The Hidden Track

The way that I usually sort my iTunes library is by date added. Sometimes album or artist. But just out of curiosity I pressed the time tab to see what the longest and shortest songs are. The shortest is an instrumental break from the last Spiritualized album called Harmony 3 (Voice) that lasts eighteen seconds and the longest being Nirvana’s song All Apologies that clocks in at thirty one minutes and thirty two seconds. Hang on, that’s about as long as the new Radiohead album. I don’t remember the song going on that long. I’m sure it was only about four minutes.
Ah yes, of course, I remember now. There’s about twenty minutes of silence and then the made up on the spot song come jam that is Gallons of Rubbing Alcohol Flow Through the Strip. Why? If it isn’t good enough to put on the album then keep it as a B side. Well it was a B side too.
A little further down the list is another Nirvana song Something In The Way that’s twenty minutes and thirty five seconds long. Again it’s a four minute song followed by silence then a muck about noise jam that they also used as a B side.
The silence is just an annoying inconvenience. Maybe they want it to be. Maybe its some crap pretentious artistic statement like on the end of The Stone Roses Second Coming which has ninety nine tracks, twelve actual songs then track after track of a few seconds silence and then an awful six minute dirge.
The Eels song Mr. E’s Beautiful Blues is a hidden track from the album Daisy’s of the Galaxy. The only thing hidden about it is that its absent from the song titles. But it is its own track that comes on right after the ‘last song’.
And it was released as a single. So not very hidden at all.



Get Eels: Mr. E's Beautiful Blues mp3 Here