JWFan's Wonderful World of Release Worshiping Rituals

[Andy 5,585]

A dear friend of mine has children who’ve been diagnosed with autism and suspects she is on the spectrum as well. She laughs about her quirks and calls it “the ‘Tism” when it manifests. 
 

I don’t think I am on the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I were diagnosed.  Either way, I’ve always been proud to think differently than most people.  I like noticing, appreciating, and fixating on The Absurd. I like being weird. 

 

What the hell is normal thinking anyway?  Who gets to decide that?  We buy CDs. Of background music. And use a message board. Celebrating a man in his 90s.  To discuss trimming our pubic hair and the merits of bacon. 
 

We all belong here. Our ritual perseverating on album art, unreleased minutes, alternates, shipping tariffs should be embraced. 
 

Oh, and Thor,  I would engage in deeper musical conversation if I were more musically articulate.  And often I don’t find the time to  check in here to say much more than something I listened to was “cool”. 

 

 

[crumbs 15,246]

5 hours ago, Manakin Skywalker said:

I think the main reason being that, like I said, more new users are coming here nowadays for information rather than to chat about the music itself.

 

From my perspective, the music speaks for itself. I could make hundreds of posts lavishing praise upon every JW track but we all know he's an incredible composer who writes brilliant music, or we wouldn't be here.

 

The great thing about JWFan is the diversity of content. Music discussion, fan artwork, editing guides, score spreadsheets, technical information, film history, score analyses, expansion speculation... plus a healthy (occasionally unhealthy) dash of off-topic mischief.

 

Like @Andy , I'd engage in the musical discourse Thor desires if I had a deeper technical understanding of musical theory. But JW's writing is so advanced, I generally retreat to listening and enjoying the music for what it is.

 

The genius of the man is that people from all walks of life, from children to musical scholars, can appreciate his music for different reasons. It's fitting that JWFan is a reflection of that diversity.

[Mr. Hooper 4,221]

1 hour ago, Andy said:

I don’t think I am on the spectrum, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I were diagnosed.

 

There's over-diagnosing going on for sure. It seems everyone's somewhere on "the spectrum" these days. It's almost become fashionable, to say you don't think like everyone else.

 

1 hour ago, Andy said:

 

What the hell is normal thinking anyway?  Who gets to decide that?  

 

Exactly.

 

I'm reminded of the Twilight Zone episode 'Kick the Can,' in which the superintendent of a rest home thinks one of the elderly residents is going crazy because he's acting like a fun-loving kid, and not sedate like the others.

 

If you don't act "normal" and as society thinks you should, you get a label slapped on you.

 

1 hour ago, Andy said:

Oh, and Thor,  I would engage in deeper musical conversation if I were more musically articulate.  And often I don’t find the time to  check in here to say much more than something I listened to was “cool”.

Yeah, I'm musically illiterate too. But my ears know what they like! 

 

[mrbellamy 7,078]

I think there may also be a certain amount of complacency that sets in as far as "casual music discussion" goes. A lot of us have been on this website a long time. When the Internet was really opening up, holy cow, you could actually commiserate with the only people around the world who seemed to love this music like you do? Yes the world recognizes John Williams is great, but you could genuinely pose a question like "Anybody else get chills listening to 'The Dark Side Beckons'?" and realize it was a shared experience all along. 

 

Now I've learned the answers to a lot of these questions and there are a lot of well-worn cliche topics and observations on JWFan, even when it comes to relatively deep corners of his music or process. Never mind the "evergreens," yawn! Sometimes I read JWFan of the 2000s and it reminds me more of the John Williams conversations I see on Reddit or YouTube than what JWFan vets are capable of now. Every so often we get a thread like Bellosh's "Is Raiders March your favorite John Williams theme?" and it's a nice excuse to repave those roads, as it were. 

 

There's sort of a sweet spot of discussion on here that is not so basic that the curiosity factor is diminished, but not so obscure or apparently uninspiring that it's hard to find spelunking partners. Even among our nerdiest fellow aficionados, we've all had to accept we have our own islands within the island at some point lol.

 

I'm not really a spreadsheet or custom edit person and I rarely even buy expansions myself, but I love seeing them exist and I like that they inspire the discussion and obsession. It seems to be the most novel way for a lot of JWFans to revisit these scores with new debates and discoveries. 

 

For me, I like the "Favorite short musical moments" thread. It most reflects how I reengage with John Williams these days. Just those little things that make me go "Ah this guy's good."

