Ideal Album Lengths

We knew we were in trouble when Aerosmith started putting out 60-minute records.

I recently purchased two Van Halen albums on vinyl and noticed how quickly I had to flip the record. VH wasn’t prone to long-winded releases. Check out the times of their first several records:

Van Halen, 35:34
Van Halen II, 31:36
Women and Children First, 33:35
Fair Warning, 31:11
Diver Down, 31:04
1984, 33:22

Not until you get into the CD era do their albums go over 40 minutes.

It’s not as if the LP format was limited to 35 minutes’ worth of music. I remember back in the day dubbing LPs onto a side of a Maxwell 90-minute cassette tape and having to cut songs when copying Genesis records. My first two purchases from Genesis were …And Then There Were Three and Selling England by the Pound, which both came in at over 53 minutes, more than an entire album side of material than your typical Van Halen record. Talk about getting more bang for your buck.

You could argue that the fidelity of those old Genesis albums wasn’t very good due to the physical constraints of the LP format and the compromises that had to be made to pack in that much music, but there were very good-sounding records with more content than your standard hard rock album:

Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon: 42:50
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions: 43:52
Supertramp, Breakfast in America: 46:06
Toto IV: 42:17
Michael Jackson, Thriller: 42:16

Clearly, even during the vinyl era, bands could put out records that were over 40 minutes that still sounded amazing (which is why engineer Ken Caillat’s argument that the wonderful song ”Silver Springs” had to be dropped from the 38-minute Rumours doesn’t really hold water).

But then came the CD, and things started to get out of hand. Aerosmith’s 1993 release Get a Grip clocked in at a whopping 62 minutes! Who on Earth needed to hear over 60 minutes of Aerosmith in 1993? Van Halen’s 1998 release Van Halen III was 63 minutes. Rush got into the act too, with Vapor Trails and Snakes and Arrows both well over an hour long.

I’m a big Rush fan. But that’s too damn long.

Listening to records from the CD era, it’s hard not to conclude that if artists had had some self-discipline, they could have ended up with a perfect 40-minute record. I recently listened to the Genesis album We Can’t Dance from 1991, and it’s generally regarded as a subpar album, but it’s over 71 minutes! If you cut out five of the weakest tracks (and there are definitely five weak tracks), I think you’d end up with a very good 45-minute album.

For a more recent example, Peter Gabriel’s I/O from 2023 may contain some good songs, but once again, it runs at almost 70 minutes long. It’s just too much, with too many tracks that aren’t distinctive enough to hold a listener’s attention for over an hour.

One could rightly point out that some of the greatest records ever released have been double-LPs with a lot of material. Consider the following:

The Beatles, The Beatles (White Album): 93:33
The Rolling Stones, Exile on Main St.: 67:07
The Who, Quadrophenia: 81:42
Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti: 85:59
Fleetwood Mac, Tusk: 74:02
Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life: if you include the extra EP included with the double album, a whopping 104:29
The Clash, London Calling: 65:07
Pink Floyd, The Wall: 80:42
Prince, 1999: 70:29

That’s a pretty amazing list, so why was it okay for those bands to put out lengthy records but not Aerosmith, Van Halen and Rush?

Well, it would have been okay for those bands to put out a double album when they were at their creative peaks. You want to combine Toys in the Attic and Rocks into one double album? Sold! It would be among the all-time best. The same for Van Halen’s first two records or Rush’s Permanent Waves and Moving Pictures.

But by the 1990s, these bands were not producing their best stuff. Yes, some of it was good. Maybe a lot of it was good. But an awful lot was filler, fluff, overwrought, drawn out and tedious. Long albums should be reserved for artists at their peaks, creating so much material that they can hardly stop themselves from composing great track after great track, struggling to find a way to get it all out on record. That’s why in the CD era it made sense for artists like Smashing Pumpkins, 2Pac, Drive-By Truckers, Beyonce, Christina Aguilera and Arcade Fire to put out really long albums. It was their time.

