The Astonishing should have been released as 3 CD's/3 Acts
There's a natural break right after "Three Days," and I honestly think a slight intermission there would help the album flow better. 80 minutes is way too long for the 1st disc considering how similar so many of the more ballad-y songs feel to one another.
The breakdown would be about 37 minutes, 43 minutes, and 50 minutes. This is MUCH more manageable than 80 and 50. The song "6DoIT" works fine as one disc at 42 minutes long, so there's no reason why we couldn't have had 2 discs around that length. The feel of the songs and the parts of the stories are self contained enough that each act would work on their own.
Yeah, the idea has been discussed before, but not specifically putting the break where you suggested. Let me first say that I love the album as-is. Like many others who love it, I still feel it has a few very minor flaws, and there are a few areas where I subjectively would feel it was better if those things were done differently. But it's all so subjective and the album is so good as a whole that I hate to criticize even a little bit. But that said, I think your idea is a GREAT one. Reasons:
The flow really WOULD be improved, IMO. I enjoy Act I more than Act II. But that said, it can be fatiguing to listen to the entire thing.
The break is a natural one in terms of the story itself. Act I sets up the major conflict. Act II creates some major tensions as Faythe, Darius, and Ahrys each try to address the conflict in their own ways. Act III is, as it is now, the resolution. Perfect. And it would fit the "classic" 3-act structure very well.
It would allow the few things that had been cut to be put back in (the intro and the bit of JP's guitar soloing at the end of A New Beginning). It would also allow for something else I feel is missing: A song about the fighting and revolution itself. There is a bit of that in A Better Life, and then sprinkled in sparingly in a few other places. But for the most part, I just don't really feel anything for the rebel movement and the larger conflict when I am listening to the story. I realize that JP intentionally wanted to present the story as something different where there IS a large-scale conflict going on, but the listeners instead focus on the personal interactions of a few people living through the conflict, and how those personal interactions have much bigger consequences. JP and I even talked a little bit about that after the show in SF in May, and I think it is a really cool way to present the story. But, again, I still want to feel something a bit more for the bigger conflict, and I think that can be done without shifting focus away from where JP wanted it if there was just a song about the fighting and the huge cost in lives that this conflict was having. I think something like that could fit very well somewhere in Act II. It could go right at the beginning and serve the story very well. We end Act I with the ominous threat at the end of Three Days, and then start off Act II with the huge toll the fighting is taking on both sides throughout the Empire, and then back to the more interpersonal stuff with Brother Can You Hear Me? But really, it could go anywhere in Act II and work just fine.
I wonder if they released it as 2 discs for cost purposes
That probably was a big factor. From what little we do know, we know that John and Jordan wrote it as a 2-disk set. We also know that once everything was recorded and ready to go, they discovered that they had cut it a bit too close on disk 1, and it actually went slightly over, so they had to make some last-minute cuts. I don't think their mindset was 3 disks at the time. They had planned and budgeted for a 2 disk set. Re-cutting it and doing it as a 3 disk set at the 11th hour would have been a major change in mindset, and would have entailed all kinds of additional logistics and corresponding costs that I don't think the band would likely have wanted to entertain that late in the game.
Topic: The Astonishing should have been released as 3 CD's/3 Acts (Read 2765 times)