[Thor 9,081]

7 hours ago, Andy said:

Oh, and Thor,  I would engage in deeper musical conversation if I were more musically articulate.  And often I don’t find the time to  check in here to say much more than something I listened to was “cool”. 

 

7 hours ago, crumbs said:

Like @Andy , I'd engage in the musical discourse Thor desires if I had a deeper technical understanding of musical theory. But JW's writing is so advanced, I generally retreat to listening and enjoying the music for what it is.

 

6 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Yeah, I'm musically illiterate too. But my ears know what they like! 

 

These statements remind me of the Noël Carroll quote from 1986, when he talks about why there is so little music discussion in film books: ”Debarred from the lingua franca of music criticism", he says, "[the film analyst] decides to say nothing at all”.

 

I've always found that unfortunate, because we are all equipped with one thing - adjectives. My musicological knowledge is very, very basic, but I've found that I can come a long way with using adjectives and language in general. Film music is also more accessible than other types of music, as you can approach it from other angles than just the musicological one that is common for "absolute" music.

 

So whether you're doing scholarly work, or just shooting the breeze at the pub (which is sorta what I consider these messageboards), film music lends itself very well to music talk, I've found. While music in itself is non-representational, it becomes representational when attached to concrete images and stories. That opens up a whole slew of possibilities.

 

But yes, there's no denying that this is a widespread concern that prevents many people from doing it, that it's "safer" to talk about everything tactile around the musical aesthetics itself, like sound issues, artwork, shipping, unreleased cues and what-have-you.

[Mr. Hooper 4,221]

41 minutes ago, Thor said:

I've always found that unfortunate, because we are all equipped with one thing - adjectives.

 

Funny you should say that, because, before I whittled it down, my original post went like this:

 

6 hours ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Yeah, I'm musically illiterate too. But my ears know what they like, and I know plenty of adjectives to express my feelings!

 

41 minutes ago, Thor said:

But yes, there's no denying that this is a widespread concern that prevents many people from doing it, that it's "safer" to talk about everything tactile around the musical aesthetics itself, like sound issues, artwork, shipping, unreleased cues and what-have-you.

Which reminds me—when's my Chris Young 'Nosferatu' CD gonna arrive?? 

[Richard P 4,517]

22 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Did I forget something significant?

 

I'll add one positive one, which happened with JPIII:

 

- Listeners discover a handful of previously unreleased moments they had forgotten were even there because they hadn't seen the film in so long.

 

16 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Certain technical evaluations on the other hand can be done easily fast. I am not sure if these observations also apply to others. At least this could have some kind of impact on this change in conversation.

 

When I get a new expansion, I'm mega-fast to zoom in on my 'areas of interest'. Whether it's a cue where I got sensitive to the mixing, or I'm curious to know how certain cues have been constructed, etc. It only took me more than 5 minutes with JP3 because I had to listen to the entire end credits to make sure the film hadn't come up with some more phantom music from nowhere...

 

I'd love to do more musical discussion of releases, but what we find here is that people home in on those technical defects - trying to fix whatever 'thing' is making the set 98% perfect for them. Perfectly normal, I think, as no set is going to be initially perfect for everyone, but it means that it takes longer for everyone to settle down, relax and enjoy the music. I'll almost never do the 'relax/enjoy' step first because I'm usually too close to the film.

[Darth Crossfader 618]

23 hours ago, Thor said:

All this talk about what I consider micro issues -- spreadsheets, cross-fades, sound quality measured in waveforms, custom artwork, shipping updates etc. etc. It's all "on the spectrum", as they say.

 

Hate to break it to you my man, but you might be "on the spectrum" yourself the way you radically adhere to your views on expansions. Inflexibility is a key symptom. All you're doing here is complaining about how other users here don't approach film music the way you do.

 

This is coming from someone who's been diagnosed with autism by the way---don't think of this as an insult, it's just an observation.

 

Also there's no such thing as an activity being "on the spectrum". I'm sure there are lots of people with autism (or ADHD for that matter) who are more interested in the actual musical content and can spend hours thinking/writing about that.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

17 minutes ago, Darth Crossfader said:

you radically adhere to your views on expansions. Inflexibility is a key symptom. All you're doing here is complaining about how other users here don't approach film music the way you do.

 

That's more about getting old. Everything used to be better!

[Darth Crossfader 618]

3 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

That's more about getting old. Everything used to be better!