In the 1990s, it was not Rush’s time, or Genesis’s or Van Halen’s.

And let’s face it: sometimes less is more. I’ll take a perfect half-an hour record by Van Halen any day over a bloated album that has me constantly reaching for the skip button.

After writing the above, I wondered if I’d ever committed the sin of producing an album that was way too long. I did a quick check, and the longest one I’ve ever completed was The Palisades from 2016, clocking in at 47:53. And you know what? It would probably have been better at 40 minutes.

So there you are.

Hitchcock's Rear Window

With Oscar night right around the corner, movies have been on my mind, and last week I happened upon a particular episode of the fabulous podcast Filmspotting, in which co-hosts Adam Kempenaar and Josh Larsen pitted Hitchcock’s 1954 Rear Window against his 1958 film, Vertigo. The former has long been in my top three movies of all-time (along with Avalon and Cinema Paradiso), and after watching it last spring for maybe the 20th time, I determined that it was conclusively my favorite film. I was curious to see where Adam and Josh would land on these two films, especially given that Vertigo has long been touted as one of the top two or three movies of all-time on many lists. I needn’t have worried. A few minutes in, I learned that Josh’s default answer for his favorite film has been Rear Window for quite a while.

Not that I needed the validation. I first saw the film at summer camp in Madison, Wisconsin, between my sophomore and junior years of high school, where my fellow music nerds and I would gather in the cafeteria at night to watch movies. Rear Window and Psycho were on the docket that summer, and from that point on, I was all in. For the next half a decade or so it was all Hitchcock, all the time. I rented every movie I could find (oddly, the nearby Sentry grocery store had virtually all of Hitchcock’s 1950s films available for rental on VHS), borrowed several books from the local library (eventually purchasing the wonderful book of filmmaker François Truffaut’s interviews of Hitchcock), and eventually used my newfound knowledge to write a paper for Mrs. Kossoris’s senior English composition class. I was kind of a Hitchcock bully for a while, subjecting many friends to a movie rental night of a subpar film (Topaz and Torn Curtain come to mind) after likely forcing the critical decision at the video rental store.

My enthusiasm for Hitchcock films has been tempered only somewhat since my teenage years, mostly because I started with the best. Rear Window was the first one I saw, and it is indeed his masterpiece. Others have been a hell of a lot of fun: The Lady Vanishes, Lifeboat, Notorious, North by Northwest, Psycho – but nothing rises to the same level of Rear Window, not even Vertigo. That film is wonderful for its creepiness, its pacing, its dreamlike atmosphere and swirling score, not to mention the superb acting of Jimmy Stewart yet again, but there are more holes in Vertigo’s plot than there are in a Chinese checkers board. Suspension of disbelief is sometimes required when watching film, and I love Vertigo, but I never finish the movie feeling entirely satisfied, similar to how I feel after purchasing a new car and wondering if I’ve been taken by the sales guy.

With Rear Window, the only lingering feelings are those of pure delight. When I first viewed the film in 1984, I was positively captivated by Grace Kelly, enthralled with the comedic banter between her, Stewart and the amazing Thelma Ritter, and stressed out beyond belief at the film’s climax. Unfortunately, suspense can’t really be easily duplicated after multiple viewings, and though I may no longer fear for Lisa Fremont’s life when she’s caught in Lars Thorwald’s apartment, Hitchcock’s deft direction and the smart dialogue of screenwriter John Michael Hayes keeps this movie from getting stale even after several viewings. Hayes may not be a household name – I had to look it up for this blog – but he hit the ball out of the park on this one, not just for its entertainment value, but for its larger themes of voyeurism, isolation, loneliness, and what it means to be a neighbor, issues that sadly feel as on-point today as they likely did in 1954.

