'Filler'

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by A Local Bloke, Nov 26, 2020.

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  1. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    She said she said
    ....was recorded when The Beatles realised they were one song short for the Revolveralbum. In a hectic nine hour session on 21 June 1966, during which the majority of the album’s mono and stereo mixes were also done, they rehearsed the song more than 25 times and then recorded three takes of the rhythm track.

    To the last of these were added John Lennon’s lead vocals, and backing vocals from Lennon and George Harrison. Extra guitar and Lennon’s Hammond organ track were then overdubbed, and ‘She Said She Said’ was complete
     
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  2. pool_of_tears

    pool_of_tears Searching For Simplicity

    Location:
    Midwest
    Listened to out of context, Florida would definitely be seen as filler. But when you follow it up with Kansas, and the opening lyric “I feel like I just woke up from a bad dream”, it somehow fits the puzzle. At least for me, anyways:)
     
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  3. Celebrated Summer

    Celebrated Summer Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    In the case of "Revolution 9," I would say no. The Beatles had more than enough songs for a double album beyond what ended up on the white album. Plus, the album is extremely lengthy anyway and some songs probably should have been cut to give the vinyl sides less playing time, and therefore higher quality.

    John Lennon chose to put a sound montage on the record to make a point. Now if you wanna talk Lennon filler, there's always his cover songs, like "Mr. Moonlight" and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy."
     
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  4. manco

    manco Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Jose, CA
    Yet 'She Said She Said' is not 'filler' because it's quality. Filler literally mean a total duff song just put in to pad the run time or fulfill a label obligation.
     
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  5. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    That was my point, so if they pull together a killer track to flesh out an album it’s no longer filler by the same definition

    filler to me lives by another definition altogether and sometimes the filler used to take up the space at the end of a live performance recording is better then the full show itself
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
  6. Rose River Bear

    Rose River Bear Senior Member

    The term "filler" is defined as follows......
    "an item serving only to fill space or time in a newspaper, broadcast, or recording."

    The problem is, the term is not used by many to describe the above and they attach subjective qualities to the term.

    The song Paranoid on Black Sabbath's second album is filler. It may be a great song but it is nonetheless filler.

    I have misused the term myself along with others that have responded in this thread. Really the only person or persons that can apply that definition to a song is the artist or those involved with the recording.
    Non of us can apply that definition unless we know all of the particulars and the artist says it is filler.
     
    Last edited: Nov 26, 2020
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  7. Celebrated Summer

    Celebrated Summer Forum Resident

    Location:
    USA
    One other thing. (I've written about this on the forum before.) By doing "A Taste Of Honey," the Beatles were aligning themselves with a popular, controversial, and innovative British film about the working-class. This was not an accident.

    "A Taste Of Honey" was the theme song of a 1961 movie about a teenage girl who has an alcoholic single mother and gets pregnant by a black man who then leaves town. She also has a gay best friend. Talk about boundary-breaking. It was also written by 19-year-old female screenwriter, Shelagh Delaney.

    Seeing the title "A Taste Of Honey" on an album in 1963 would have conjured images of this film in the British public's minds. It's a movie you don't forget. It would have also sent a message to British record buyers that the band was 1). Defiantly working-class; 2). Not going to shy away from controversy.

    The movie "A Taste Of Honey" also made a big impression on Morrissey who quotes lines from it in several Smiths songs and wrote an entire tune about a scene ("This Night Has Opened My Eyes"). Shelagh Delaney's photo was also featured on some Smiths releases, most notably the compilation album Louder Than Bombs.

    The influence of this movie on the British public and UK film industry was immense. The movie holds up to this day, and I would recommend seeing it to get an idea of what British working-class culture was like in the early 1960s.

    [​IMG]
     
  8. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    Exactly. Although the idea of making thematically and musically unified pop albums wasn't that unusual either whether it was Dust Bowl Ballads or Songs for Swingin' Lovers or Nat Cole's After Midnight or Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. And jazz was full of conceptual albums from the 50s on.
     
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  9. Exile On My Street

    Exile On My Street Senior Member

    Location:
    Long Island, NY
    I wouldn't label "Florida" as filler. Taken on its own it may not seem like much but in the context of the record its track placement couldn't have been more perfect. Within the album itself it's the perfect track leading into "Kansas".

    I would liken it to "I just Want To See His Face" on Exile. With it's gospel tinged atmosphere I think it works brilliantly leading up to "Let It Loose", another very gospel tinged recording. If a song serves a particular function within the context of a complete album, I would hard pressed to call it filler.

    "Filler" is a song used to fill up space, generally tossed on at the last minute to stretch out an album so neither of these qualify. Their track placement and inclusion were both carefully considered.
     
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  10. CrombyMouse

    CrombyMouse Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vienna, Austria
    I don't think "Revolution 9" counts as a filler. At that point The Beatles had enough power to put on their records whatever they wanted. I am pretty sure John pushed this one and the band thought it was hip. It's not that they didn't have 8 min of music to finish the album. Prove me wrong.

    One needs to distinguish between filler-filler and filler-weak tracks. I'd argue that artists under tight contracts with weak bargaining power and severe obligations had to go the first way. Like many 1960s hit-single artists.
     