 

And I'd say that's just a petty excuse for being inflexible

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

12 minutes ago, Darth Crossfader said:

 

And I'd say that's just a petty excuse for being inflexible

 

Just wait until you get old yourself!

[Andy 5,585]

Getting old is terrible! One minute you’re rocking out to Powell, then all of a sudden you soften to Delerue. 

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

You've always been a softie, you just didn't know it! 

[Marian Schedenig 9,718]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

2 hours ago, Darth Crossfader said:

you radically adhere to your views on expansions. Inflexibility is a key symptom. […]

 

That's more about getting old. Everything used to be better!

 

Then Thor has been old for two decades. 

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

He was born old.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

13 hours ago, Andy said:

What the hell is normal thinking anyway?

 

I'm afraid normal people don't think much. 

 

13 hours ago, Andy said:

the merits of bacon

 

My thread has become famous! My work here is done, now I can rest on my laurels. 

[GerateWohl 5,578]

4 hours ago, Darth Crossfader said:

All you're doing here is complaining about how other users here don't approach film music the way you do.

Hm. I don't see that ever happening. Thor just points out and explains his view on things. I can't remember him complaining about other's views. 

There are people feeling criticized just by being confronted with an opposite opinion as theirs. Maybe that's rather the issue.

[Meredith McKay 7,340]

28 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Hm. I don't see that ever happening. Thor just points out and explains his view on things.

[Darth Crossfader 618]

53 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

Hm. I don't see that ever happening. Thor just points out and explains his view on things. I can't remember him complaining about other's views. 

There are people feeling criticized just by being confronted with an opposite opinion as theirs. Maybe that's rather the issue.

 

We must have read different posts then

[Mr. Hooper 4,221]

16 hours ago, Andy said:

To discuss trimming our pubic hair and the merits of bacon.

Or the merits of our pubic hair and the trimming of our bacon.

 

54 minutes ago, GerateWohl said:

There are people feeling criticized just by being confronted with an opposite opinion as theirs. Maybe that's rather the issue.

Anyone with such a delicate temperament should probably avoid the Internet.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

10 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

Anyone with such a delicate temperament should probably avoid the Internet.

 

Dude, he's just stating his personal opinion!

 

 

17 hours ago, Andy said:

A dear friend of mine has children who’ve been diagnosed with autism

 

Which JWFan users are you referring to? 🤔

[Mr. Hooper 4,221]

14 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

Dude, he's just stating his personal opinion!

I'm simply saying that if someone gets his feathers ruffled just from being confronted with an opposing viewpoint, maybe the Internet isn't the best place for said person. Seems reasonable.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Hooper said:

I'm simply saying that if someone gets his feathers ruffled just from being confronted with an opposing viewpoint, maybe the Internet isn't the best place for said person. Seems reasonable.

 

Agreed. I was making a joke.

[Mr. Hooper 4,221]

Just now, Jurassic Shark said:

 

Agreed. I was making a joke.

Ah, well, you know how well jokes travel through the screen sometimes.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

Just now, Mr. Hooper said:

Ah, well, you know how well jokes travel through the screen sometimes.

 

I even included a wink smiley...

[Thor 9,081]

The "spectrum" line definitely didn't fly well! It was meant rather tongue-in-cheek to describe our offbeat obsessions, so maybe 'obsessive-compulsive' had been a better description. I think it's useful and even healthy to step back from one's own nerd-dom now and then, and try to look at it with outsider eyes -- how weird some of our activities may seem to them.

 

I think many of us have some autistic traits in us, to varying degrees. It's part of being in a niche. I know I definitely do, although it takes other forms than the minutia thing, which I just find excruciatingly boring. For example, I'm very concerned with having neatly organized collections -- both the CDs on the shelf, and my iTunes collection, each with intrinsic systems.

 

Another example - I recently started a walkthrough of my entire music collection, from A to Z. When I posted about it on FSM, member HurdyGurdy said: "Any kind of methodic A-Z kind of listen through seems a bit robotic/spectrum-y to me (no offence intended). But I admire your efforts."

 

I sorta agree with him.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

I find it weird when people here write that they can't check out an album yet (that they've already got in their collection) because it's Christmas and they have to listen to Christmas-y music until a certain date. 

[Thor 9,081]

4 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I find it weird when people here write that they can't check out an album yet (that they've already got in their collection) because it's Christmas and they have to listen to Christmas-y music until a certain date. 

