Accelerating Down Fascination Street

The internet sucks. It’s too easy for you to check if what I’m saying is right.

So just pretend we’re in a bar and I’m relaying something to you because I like it and I know you will too. It might not be totally true. It might be that it’s one of those things that is nicer to believe is true.

I think of this simply because of the previous blob that mentioned The Cure‘s album, Disintegration. It’s a big fave of mine and I’m not alone in holding it in high regard. It even cracks a mention in South Park, when Robert Smith saves the world from the Mecha-Streisand. Not only does he save world, but as he leaves, Kyle yells, “Disintegration is the best album ever.” When you think about how rude the South Park boys are about most things, that is high praise.

It’s alleged that a music CD is 74 minutes long because that’s how long it takes to play Beethoven’s 9th. Slowly.

Why that piece? Well, Sony and Phillips looked at the most popular sales of classical music in Japan, saw that it was the 9th, worked with a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz, at 750,000 bits per square millimetre, and 74 minutes of Beethoven gives you a very reasonably sized 12 centimetre CD.

It’s also alleged that Robert Smith heard that this technology was coming down the line and said to his little lipsticked self, “I can now record 74 minutes of gloomy, synth guitar, fun, I can. Rather than a much shorter vinyl offering.” Or words to that effect.

So, Disintegration is a much longer album than a lot of its peers because Bob knew that he had the space to play with. If you buy the album in vinyl, you lose two tracks.

This spurious preamble is to set the scene for why my Spanish speaker, mentioned in the previous blob, was even thinking about The Cure. We had been having a conversation about driving distances and I mentioned that I have made it to Newcastle from Sydney inside a single playing of Disintegration. “Plainsong” on at my driveway, hammer down, “Untitled” fading as Emergency Contact and I pull up at Pink Patent Mary Janes' house. Done. (With stains on the carpet and stains on the memory.)

It doesn’t carry any particular, universal, significance. It’s just one of those things. I don’t break any laws to try and repeat the phenomenon… but if I do repeat it, I have extra special good luck for a period of 4 hours and no babies catch freckles. But apart from that, no special meaning whatsoever. Oh, and no one’s back get’s broken. Yup.