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I think Vaccination Scar was a perfect single. In terms of trying to reach older fans who reminisce of Road Apples and Up To Here, you got the slide guitar and Gord fitting in his lyrics without staggaring lines. I think it was a great first single, but Summer is not the right choice for a second... either Gus or You're Everywhere would have been more appropriate. The radio stations would have eaten them up...
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..they did release darkest one as a single..as for vaccination, perfect choice for first single...nashville..not so much...editing out the "fucks" takes a lot away from the song..it kind of sums up the whole point of the tune, and without them the first verse sounds..well..silly..."he said this and that.."...
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Vaccination Scar was an OK choice........but they really dropped the ball with Summer is Killing Us Not single material at all.
Makeshit should certainly have been a first or second single.
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I agree with most people here... I think the first the first single has to be a straight rock tune and VS fits that well. Also, it's a pretty short tune, so they didn't have to cut out a solo or any breaks to make it short enough for radio.
Summer hasn't impressed me at all yet. I always skip over that and often over Heaven too. You're Everywhere is by far my favourite song from the album and I think it would've been a wicked second single to pick up where VS left off.
BTW, Rye, good point about being judged on your recent past efforts. I totally agree with you about Good Life. I know a lot of people that think it's weak and I don't particularly think it was the best choice for the first single from IVL (after the struggle of M@W), but I still love it. I think it would've gotten way more respect on an album like DFN, but after the release of another album or two, I think it's respect will climb close to (but not quite as high as) other slow songs like Bob C.
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MakeShift gets my vote -- especially over VS & Summer -- at shows, i will use those two songs to get another beer or go to the John. back to back allows me to do both!! i just personally feel they are the weakest singles to date!!!!
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VS is a good song. It's just not very 'hooky.' The only real catchy part is the guitar work. It's not enough that a song sound like what people expect of the Hip...to work as a single is has to be memorable, catchy. Indeed, I think that VS is the worst of both worlds---it reproduces the established 'Hip sound' but without the memorable hooks of their older hits. So their older fans go, 'oh, they're not as good as they used to be' and potential fans go 'meh.' Again, not to say it's a bad song...just not a single, any more than 'On the Verge' should have been the leadoff single from Road Apples.
'Summer' is a GREAT song, much more memorable and demented than VS, but it's too complicated for radio---it takes a couple of listens to see the patterns. And the manic quality of Gord's vocals, while wonderfully loose and spontaneous, is too 'underground,' NOT radio-friendly. I cannot understand that as a choice of single (but I love the tune).
Makeshift! The obvious choice.
I also submit 'Mean Streak.' Now there's a tune that fits the established Hip pattern while tweaking it in a cool way, a good choice to lure both older and new fans.
Oh well.
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I haven't even heard any of the rest of the album yet (see other thread about IBE on the radio), but VS is not catchy or memorable for me in any way, and therefore made a poor choice as first single. It has a good energy and rhythm to it, but that alone doesn't make for something that will stick with you.
In fact, in past years I always rushed out to get the new Hip album from being juiced by hearing some cuts of it on the radio, and I just haven't felt that at all from VS and haven't heard anything else yet on the radio, so... I'm still going to get it at some point, of course, and I'm sure I'll like a lot of it, but VS gets a big "meh" from me and hasn't burned the fire into me to take a detour to a record store and pick up IBE.
I wonder if they even really care anymore about "making it" in the States (though I'm sure their label would like that), but how VS was supposed to connect with a large audience outside of their loyal fans is beyond me. It doesn't even seem to connect with some of the loyal fans like me.
Leonard Bernstein once said that good music was "inevitable", that you couldn't imagine one note not following another. A lot of the Hip's music (singles and album tracks) can be defined that way for me, but not VS. There's hardly a definable vocal line on there. Very meandering. Okay, so it "rocks out, maaan", but so what? To me, it's just not a great song, whereas many other Hip tunes have had that kind of energy but were also very memorable and distinct and inevitable.
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Well, I like the pent-up energy of the 'vaccination...scaaaaar' part. It's a serviceable tune with a definite place on the album, but I'm with you, it's no single.
Here's a question---does the band call the shots about singles? Or is that decided by record companies? I ask, because I know that my all-time-fave Elvis Costello has often complained about poor single selection by his record companies, so I assumed it wasn't the performers' call. Anyone know better?
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Do you think that Vaccination Scar, Summer's Killing Us and possibly Nashville will be available as cd singles to purchase much like Good Life was and came with an extra live track from Club 279?
It's double frustrating because this is a CD that fans of their older stuff really should be able to rally around...it should be a bit of a 'comeback' CD from a commercial point of view.
