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Originally Posted by David
As usual, I don't know what everybody's talking about. Record sales? Aesthetic cohesion?
NOTHING would have made SYW sell more. It wouldn't have mattered if it had been a five-album package, a two-album package, a single-album package, or a collection of brass coasters. To hear Fleetwood Mac argue over one disc vs. two was pretty wild & pretty amusing.
The kids who DIDN'T buy SYW refrained from doing so NOT because it was too long or too short or too this or too that: they refrained from doing so because THEY DON'T GIVE A **** ABOUT A GEEZER ROCK BAND that means NOTHING to them or their friends. Get real, folks. It wouldn't have sold 3 million if it had been a "manageable" 12 tracks -- that would have had no effect on its sales at all. The people who bought SYW didn't tell their friends, "Oh, don't buy it because it's too unwieldy, too much music, too variable, too much for a pleasurable listening experience yabba-dabba-doo." And their friends didn't say, "Oh, well thanks for the advice." Their friends, if they said anything at all, probably said, "I wasn't gonna buy that **** anyway. Why are you telling me this? I'm buying System of a Down & maybe the Ying Yang Twins."
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I agree with this 150%. My aunt, who is 52, turned me on to Stevie Nicks, but purely by accident. I'm 27 and the only reason I got into FM/Stevie was because it had some personal meaning for me. I was really f"*ked up at the time and something about Storms grabbed me. Then, the entire Tusk album. My aunt doesn't have a huge collection, so I went out and bought everything I could get my hands on and then ordered some on the net.
But my friends
all said "why are you listening to that sh*t?" We were all into metal or punk and I still am, but I listen to FM or Stevie more than anyone else. I am the exception. There's no way in hell I'm ever going to turn my friends on to them or her. To everyone else, other than FM diehard fans, they're a washed up, 70s band trying to capitalize on their *once* success and set up their retirement funds. If I told my friends, "oh, but it's cohesive" or "they kept it down to 12 songs" they would look at me like I was insane. I wish that more people could get out of them what I have but the truth is, FM's big ship has sailed and the ones who care now and go to concerts are either the ones like me who they've touched with their music or the ones like my aunt who grew up with it and want to hear their old favorites. The Dance helped them to an extent, but they're still considered *has-beens* by most people.
I love SYW because I'll take any new material however I can get it and in whatever form it's packaged, but I'm a big fan. To the *outside* listener, it was a mess and definitely not cohesive. Come would be laughable I think to someone other than a big fan. So would a lot of the others. They could have cleaned SYW up more and changed the running order or nixed some songs to make it flow better, but it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference in sales if you're not already into FM.