Throwing a song away hurts. Sometimes we'll pull a section of it out and make it into something else. Or change the tempo, yada yada.

If everyone isn't into the song, it's not going to sound good because people aren't going to enjoy playing it and it loses its.. spark? Yes, spark.

So, even if you love it, it becomes kind of pointless to play.

Ok, how about if nobody in the band is particulary excited about a certain song but everytime you play it people go nuts for it and love it? Do you get rid of it?

Marsupialized wrote:what about a song that actually made it through, got played at shows and maybe even recorded? When do you know it's time to let it fade away?

For us this has always simply been when we forget how to play it!

As for what to do if everyone else is really in to a song but you're just not feeling it - try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe there's something you're missing, maybe a few weeks down the line you'll get it. After all, you're in a band with these guys so I guess you respect/trust their musical opinion? If not, don't be in a band with them!

I remember hearing that a great filmmaker (I believe it was Antonioni, but I may be wrong) once said that when editing a movie, if he ever has a single shot that looks so good that it calls attention to itself outside the context of the story, or if it's so good that it makes all the other shots around it look bad, then it has to be cut.

This can be applied to music as well. Sometimes a thing that we're most biased in favor of can become a real problem. Recognizing when something ain't working, and having the discipline to cut out that favorite part, is one of the most difficult tests of an artist. As the creator of the part, you might have a hard time seeing it from any other context or viewpoint than our own blind enthusiasm, so you might have to trust the judgment of others in your band to decide what's best. If a certain passage of music is causing a serious rift, then you might consider letting it go. It can always be salvaged later for use in another piece.

Of course if the real problem is not any particular song or riff or whatever but a clash of egos, then I guess you have some even harder choices to make.

Marsupialized wrote:Ok, how about if nobody in the band is particulary excited about a certain song but everytime you play it people go nuts for it and love it? Do you get rid of it?

You close every concert with it for 30 years and watch the millions roll in.

Let it go, man. There's more where that came from. It's just a song. If your current bandmates can't/won't do it justice, you can revive it in your next band or put it on your solo album.

Having nobody like your song is easy: just scrap it, cannibalize it for new songs, or play it in another project, but mostly just drop it and move on. The opposite situation is worse: I've had songs I wrote that *I* want to scrap, but the rest of the band like.

There's no feeling quite so weird-- you want to exert some quality control and prune that generic, average, lackluster song from your set but it just won't go away, and it's your own fucking fault it exists in the first place.

i keep every idea. if someone dislikes something, i twist it into something they do like.

the funny part is when i walk in with the old but now severely mutilated idea and they like it. then i say, "oh yeah? guess what, fucker, you're playing that song you hated. in your fucking face!"

don't throw them away. keep them, work on them, twist them, change them, warp them, ideas are good.

Usually, I just forget about the song, so I'm never really faced with the decision.