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Curriculum Guide: Album Context
Sample Discussion/Exam Prompts
- (M) What criteria did fans, critics and record companies use to determine that the Long After Dark album was not much of a success? What criteria does Volpert use to reconsider its success now?
- (W) Choose any 3 quotations from this section and consider what they have in common. Why does the author rely on quoting other sources at these moments in the manuscript, rather than continuing to summarize in her own words?
- (C) In what ways does the book argue that the main villain in the story of any band is always a record company or the recording industry at large? Where does MTV fit into such plots?
- (P) What were some of the creative difficulties encountered in making Long After Dark? What aesthetic values for making music albums are revealed by such challenges?
- (P) How did Jimmy Iovine’s work on Long After Dark prove to be both an asset and a liability? How much of this duality is inherent in the work of a producer, rather than attributable to Iovine’s specific personality?
- (W) How does sequencing the tracks for a music album compare and contrast with sequencing parts of a manuscript?
- (C) What are the parts of the “album cycle”? How does this cycle simultaneously benefit and hinder an artist’s creative process? Do such cycles exist in academic, creative, or business fields other than the arts?
- (P) What existentialist dilemmas does Volpert associate with Petty’s musicianship during the album cycle for Long After Dark? What beliefs does Petty seem to rely upon in order to resolve these dilemmas?