A Lotta People Won’t Get No Justice Tonight»

My wife Carrie Brownstein has an interesting post up at Monitor Mix:

A man named Joshua Allen, using scientific methods, his internal good-taste barometer, and a whole lot of sass, has come up with the perfect song length. That length is 2:42. His article includes a link to a mix tape featuring songs that clock in at exactly 2:42.

Beware he who tries to quantify the perfect song length. Long ago, a member of the Clash’s entourage speculated that the perfect length was 2:55, and the band figured it should test the theory. Sure enough, the band got weeded when it was recording “Armagideon Time” and forgot that someone had instructed the engineer to cut them off at 2:55. As the band really starts to cook, it nears the mark, and so the geezer barks out on the intercom, “All right, let’s ‘ave you outtathere.” Joe responds, over a sinister Paul Simonon bass line, “OK, OK!/ Don’t push us/ when we’re…/ hot!” And then back into the track’s well-seasoned cast iron skillet. Lesson: you can’t quantify brilliance.

Also, Carrie mentions the greatness of Them’s “I Can Only Give You Everything” and the meh-ness of the MC5’s “High School.” What she might have considered is that the MC5’s version of “I Can Only Give You Everything” is even better than the original. That key change? Wicked.