Other films I’ve seen have knocked me off my feet for a variety of reasons: Broadcast News, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Goodfellas, Beginners, High Fidelity, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Witness for the Prosecution, The Big Short, Charade, Parasite, Holiday, Amadeus, Schindler’s List, Elf, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Searching for Sugarman, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Get Out, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Roman Holiday, I’m Thinking of Ending Things, I Tonya, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Wall*E, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tar, Finding Nemo, Fiddler on the Roof, Long Shot, Michael Clayton, Magnolia, The Great Escape, It’s a Wonderful Life, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense…

But if I had only one film to live with for the rest of my life (not counting trilogies and the like), Rear Window is tops for me.

Now, onto the 2024 Oscars!

My new rock album, Pop and Circumstance

POP AND CIRCUMSTANCE (2024)

Listen on Spotify, Apple, YouTube, Amazon, Tidal or this website.

1. What Love Can Do
2. Get Out While the Getting’s Good
3. Your Work Day
4. One Good Turn
5. A Thing For You
6. Stretched Too Thin
7. Codependency
8. Long

Music and Lyrics written by Paul Heinz.

Drums – Josh Holm, except track 6, Sam Heinz.
Bass – Johnny Furman, tracks 1-3, Julian Wrobel, tracks 4-8, PH, supplemental bass.
Guitar – Brandon Schreiner, tracks 1, 2, 7, solo on 5, Griffin Cobb, tracks 3-4, Roy Anderson tracks 5-6, 8, PH, supplemental guitar.
Backup Vocals – Jessica Heinz and PH.
Second Vocal on track 2 – Anthony Calderisi.
Paul Heinz – vocals and keys.

Copyright 2024, Paul Heinz. All Rights Reserved.

Cover art by Sarah Heinz based on a concept by PH.

Drums engineered by Mark Walker at Kiwi Audio, Batavia, IL, on July 10, 2022.
Mixed by PH with helpful feedback from Mark Walker, Johnny Furman, Brandon Schreiner, Sam Heinz and Anthony Calderisi.

Mastered by Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room, Chicago, IL.

Thanks to all of the musicians, engineers and artists, as well as to Isaac Triska for giving it his all.

******************************************************************************

The short version is that I’d hoped to be completed with this project by December of 2022. Oops.

Here’s the long version. Still just clawing our way out of the pandemic in the spring of 2021 and immediately on the heels of completing The Human Form Divine, I decided to tackle what I thought was a brilliant idea: take the original recordings from my 2000 album, Better Than This, and mess around with the mixes. Maybe re-record the vocals of a 32 year-old me and replace them with my more mature voice, add some live drums, get things properly mastered. It would be a blast! So I took out my trusty CD-ROMs upon which I’d stored all the tracks, only to discover that most of them weren’t retrievable. Gone. I even took the CDs to a specialist, and the conclusion was the same: I either had to live with what I recorded back in 1999 or completely re-record the tunes.

Well, why not? I relearned my piano parts, got a proper click-track programmed, recruited my son Sam to record drums, and even tracked down the original guitarist from the original album, Andrew Portz from Pennsylvania. Unfortunately, Sam didn’t get the songs down during the summer of 2021 and was soon back off to college. I was in a bit of a bind.

I searched for a replacement drummer, and after hitting a few dead ends, Josh Holm entered the picture, recommended to me by my friend and current podcasting partner Chris. Our initial conversation went something like this: would you like to play drums on an album? If yes, we have two options: completely re-record Better Than This or record a new album of what was shaping up to be a collection of up-tempo tunes, possibly in the realm of power pop. Josh chose the latter, thinking it would be a lot more fun to create parts for new tunes rather than reproducing parts for old tunes. Probably a good call (though I’d love to revisit Better Than This one day).

This was in September in 2021. I hadn’t really written any songs yet but had snippets, some of which I’d shared with Chris a year or two earlier, hoping to do some collaborating, but he didn’t have the bandwidth to address them at the time. So I started writing in earnest, going back to song ideas I’d recorded on my phone over the years, and even one that I started composing over two decades ago (”Long”). It’s funny how once you make a commitment to finishing something, you actually finish something! I started marrying ideas together to complete songs, and as always happens once I start a project, I also wrote several songs from scratch in the ensuing months.

