(I've missed all you guys)
Here's a question that came up on the forum at discogs and I would love to hear your thoughts.
Here's a question that came up on the forum at discogs and I would love to hear your thoughts.
QuoteOn Melvins' 2002 album Hostile Ambient Takeover, the titles of the first two tracks are causing some confusion. Here are the facts:
* Hostile Ambient Takeover starts with two tracks: Track 1, which is short (:31) and Track 2, which is long (5:58). (Track 1 is generally regarded as an intro to the latter)
* One of these is called Black Stooges, the other is not given a title
There are two possibilities:
A) The intro is "Black Stooges" and the long track is untitled
B) The intro is untitled and the long track is "Black Stooges"
Discogs and Musicbrainz have generally followed Case A, while Wikipedia and RateYourMusic have followed Case B.
After looking into things, I believed strongly enough in Case A that I edited the releases in the database. I should've made this forum post first, but didn't. My bad, I'm new at this. Hopefully we can work together to come to a good conclusion here.
The case for Case A:
* The tracklists on the CD and vinyl editions start as follows:
1. Black Stooges
3. Dr. Geek
This strongly indicates that the first track is Black Stooges and the second track does not have a title
* Ipecac's 2016 digital release of the album lists the first track as "Black Stooges" and the second track as "(Untitled)". This is true on Spotify, Amazon Music, Deezer, Soundcloud, and Bandcamp. (But not Apple Music for some reason)
The case for Case B:
* A promo copy of the album lists the second track as "Black Stooges" and the first track as "Intro"
* The 7" single release of the long track is titled Black Stooges. According to this guy, this release only contains the long track and not the intro
* When appearing on live albums, the long track is called "Black Stooges" on Melvins vs. Minneapolis and The End, and is called "Ol' Black Stooges" on Millenium Monsterwork
* As mentioned above, the long track is called Black Stooges on Apple Music
Since some of these facts contradict each other, assumptions have to be made when considering each case.
Case A (long track untitled) has to assume that:
1) The promo CD is wrong (This kind of thing does happen from time to time)
2) The two tracks were conceived as parts of a whole (Like the tracks on The Maggot), and "Black Stooges" in a way refers to both tracks, which is why the 7" single is called Black Stooges
3) The long track is referred to as "Black Stooges" in live setlists to avoid confusion
Case B (short track untitled) has to assume that:
1) When Ipecac released the album digitally, they mixed up the titles of the first two tracks and in seven years have never corrected it
2) Either:
a) All the physical tracklists are extremely complicated for no reason. "1 - Black Stooges" would have to imply that track 1 is not called Black Stooges, and is instead the intro to track 2, which is "Black Stooges", but track 1 is still labeled "Black Stooges" because the two tracks are part of a whole and the two tracks combine to form the complete Black Stooges, like the tracks on The Maggot. (But instead of both tracks having the same name like the tracks on The Maggot, track 1 is untitled for some reason)
OR
b) Every physical album's tracklist is wrong
I believe strongly in Case A, that the intro is "Black Stooges" and the long song is untitled. I find it very easy to believe that the band chose not to title the song (probably as a joke) back in 2002, but changed their minds later on and started calling it Black Stooges because that made more sense. While digital tracklists can occasionally have errors, I think Ipecac or the band would've noticed there was an error after 7 years and counting. (My guess for the Apple Music discrepancy is that someone working there manually changed it because they believe in Case B.
I'm not ruling out Case B entirely, but you have to jump through so many hoops to conclude that this tracklist means track 1 isn't called Black Stooges that I just find it incredibly implausible. The 7" single having a title is a pretty solid argument though.
If I've missed some important context, let me know. Again, sorry for editing everything before posting here, but I feel pretty strongly about this one.
