short.

Conversely, I thought it was interesting to discover how many songs that I love, and which feel “fully formed,” do indeed happen to be this short. It makes them seem all the more remarkable, in a way. (I couldn’t believe it when I saw “Zurich Is Stained” is only 1:41!)

Paramore - Moving On (1:30)
The Smiths – Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want (1:50)
The Alan Parsons Project - Sirius (1:48)

The Jesus and Mary Chain - Taste of Cindy (1:47)
The Mountain Goats - See America Right (1:52)
A$AP Rocky - Purple Swag (1:59)
Pavement - Flux=Rad (1:45)
Royal Headache - Girls (1:39)
Jonathan Richman & Julia Sweeney - Just Because I'm Irish (1:54)

KM -- no chicanery at work; all those songs were under 2:00 on two of my three media players. Anything I keep is always the standard version--honestly, if you have different timings on Spotify, those are the versions I'd be suspicious of. (The Neil Young is a different case; think it's the Archives version I have.)