In December, I finally had a demo to send to Josh, a song called ”Your Work Day,” taken from a guitar line I’d written the previous March. Later that month I finished “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” the chorus of which I’d written the previous February and that I eventually combined with a verse I’d written in November of 2019.

“Codependency” was written in short order on guitar in July of 2021. It’s one of those chord progressions that I would never be able to write on piano. With guitar, I place my hands down and don’t really know what’s going to come out, and sometimes happy accidents occur. I finished the demo for this tune in January.

The phrase “What Love Can Do” was taken from a comment I made during a Packers game in January of 2022. Someone asked me if I wanted Aaron Rodgers to come back the following season, and I answered, “I want to see what Love can do” referring to the team’s second-string quarterback, Jordan Love. Someone said, “That would be a great song title.” And it was! I just needed to write a song. I started composing the tune and by the second week of February it had come together, with just a few lyrics to be ironed out.

I thought of “One Good Turn” in December of 2021 with the chorus pretty much complete. The verses came together that January, and the tune was ready save for a few lyrical phrases later that month.

In April I completed the demo for “Stretched Too Thin,” a song I began way back in 2010 when I still carried around a hand-held recorder. The verse and melody of the B section were fully formed right out of the box, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it beyond that. The bridge “…trying to be a good husband” was written in 2017, and then the tune sat on the backburner until I finally got the motivation to take it to the finish line.

The origins of “A Thing for You” came while I was cutting the lawn in May of 2021, with the verse melody pretty much complete. That September I composed the pre-chorus and chorus, the latter from a riff that I had written a year earlier for an entirely different tune.

Lastly was “Long,” a song I began writing in January and August of 1999 (I still have my original notes) during my stint in Emmaus Pennsylvania, nearly fully formed except for a few key lyrical phrases. Funny how just a few lines can really muck up a tune! It took me a “long” time, but I finally put this one to bed in May of 2022.

I met with Josh at his home to talk through the songs, and on July 10, 2022, he recorded drums at the now defunct Kiwi Studios in Batavia, IL, where I’d recorded at least parts of every album I’d made since The Palisades in 2016. Since my son Sam was back from school by this time, he played drums on “Stretched Too Thin,” and both he and Josh did a terrific job of injecting new life into songs. Real musicians do something that no amount of programming can accomplish. At the controls was Mark Walker who also assisted me on my last recording, and as is always the case at Kiwi, the session was low-stress and productive. We celebrated our achievement at the end of the day with drinks and stogies.

Because the music on this project resembled power pop, I recruited my old bandmate Johnny Furman to play bass, as we had played in a power pop band called Block 37 last decade. I knew he’d be perfect for my new batch of songs. Opting to play on three of them, he sent me tracks in August of 2022. Next on bass came my trusty assistant, Julian Wrobel, who’s played on my last three projects. Julian is a force on bass, employing lines that I couldn’t dream of in a million years. He came over to my house on two dates in August and knocked off the other five songs in short order.

On guitar, I first recruited another old bandmate from a long time ago, Roy Anderson, who I played with in Milwaukee back in 1991-1992. He had played guitar on a few tracks on The Dragon Breathes on Bleeker Street way back in 2003, and we’d recently gotten in touch again. I sent him tracks to a few tunes that I thought would be up his alley and he didn’t disappoint, adding parts to “Long,” “A Thing For You” and “Stretched Too Thin.” Griffin Cobb of Louisville, KY returned after doing a stellar job on my previous album, sending me tasty tracks remotely for “Your Work Day” and “One Good Turn.” Finally, a new musician friend of mine, Brandon Schreiner, came to the rescue on the remaining tracks, coming over a few times in the fall and early winter of 2022, taking the songs “What Love Can Do,” “Get Out While the Getting’s Good,” and “Codependency” to the finish line (at least guitar-wise. I still had a long way to go), and adding the solo to “A Thing For You.”