 

Is that a thing?

 

This Christmas, I played very little Christmas music. Not even HOME ALONE. Too much else to listen to.

[Andy 5,585]

31 minutes ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I find it weird when people here write that they can't check out an album yet (that they've already got in their collection) because it's Christmas and they have to listen to Christmas-y music until a certain date. 

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

2 minutes ago, Andy said:

 

It wasn't me!

[Marian Schedenig 9,718]

2 hours ago, Jurassic Shark said:

I find it weird when people here write that they can't check out an album yet (that they've already got in their collection) because it's Christmas and they have to listen to Christmas-y music until a certain date. 

 

Well, "have to" as in "want to". Over the years, I've assembled a collection of various Christmas-y music, like Williams's scores, various choir albums of carols, and a couple of albums of Ralph Vaughan Williams music for various Christmas settings. I don't play them throughout the year, because I tend to cling to the ever harder to reach Christmas-y atmosphere I remember from my childhood Decembers, so I try to fuel that by playing matching music that I don't listen to outside the season. What with that and December generally being a hectic time when people are short of time, that doesn't leave them for much other music.

 

Certainly obsessive to a degree, but with(in) reason.

 

…and afterwards I discovered that there's actually one more album of RVW carol settings that I've acquired this year which I'd totally forgotten about and never listened to. That'll have to wait until next December.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

6 minutes ago, Marian Schedenig said:

and afterwards I discovered that there's actually one more album of RVW carol settings that I've acquired this year which I'd totally forgotten about and never listened to. That'll have to wait until next December.

 

It's okay to listen to it now, and next December. 

[Loopy 25]

I just come to this forum for the "They're all dead!" jokes.

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

We could have done more.

[Holko 11,054]

4 hours ago, Loopy said:

I just come to this forum for the "They're all dead!" jokes.

NOOO

The resident spambot needs no encouragement!

[Jurassic Shark 14,204]

Count on Holko to label John Williams a spambot.

[Davis 3,727]

Who is the resident spambot, I wonder?

[GerateWohl 5,578]

On 11/01/2025 at 10:29 AM, Thor said:

These statements remind me of the Noël Carroll quote from 1986, when he talks about why there is so little music discussion in film books: ”Debarred from the lingua franca of music criticism", he says, "[the film analyst] decides to say nothing at all”.

 

I've always found that unfortunate, because we are all equipped with one thing - adjectives. My musicological knowledge is very, very basic, but I've found that I can come a long way with using adjectives and language in general. Film music is also more accessible than other types of music, as you can approach it from other angles than just the musicological one that is common for "absolute" music.

 

So whether you're doing scholarly work, or just shooting the breeze at the pub (which is sorta what I consider these messageboards), film music lends itself very well to music talk, I've found. While music in itself is non-representational, it becomes representational when attached to concrete images and stories. That opens up a whole slew of possibilities.

 

But yes, there's no denying that this is a widespread concern that prevents many people from doing it, that it's "safer" to talk about everything tactile around the musical aesthetics itself, like sound issues, artwork, shipping, unreleased cues and what-have-you.

As I wrote in one of my previous posts here I think, this doesn't necessarily have to do with missing vocabulary but rather with the changed way of music reception. With the count of new releases that I purchased in the past few years, I wasn't able to spend much time with these. If you listen to a score program of two times 70 minutes (common expansion length) and even listen to it while you are doing something else, how would you in that way actually get to know the work well enough to talk about it?

And not every score is a John Williams score. Not all scores are worth a deep and close listen. Even if I sit down and try, these expansions often contain a lot of musical passages that get me distracted by something else, simply because there is not enough going on in the music to keep my attention. And actually, I don't have enough sparetime at my hands to permanently doing nothing else than closely listen to my new CDs.

 

That was in a way an advantage that I got hold of the A.I. expansion while I was liying down with Covid, so I had time to really explore the relase in detail.

 

Another topic is, that things that are often discussed in context of new releases like micro edits, ommissions from the recording sessions or sound issues in the high registers is something that come really at the very end of musical reception of a particular work. If I have a double album of music with about a hundred to a hundred thirty minutes of composed, performed and recorded music there is actually so much to talk about. As soon I am done with getting familiar with all of this, then I could spare a thought on what might be missing. I accept this as a work presented as intended by the composer. So, I don't question that and "fix" his work by creating my own edits. But that's just me, my way of reception. I know in the meantime, everyone deals different with this kind of thing. Totally find. I just try to contribute to the question, why people are discussion less about the actual music at hand.

