Pet Sounds discussion (UK), Nov 23

[The Shift]

http://www.houstonpr.co.uk/next-concept-album-talks-pet-sounds-november-23rd/

Next Concept Album Talks: Pet Sounds, November 23rd

POSTED BY HAMISH THOMPSON   / UNCATEGORIZED

A while back we held our first Concept Album Talks.

The idea is pretty simple. It came about as we were trying to think of an interesting way to structure a set of talks from interesting people. We liked the idea of giving our speakers some constraints to work with, to give them a little bit of a challenge.

When you’re preparing a talk, the two most important things are the subject matter (what you are going to talk about) and the duration (how long you are going to talk for).

We realised that if you take the tracklisting from an album, then you have a list of subjects (the song titles) and durations (the lengths of each song) and the Concept Album Talks were born.

And so we devised a set of seven rules:

We’ll pick a record.
The name of the album will be the name of the event.
Each talk will be a track on the album.
We’ll arrange the speakers.  Each speaker will be limited to the running time of the track.
Each speaker will have to give a talk that makes sense of the track title.
They won’t be able to talk about the song though.
That’s it.
We’re pleased to say that we’re doing it again on Monday November 23rd at 6pm.  The next album will be the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds.  To whet your appetite, here is the track list and their lengths:

“Wouldn’t It Be Nice” 2:25
“You Still Believe in Me” 2:31
“That’s Not Me” 2:28
“Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)” 2:53
“I’m Waiting for the Day” 3:05
“Let’s Go Away for Awhile” 2:18
“Sloop John B” 2:58
“God Only Knows” 2:51
“I Know There’s an Answer” 3:09
“Here Today” 2:54
“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times”  3:12
“Pet Sounds” 2:22
“Caroline, No” 2:51
We’ll start early and finish early and the venue is the Savoy Tup pub, just off the Strand near Somerset House.  We’ll confirm exact start time in a few days.  All the speakers are lined up – and we have some GREAT speakers.

Would you like to come?  If you would, please email me at hthompson@houstonpr.co.uk or Tweet me at @HamishMThompson.  It would also be really great if you could share a link to this post on Twitter and/or Facebook.

[Andrew G. Doe]

Temmmmmmmmmmmmpppppppppppppppp-ting.

[Fire Wind]

I see they cannot talk about the song itself.  Does this mean the talks will be completely Beach Boys-related?  Or is the track title simply a springboard to talk about anything, like Wouldn't it be nice to have world peace or something?

Either way, sounds interesting.

[Emily]

I see they cannot talk about the song itself.  Does this mean the talks will be completely Beach Boys-related?  Or is the track title simply a springboard to talk about anything, like Wouldn't it be nice to have world peace or something?

Either way, sounds interesting.

Here's a rundown of the last concept album talks:
http://www.houstonpr.co.uk/the-dark-side-of-the-moon/
Evidently, the talks need not have anything to do with the artist or album simply, as you say, the track title is a springboard. But I hope that Wouldn't it be nice to have world peace is the subject of the first talk.

[Fire Wind]

Ah, cheers.  Looks great, more subject-specific and with a better range of speakers than I would have expected.