For vocals I was uncertain about what to do, as admittedly, my voice is not that strong for this type of music. My friend and fellow musician Isaac recorded a few tracks for a couple of tunes in January, but I ended up recording vocals myself, often with the attitude I desired but without the finesse and skill I wished for. I knew I needed help on at least one song, and my old cohort Anthony Calderisi came to the rescue, providing the second vocal for “Get Out While the Getting’s Good” in June of 2023. As ever, on backup vocals was my daughter Jessica, who knocked out her parts with professionalism in an hour or so. I’m glad she didn’t inherit her old man’s vocal chops.

I started mixing in earnest in July of 2023, but after a month or so I decided I hated everything I’d recorded and had to take a break. This happened with my last album as well, and after a few months of hemming and hawing, I ran into Brandon at an impromptu music jam in friend Rob’s basement, and he gave me the pep talk I needed to resume mixing. I also bounced an idea off him that I soon put into action.

Enter Mark Walker once again, the audio engineer who led the drum sessions over a year prior. I asked if he could help me take the mixes to the finish line once I got them to a decent place, and on December 3rd he came to my house and together we dialed in the bass and kick relationship that I so often struggle with, along with a few other issues. I handled multiple rounds of additional tweaks for the next week, and finally got the files sent off to Collin Jordan of The Boiler Room in Chicago for mastering.

For the album cover, I once again employed my in-house artist, daughter Sarah, who’s now done covers for four out of my last five albums. I had the idea of incorporating as many uses of the word “pop” as possible, and Sarah didn’t disappoint, completing the art in short order, long before I’d even finished recording.

So there you have it! Next up is (I think) an album of moody music composed around a particular theme, hopefully with my daughter Jessica contributing on vocals. We shall see if it comes to fruition.

PH

A Christmas Carol and Embracing the Good We Do

Imagine attending a performance of the Dickens play, A Christmas Carol, except that this time it contained new information. Yes, Ebenezer Scrooge still finds his redemption toward the end of the play, but in a brief narrated postlude we learn that his kind and loving employee, Bob Cratchit, made a serious moral blunder just before dying at a young age. What moral blunder, you ask? Something short or child abuse, rape or murder, let’s say, but a detestable thing nonetheless, a very regrettable act. Which character – Scrooge or Cratchit – would we view in a better light? The one who brought misery to others for most of his existence except for a flash of philanthropy towards the finish line, or the one who lived a noble and loving life except for a flash of regrettable conduct toward his finish line?

Finish lines matter to us. When it comes to sports, it might be all that matters. I’ve often thought it’s a shame that as a fan you can experience jubilation for 8 ½ innings of baseball or 55 minutes of football, only to sour if the opposition scores six runs in the bottom of the ninth or two touchdowns in the final minutes of the fourth quarter, as if the previous joy you experienced never happened. It’s the ending that matters; the team that performed well for 90 percent of the game is a failure, and the team that performed poorly for 90 percent of the game is a success.

But what about human life? Is the finish line the be-all and end-all?

About twenty years ago I composed the following couplet:

Are we measured at the grave?
Or by the weight of equal days?

I had been contemplating the ability for humans to redeem themselves, to make up for past transgressions and finish life morally strong, perhaps with the hope that posterity will judge them for how they’ve completed the race rather than how they ran it. By contrast, if each of our days is weighed the same, then a poorly-lived life can never be overcome. If this is the case, then the legacy of a character like Ebenezer Scrooge would be far different than the one portrayed in the Dickens classic. Sure, we might applaud the miser’s late-life efforts, but we’d still condemn him for everything that preceded it.

I like to think that when it comes to the art of being human, we can view things less black and white than we do a sports game, granting ourselves and others a bit of latitude and allowing us to have it both ways.

Are we measured at the grave?

Yes. How horrible it would be to live life without believing in redemption, the ability to correct our errors, steer back on course, make up for past transgressions and strive to finish life with more wisdom and better conduct than preceded it. Without this, all of us at times would be unable to face another day.

Or are we measured by the weight of equal days?

