Context

This is about CONTEXT - I'm going to have a little rant.

Context is Dead Important. It seems to me that barely a day goes by without me reading something, or hearing something, and having to ask "what's the context?". It's a variation on "so what?" People present things in isolation - why are you telling me this? What's the point?

Example: "We've got five new widgets!"
Great. Fantastic. I know what a Widget is, and I can imagine how useful it'll be. But how significant is having five new ones? If you didn't have any, and now you've got five, then that's great. If you've got 950 already, and now you've got another five, then that's less-great. If you've got 950, but you need 955, then five more is fantastic. CONTEXT.

I was playing a CD in the car the other day. I haven't changed the contents of the autochanger for a while, so we've now reached the point where I've forgotten what's in it, and whatever starts playing will be a surprise. A Jean Michel-Jarre track started playing - the hummable one you probably know from Oxygene. And I'm thinking "Great - Oxygene - haven't heard that in ages!"

The track ends and the next one begins - and it's something from somewhere else - Magnetic Fields, maybe - and then I realise - I'm listening to a "Best of...". The "Best of Jean Michel Jarre". The CD has a name, and I've forgotten what it is. Might be "Essential Jarre" - something like that.

I'm disappointed. I was expecting the next bit of Oxygene. I know these CD's - I've had them a very long time, and I'm very familiar with the music. I had the LP's before that - I grew up with them. This gets me thinking...

CONTEXT. Serious musicians produce albums - collections of songs or pieces of music. There will typically be some kind of personal or theme link. For example, the songs might all have been written over a summer, or while the writer was recovering from a personal disaster. The songs might all be about an ex-girlfriend. The writer might have just come back from a long trip to somewhere foreign, and their music will be oozing with influences from that culture. They might all be angry songs, or depressed songs. The next album might be completely different. If you're Madonna, you might re-invent yourself a bit. A new musical style might emerge, and you might embrace it. Any number of things. And the combination of any number of things.

In that sense, an album is a greater whole, and the album gives each of the songs within it a CONTEXT. Oxgygene Part 4 might well be a perfectly good piece of music, but if you're not hearing it as the fourth track on Oxygene, then you're not hearing it in the original context that Jean Michel Jarre intended. You're not getting the full message, or the full effect. In a lot of cases - like with songs - this might not be such an issue. But - with Jarre - with his music - I think the effect was particularly acute. The whole experience of listening to this music felt WRONG. One hummable Jarre track after another - it was horrible. It was a hollow experience.

Sometimes, you might think that a particular artist has produced a truly awful album, but there's one track on it that really works for you, and that you like. So in that situation, I can see that there is a place for taking that track and putting it somewhere else - in amongst other things that you like - but for an artist that you like a lot - where it's more like the odd track that DOESN'T work for you, then I think "Best of..."'s are a bad idea and to be avoided.

So there's my tip - avoid "Best of..." CD's of artists that you really like.