Indablog
News, sessions, and oddities from the Indaba community. Written and curated by Streeter Seidell.
About Streeter
Streeter

Streeter Seidell is a comedy writer and (mediocre) drummer living in Brooklyn, NY. During the day he edits the front page of CollegeHumor.com but when the sun goes down he takes his place at the helm of the Indablog. He maintains a personal blog at StreeterSeidell.com and wants to make sure you know he once wrote something for the New York Times and that it was, in the words of his mother, "Amazing! You're so talented!"

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Blog Roll
  • David Byrne Journal
    Stop making sense David Byrne. Seriously, you make too much sense to us - it's scary. When are you coming by to hang out?
  • Creative Commons
    If you want to know about IP law - this is the place. CC is defining the cutting edge of music licensing.
  • Lefsetz Letter
    In his own words - "First in music analysis"
  • Wired Listening Post
    One of our favorite places to stay on top of what's happening in the music industry.
  • Create Digital Music
    Fairly relevant to Indaba :)
  • Underrated Magazine
    Our favorite NYC music-scene blog from our favorite CMJer.
  • StereoGum.com
    Super-hip music blog. A must for anyone serious about the NYC scene.
  • The Daily Swarm
    ll the news that fit to print ... about music, that is.
  • Idolator
    Gawker Media's music blog. Perfect if you like a little snark with your music news.
  • That's What Matt Said
    Shameless promotion, we know, but this is Matt's (Indaba Co-Founder) non-Indaba blog and he wants people to read it.
The Return of the Concept Album?

Wednesday July 23, 2008 at 06:00 PM

The Times UK has an interesting story about the re-emergence of the concept album.  Only a short while ago albums were declared dead and singles were slated to replace them.  However, the death of the CD has brought an unexpected return to form for a lot of bands who, I believe anyway, see an album-as-a-whole as the only way to get all their music out there.  Most successfully and recently, Green Day showed us that a concept album of sorts, American Idiot , can also be a huge chart topper.  Now, says the The Times, more bands are beginning to experiment with the idea.  Where once the land was rife with concept albums from The Wall to Tommy , we haven't seen that kind of attention to the over all product in a long while.  I for one am happy it's back. 

This time last year, Peter Brewis was feeling down. Despite critical plaudits for their second album, his band, Field Music, had failed to make a breakthrough, and he was running out of money. He decided to put the band on a sabbatical, moved into a new home in Newcastle, threw out his television, computer and radio, and cancelled the papers. Then he started to write.

A week later, he had the raw material for The Week That Was, a contemporary concept album about the influence of mass media on modern society, structured as an imaginary crime thriller in the style of the novelist Paul Auster.

Sounds pretty cool.  Read the rest of the article for more .

1 Comment:
Joe S. said:
Thursday July 24, 2008 at 09:44 AM

Great article! I'm a little uptight about the "silly 70's" comment though. There was some serious art rock that came out of that period.

I tend to think most albums are a snapshot of the artist at that point in time. Therefore most albums can be vaguely considerd "concept" albums. But the trick to 70's artists like Alan Parsons, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Yes, and other prog rockers is that they express a giant theme with their music that connects to the audience. Many times it seems they have tapped into the collective consciousness somehow.

As the eighties came and the video revolution the video directors tended to start telling the tales. So the return album the concept is welcome.'

To give an example here is Yes' "Owner Of A Lonely Heart", with a concept I'm sure Trevor Rabin never had in mind!

Thanks for posting this article. I will definitely check the artists out. :)

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