 

 

[Bayesian 1,492]

9 hours ago, Holko said:

NOOO

The resident spambot needs no encouragement!

Holy lord, isn’t that the truth.😒  So fucking sick of that “joke.”

[Thor 9,081]

2 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

As I wrote in one of my previous posts here I think, this doesn't necessarily have to do with missing vocabulary but rather with the changed way of music reception. With the count of new releases that I purchased in the past few years, I wasn't able to spend much time with these. If you listen to a score program of two times 70 minutes (common expansion length) and even listen to it while you are doing something else, how would you in that way actually get to know the work well enough to talk about it?

And not every score is a John Williams score. Not all scores are worth a deep and close listen. Even if I sit down and try, these expansions often contain a lot of musical passages that get me distracted by something else, simply because there is not enough going on in the music to keep my attention. And actually, I don't have enough sparetime at my hands to permanently doing nothing else than closely listen to my new CDs.

 

That was in a way an advantage that I got hold of the A.I. expansion while I was liying down with Covid, so I had time to really explore the relase in detail.

 

Another topic is, that things that are often discussed in context of new releases like micro edits, ommissions from the recording sessions or sound issues in the high registers is something that come really at the very end of musical reception of a particular work. If I have a double album of music with about a hundred to a hundred thirty minutes of composed, performed and recorded music there is actually so much to talk about. As soon I am done with getting familiar with all of this, then I could spare a thought on what might be missing. I accept this as a work presented as intended by the composer. So, I don't question that and "fix" his work by creating my own edits. But that's just me, my way of reception. I know in the meantime, everyone deals different with this kind of thing. Totally find. I just try to contribute to the question, why people are discussion less about the actual music at hand.

 

Those are excellent points, Gerate.

 

It kinda relates to a different topic, which is how you listen to soundtrack albums. As I tend to say, "I listen to albums, not archives"™. I press 'play' and let it play out until it finishes. I sometimes wonder if people concerned with these minutia things don't do that, but rather listen to cues individually, or in some other way. Or do they sit down and listen to them from start to finish like I do?

[GerateWohl 5,578]

I made some good experience with from time to time to listen to a score album starting e.g. at track 6 or track forteen and see how that goes. By that often I discovered some of my favourite pieces of a score where I didn't pay enough attention before when I just listened from the start of the album.

 

[Richard P 4,517]

2 hours ago, GerateWohl said:

Another topic is, that things that are often discussed in context of new releases like micro edits, ommissions from the recording sessions or sound issues in the high registers is something that come really at the very end of musical reception of a particular work. If I have a double album of music with about a hundred to a hundred thirty minutes of composed, performed and recorded music there is actually so much to talk about. As soon I am done with getting familiar with all of this, then I could spare a thought on what might be missing. I accept this as a work presented as intended by the composer. So, I don't question that and "fix" his work by creating my own edits. But that's just me, my way of reception. I know in the meantime, everyone deals different with this kind of thing. Totally find. I just try to contribute to the question, why people are discussion less about the actual music at hand.

 

Yes, I do this a lot, although most of the time it doesn't result in any changes - at most, a track re-ordering, and deciding which bonus tracks to keep. I almost never keep an expanded score set exactly as ripped. Most typical changes for me are re-creating a film edit if I think it's a really great editorial piece of work, perhaps adding a trailer or source piece, and maybe opting to keep a few OST tracks that I feel offer something different. If it's a score that I'm slightly less fond of, I determine any tracks I'm dropping - some scores are just too long in complete form.

 

And I don't consider that abnormal at all - no producer is ever going to produce an expansion in a way that makes everyone happy in terms of ordering, track joining and so on. I alway see them as a professional and extremely polished starting point for my personal playlist. I went back and forth a million times with Sleepy Hollow on various aspects, and there were a ton of editorial, versioning and bonus/alternates things to think about there.

 

18 minutes ago, Thor said:

It kinda relates to a different topic, which is how you listen to soundtrack albums. As I tend to say, "I listen to albums, not archives"™. I press 'play' and let it play out until it finishes. I sometimes wonder if people concerned with these minutia things don't do that, but rather listen to cues individually, or in some other way. Or do they sit down  and listen to them from start to finish like I do?

