Hidden Gems: Missing the cut

So in the Hidden Gems posts, I bring up those cards that are beautiful as well as the songs you may have missed out. But for today's post, let's look at a couple cards that one might think hit the binder, but they are just not good enough to make it in. Plus, they help transition to the song selections of the post. Yes - plural. You'll see.

I have plenty of cards I have kicked aside from the Hidden Gems binder that fit into this look. Most of the time something is considered, but ultimately rejected, comes down to one simple word:

Cropping

In the world of digital graphics, cropping is removing outside areas of a photo or image. It helps focus the eye to what the artist wants you to see, frame the image, remove trash from the image or alter the aspect ratio. Sometimes, it's perfect. But on these examples, it's too much. For the Reddick, they did well to get most of him within the frame, and the most important parts, but chopped off a leg, and the glove is juuuuuust out of the inside border. On the DeJesus, we have a similar issue. Cropped just s fraction too close, so he has no feet and the Ultra logo covers part of the image. DeJesus would have done better pulled out just a bit, while the Reddick could have fared much better on a horizontal card (yeah - I know it's Archives, but go with it).

Sometimes, you can crop too much, thinking you are getting rid of excess garbage, but losing the best part of the subject.

Now, for music, I am going to start with a simple question: Ever hear the songs "Get Away" and "Broken" by Chicago and Tears For Fears, respectively? I'm fairly certain most of you have without really knowing it. But unless you own the songs, you probably won't hear them anytime soon on the radio. Maybe on WXRT here could your ears enjoy Broken. But you tend to not hear those songs lately because of a little thing called the "radio edit".

I've talked about radio edits before, specifically the fact the 60 plus seconds are cut from The Knacks "My Sharonna" when you tend to hear the song. Many songs have sections cut out so they play faster, allowing more commercials over the air. See, Get Away and Broken appear at the end of a couple very famous songs for each band:

If you listen to the end of each video, the song ends. But on the album, each song has a close to minute jam fest attached. Getaway highlights Chicago's horn section, which hearkens back to their earlier years as a jam band. For Tears For Fears, Broken is a small section of a live performance of the song tacked at the end. It's an actual song that appears just before Head Over Heels on their Songs From The Big Chair album. It's a shame you don't get to hear either over the airwaves, though.