Yes. How horrible it would be if we couldn’t take stock of the good we’ve done even after making a terribly regrettable act and happening to discover that our time has run out, that we’ll be unable to finish life the way we’d hoped.

As we begin the new year, let’s try to have it both ways: embrace all the good you’ve done and strive to do more good, and embrace all the good others have done, regardless of where they end up. After all, some never have a chance to redeem themselves. If Ebenezer Scrooge had died at the first site of Jacob Marley’s ghost, he never would have had a chance to rectify all the wrongs he’d committed.

Life can be tough. Let’s try to grant ourselves and others all the generosity we can muster.

Give More, and Give More Wisely

Recently listening to George Michael's 1990 release, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (a fantastic album – if you don't know it, give it a chance), I was struck by the lyrics of the opening track, “Praying for Time,” a tune that intrigued me upon its initial video release on MTV back in the day, but one that I'd never properly absorbed lyrically. It's about the haves and the have-nots, or as Michael offers, the “beggars and the choosers.”

He sings:

The rich declare themselves poor
and most of us are not sure
If we have too much
but we'll take our chances
’Cause God's stopped keeping score

And something a bit more direct in verse two:

These are the days of the empty hand
You hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

Strong stuff, and the call to action implicit in “Praying for Time” is something that I think needs to be wrestled with. Whether or not you believe in God, I think it's better to live as if what we do matters, and if believing – or merely considering – that there is an entity "keeping score" of our actions is what spurs you into doing more to help others, so be it. Unfortunately, for many of us – even those who do believe in God – charity is indeed nothing more than a few articles of clothing dropped off at Goodwill twice a year.

To which I say, do more. Give like it matters. Give like someone is tallying all of your actions, keeping score, whether or not you think it’s nonsense.

I find it fascinating and frustrating that many who consider themselves Christians don’t take Luke 18:25 to heart:

Indeed, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.

I’ve heard preachers attempt to wriggle their way out of that verse, claiming it’s taken out of context, blah blah blah, but to me it sounds pretty fricking straight forward. Give. Don’t amass obscene amounts of wealth. If you do, you have a lot to answer for when you meet your maker.

Similarly, I find it no less fascinating and no less frustrating that many who consider themselves Jewish don’t take seriously the laws of tithing found in Leviticus 27:30, Numbers 18:25–28, Deuteronomy 14:22–24, and 2 Chronicles 31:5–6. 

Whether or not these Bible verses speak to you, you may find some assistance on how much to give and where to give on philosopher and philanthropist Peter Singer’s terrific website, The Life You Can Save. I’ve recently reevaluated the charitable giving for my household because of it.

Singer believes that not only do we not give enough, we don’t give wisely. We support charities that offer very little bang for the buck, eschewing the good we can do to the most destitute overseas in favor of helping far fewer here at home. I’ve chosen to take a middle-ground approach. I still have my favorite local organizations that I feel strongly about, but I am going to set aside a significant percentage to improving the lives of those who need it most (as well as to environmental causes). Singer’s website offers simple ways to give directly to the causes that you feel most strongly about: tackling climate change, saving lives, helping woman and girls, education…there’s certainly no shortage of worthy causes for you to focus on.

What I found particularly helpful is determining how much to give. If you take tithing to the letter of the law (and I’m not saying you shouldn’t), you give 10% of your income. Period. My family has been giving less than that, but now that we’ve paid our last tuition bill, I wanted to get some guidance on what makes sense for us going forward. Peter Singer’s website actually has a calculator that suggests a target amount for charitable giving, and if you want to know more, they include the formula used to determine the amount. Using this, my family will now boost our giving by about 50% next year. It may not be a perfect calculus, but it’s a nice guideline when asking the question, “How much should I give?”

Perhaps you won’t find the answer that works for you on the above website. But if charity for you has been “a coat you wear twice a year,” I urge you to reconsider your role on Planet Earth and what you can do to alleviate as much suffering as possible. You may have the power to do more good than you think.