This is a Hell of an album. I don't mean the music, so much as the process of cutting it up. The process made me question Hargis' sanity more than I already did.
I'm not the most organized person in the world and I don't mean to be too inside musical baseball here but editing audio is pretty straight forward. You look for the breaks in the waveforms and what's in between is the song. You start at the beginning and move to the end. Vinyl complicates the process somewhat as the pops and cracks can hide the audio you want but, still, when a song stops it's pretty obvious. Right?
Um. Not in this case.
Take a look at the the track list.
1. 3 Korean Children's Songs
2. Korean Folk Songs
Monggeumipo Taryrung
Sae Taryrung
Psalms 23
1. America The Beautiful
2. My Jesus Thou Wilt
3. Blessed Assurance
4. How Great Thou Art
5. He Hideth My Soul
6. In The Garden
7. Battle Hymn of the Republic
8. Down in the Valley
You've got some medleys going on with Side One and then Side Two is smooth sailing, right? Nope. Billy, as the song said, must have had his beer goggles on as well as his alleged confused-about-his-sexuality-and-inappropriateness-towards-children glasses.
First off, although Side One lists three tracks. Procedurally, you should be looking for three songs. No. There are eight bands. So the issue becomes two tracks that lists the contents of the songs and one that doesn't. Here's where it gets odd - the track that doesn't list the songs is the easiest one to cut up. There are definite breaks. Two of the folk songs blend into each other, making it impossible to split. And the hymns didn't morph into one another, either.
Side Two contains eight songs. Except My Jesus Thou Wilt and Blessed Assurance are actually a medley. DOH!
Anywho - it gave me a new appreciation (if that's the right word) of the album.
Download Three Korean Children's Songs
Download America The Beautiful
Download My Jesus Thou Wilt - Blessed Assuran
Download Battle Hymn Of The Republic
Someone finished burning a disc in the middle of "Three Korean Children's Songs."
On a less anal note, this post is great not necessarily for the music, but for the attention it attracts to record organization, which I've always found interesting, especially with multiple movements playing under a single heading that are inextricably linked.
Also Hargis was a crazy motherfuck.
Well, okay, this comment merely echoed the post, but I wanted to express my appreciation using more words than "fuck" and "yeah."
Posted by: Brad Nelson | April 08, 2009 at 03:19 PM
If you went through all this trouble to cut up the LP tracks properly, why didn't you give the files coherent names? Now I have do it.
Thanks anyway.
Posted by: William Zeuthen | April 09, 2009 at 04:51 AM
Brad - I'll take a look and re-upload it.
William - Whuh? They're named the name of the song and the MP3 tags are set.
Posted by: Paul | April 09, 2009 at 09:05 AM