 

On occasion I can listen to a whole album, but most of the time it's either sections or individual tracks. I'm definitely an archiver - see my prior comments about Sleepy Hollow, a score where the minutia took a long time to figure out.

 

This is also why I don't treat bonus sections in a way that I suspect expansion producers would probably like us to, i.e. creating a mini program to just put on and enjoy, free of context. Nah, I want to know what I'm listening to and where it fits in the overall work.

[Thor 9,081]

10 minutes ago, Richard P said:

On occasion I can listen to a whole album, but most of the time it's either sections or individual tracks. I'm definitely an archiver - see my prior comments about Sleepy Hollow, a score where the minutia took a long time to figure out.

 

This is also why I don't treat bonus sections in a way that I suspect expansion producers would probably like us to, i.e. creating a mini program to just put on and enjoy, free of context. Nah, I want to know what I'm listening to and where it fits in the overall work.

 

Yeah, that makes sense. That approach is all very alien to me, but reasonable from your point of view.

[Davis 3,727]

1 hour ago, Bayesian said:

Holy lord, isn’t that the truth.😒  So fucking sick of that “joke.”

Don’t tell that to Williams.

[Manakin Skywalker 5,571]

3 hours ago, Bayesian said:

Holy lord, isn’t that the truth.😒  So fucking sick of that “joke.”

 

But all the other jokes are already dead!

[Meredith McKay 7,340]

3 hours ago, Thor said:

 

Those are excellent points, Gerate.

 

It kinda relates to a different topic, which is how you listen to soundtrack albums. As I tend to say, "I listen to albums, not archives"™. I press 'play' and let it play out until it finishes. I sometimes wonder if people concerned with these minutia things don't do that, but rather listen to cues individually, or in some other way. Or do they sit down and listen to them from start to finish like I do?

Start to finish for me. I see scores just like books, movies, plays, so on: A story.

[mrbellamy 7,078]

Often my listening is definitely just individual tracks or even skipping right to moments. Probably portable CD player/iPod brain (or while we're all self-diagnosing, possibly ADHD.) It's pretty much snacking, I'll get a craving to hear something specific. Full start-to-finish listens are first listens or special revisits for me. I don't have a listening routine...I guess I prefer chaos. 

 

It also comes from discovering so much stuff through compilations, or a habit of watching the movie and then just wanting to find my favorites on the album. So I think that definitely wired my brain to think of an album as a collection more than an exclusively linear work. Also a lot of albums don't have especially compelling programs imo. Which makes the exceptions very special to me. 

 

I think that's one of the things that makes John Williams so appealing, though. Because his concert pieces or film cues are often such a satisfying meal in and of themselves, I could feel like I got an entire narrative of the film, a character, a setting, a situation in just a few minutes. And I'd listen to that all day! It hardly ever occurred to me to put them all back together. 

 

There are a lot of John Williams soundtracks I haven't listened to in full in years, or ever? I have actually been digging back to a lot of these because it's a big blindspot, these holistic OST experiences. Especially the classic ones. I just listened to the original E.T. album all at once for the first time last year, at least to my memory. Guess what, it's awesome. 

[Datameister 2,384]

I embrace multiple styles of listening.

 

There's something singularly satisfying about listening to a great album in sequence—even if it's sometimes split by necessity into a couple of listening sessions.

 

But sometimes I'm in the mood for shuffle. The surprise and the variety can be fun in a different way.

 

Other times, I pick and choose specific tracks as I go.

 

Still other times, I listen to specific playlists that I've curated, either for linear listening or for shuffle.

 

They all have unique advantages and none of them are morally or artistically superior to the others in any objective way.

[Lady Dimitrescu 9,304]

On 11/01/2025 at 5:40 AM, Jamie Dutton said:

I don't want to hang out with people who are into this crap in real life. They're uncool. I want to be around cool Zack Morris types so that I can in turn feel cool, not a bunch of Screeches. 

 

 

[Schilkeman 1,388]

On 11/01/2025 at 4:29 AM, Thor said:

These statements remind me of the Noël Carroll quote from 1986, when he talks about why there is so little music discussion in film books: ”Debarred from the lingua franca of music criticism", he says, "[the film analyst] decides to say nothing at all”.

Just wanted to say that I recently read your Film Music Ex Narratio over on FSM, and enjoyed it. It shared and illustrated many of the opinions on ost albums-as-a-form, and what I call the "toy-maker" aspect of music, and particularly film music sans film, that I have been formulating the past couple of years.