  11. John B Good

    John B Good Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    NS, Canada
    Sting - Fill Her Up (and it seems the Urban Dictionary has another meaning to offer)



    I like the classic "Too many notes" :)
     
  12. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    NOPE - if an artist says its filler - its filler - regardless of quality!

    Rush - their biggest ever hit single (their only US Top 40 at #21 and their only Canadian #1) was a "Filler Track". How do we know this? The band very specifically said it was. They needed another song for the album "Signals". I'm not sure why because they had released shorter albums and albums with less songs before. Perhaps they didn't like the running order they would have been forced to use to keep the album sides similar in length - ie put the three longest songs on one side and the four shortest on the other side. Maybe they felt one more song would allow them more options with the running order. Anyway they made up the song on the spot in the studio at the end of the album's sessions when they decided they needed one more song. The song - 'New World Man'.
     
  13. Lance LaSalle

    Lance LaSalle Prince of Swollen Sinus

    Yes these are good definitions of filler, in my opinion; "Revolution 9", no.
     
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  14. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    Well we do know "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" (as well as "Bad Boy") were definitely filler - recorded specifically at Capitol's request for use as filler on their next Frankenstein'd creation. Neither song was originally intended for UK release as it was reported at the time that the two songs *may* appear on a UK EP at some point in the future. Dizzy Miss Lizzy was ultimately used to fill up the Help! album when the group decided three of their original songs recorded during the sessions weren't good enough to include on the album - while 'Bad Boy' ended up as the "new" track on their 1966 UK Hits album.

    Due to the rushed nature of the Rubber Soul sessions (lasting only a month due to a hard Xmas deadline and commenced before they had written all the songs for it - and one would assume it was their intention to no longer include cover songs on albums) they chose one of the three Help! rejected originals for inclusion on Rubber Soul (after a bit of extra overdubbing on the half year old recording).
     
  15. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    But wasn't Setting Sons a concept album about three childhood friends meeting again as adults (or something like that)? How does switching the sides (thus altering the running order) and inserting a non-related stand-alone single (further altering the running order) "work so much better" than the band's intent? Isn't that the equivalent of a publisher deciding to reorder the chapters of a book (and also sticking a totally unrelated single-chapter short story in the middle of the book as well)?
     
  16. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    The record company rejected the album as originally submitted because in contained only seven songs. Time length wasn't the issue. The issue was the record company demanded the inclusion of an eighth song.
     
  17. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    Intended by who? and why?

    In the Fleetwood Mac case they handed in a completed album that the record company initially rejected, demanding an eighth song be included - so they quickly recorded a quite short instrumental jam track - just to get the album released/save their recording contract.

    That's not an example of filler? It certainly wasn't intended (by the band) to be there. They had already completed and submitted the album for release.
     
  18. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    Lulu?
     
  19. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    ...and occasionally they turn out so unintentionally well that those B-Sides ironically become hits (rather than the song that was intended as the A-Side hit). 'Kung-Fu Fighting' (recorded as a quickie B-Side - but instead becoming a worldwide #1 hit) is a prime example of that.
     
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  20. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    According to who?

    The Duke album had two outtakes (issued as B-Sides) so obviously Cul-De-Sac wasn't included on the album due to lack of material (plus the album as released was 55 minutes long, so even if they left one song (Cul-De-Sac or whatever else) off the album, it STILL would have been too long for vinyl).

    They recorded enough material for Abacab (over 70 minutes) to release it as a double album. While they didn't do so, they did release all the songs (on an EP and as B-Sides). The band was undecided on whether to include 'Whodunnit?' or 'You Might Recall' on the album - the other of the two songs going on the UK #10 charting EP "3x3". Apparently it was Ahmet Ertegun who encouraged them to put "the weird one" on the album. Plus they not only played it live regularly on the Abacab tour, but also on the Encore and Mama tours!

    Invisible Touch had three outtakes (issued as B-Sides) so obviously they weren't short of material there either.

    There were no outtakes for the "Mama album" but the band have never even hinted that Illegal Alien was recorded as filler for the album.
     
  21. wildstar

    wildstar Senior Member

    Location:
    ontario, canada
    No need to wonder - that was usually done intentionally to avoid the possibility that DJs would "flip" the single, playing the B-Side rather than the A-Side.
     
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  22. DTK

    DTK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Interesting. Then She Said She Said is obvious filler, despite what anyone thinks about its quality. Stunning song imo.
     
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  23. DTK

    DTK Forum Resident

    Location:
    Europe
    Good example!
    The reason Jimi did not use the other tunes is likely that he wanted to put in more work on all of them but there was no time for that.
     
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  24. Tim 2

    Tim 2 MORE MUSIC PLEASE

    Location:
    Alberta Canada
    Yup :righton:
     
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  25. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    "Burning Sky" is a much more compelling opening statement for the album, introducing the theme of the three friends who have grown apart, than "Girl On The Phone", which doesn't seem to have anything to do with Weller's purported concept. With the US version, side two reaches the dramatic climax with the segmented epic "Little Boy Soldiers" followed by the denouement with "Wasteland" where the UK version fizzled out with "Heatwave". Ultimately, Weller didn't really see the concept through fully--maybe half of the tracks relate to this story he had in mind--but the US version comes closer to presenting a coherent narrative arc, imo, even if it was accidental. The UK sequencing seems really haphazard to me, starting and ending with the two weakest songs, but of course, I cut my teeth on the the US edition.
     
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