What got lost when records stopped having two sides?

On the other hand, jumping offa my cosy arse to go & turn over the fickle now-it-starts!-now-it's-over! vinyl 45's - that I don't miss at all.

It became harder for me to turn on an album and just listen to half of it; yes, I am a rockist of some sort.

You don't get that sort of forced "turn your focus back to the music" thing in the middle of the album any more, if you're the type to let your mind wander.

No more giving each half of an album a different name (or at least not in a way that doesn't seem pretentious)

eg roxy music's manifesto? (west side vs east side)

maybe it's still called that, w.no explanation

(haha the band i wz in at college put out a tape where the sides were called "good side" and "crap side")

With rock albs that last 70 mins (trout mask, double nickels on the dime , zen arcade): i think they are better as double LPs for me bcz I will play than more. Its partly bcz of length and that I'm also too lazy to program or skip tracks but its great to play side 3 first: I'd assume that most ppl don't have the concentration to stick it out for the whole duration and I certainly don't so i'll paly side 3 and 2 or whatever.

In Morton Feldman discs like the 4 Cd string quartet you get each CD broken in 3x 20-25 min sections: i think record labels acknowledge that its a record not a concert.

I agree with Phil though about not missing vinyl. Sure, it sounds better than a CD when it's turned up quite loud through huge speakers, but for everyday listening, I prefer the clarity and punch of a CD.

the sense of the gradual mortality of the object may actually be a loss (even if you don't mourn it): CDs and MP3s just one day stop working, which is just as final

was the hiss part of the music? the platonic ideal that actually the "real" music exists somewhere outside the thing i'm listening to is a very curious ideological formation, particularly evident in jazz listeners, who come from a music background which (rightly or wrongly) never reconciled itself to the status of the record as a music MAKING device

Well this I certainly agree with as a general anti-digital point, but we're drifting away from the 2 sides thing.

NONETHELESS IT IS THE QUESTION I ASKED: so yeah, n. OTM

same with mp3s

the move is towards auto-music, muzak, continuous drone (as opposed to peaks, troughs, the element of surprise, silence) -- it forces music into a more automatic place in your furniture, less conscious, less meaningful (i'm talking about pop/rock music) -- ears will glaze over even more as it's so easy to program music for auto background music

i'll list some albums that have been ruined by cd transfer later and the reasons for the ruin but i'm tired right now

just sufice to say that going from lps to cds was as important an aesthetic jump as the times of led zeppelin refusing to release singles, a very cunning marketing ploy

examples later, but yeah, it's made it easier for record companies to produce lack lustre product, it's sleazy, it's part of encouraging everybody to use piped music (which you will be able to conveniently have programmed for you in the future)

so another move in the direction away from art and towards brainless consumption, and a major limitation on the art of programming single and double albums

primarily, i think the result is yet more corporate swings at free expression

surely people get up to skip these tracks?

is this an acceptable substitute?

the former is where art and avant-garde music has relocated certainly: chart-pop (rap, R&B etc) is WAY more condensedly rich in the latter now than it was in the 60s, never LESS anti-muzak than it is now

but that's partly because there's the same huge tension between grabbiness and fun and surprise and waking you up which radio and TV require to get you to buy buy buy, and somnolence/snooze/distraction-mollification which recorded music has always seemed to aim for (i think the jump-out-of-yr-chair breaks did cut into this, which is why they got programmed away...) that's been there really since the arrival of electric recording and network radio in the mid-20s => this tension has never been resolved (it can't be, i don't think) but the locus of the divide migrates as formats shift

too much candy is bad for you.

(ok obviously this is a giant generalisation at any one moment, but this division has basically held true over the last 80 years... )

That said, there are some albums that are very suited to CD. I'm not the only person I know who first bought a CD player around the time of Screamadelica which, to me is a classic CD album, not least cause it stopped you having to get out of bed three times to turn the records over!

Some people made an attempt to replicate the "sides" I think quite successfully; both "Spirit of Eden" and "Laughing Stock" have huge gaps in the middle of the CD where the first side of the record ended - I think this worked quite effectively.

What concerns me more about the proliferation of digital forms and that we are potentially heading for all our music coming via download is the disappearance of the B-side. B-sides are great and give people a chance to do things the record company might not otherwise have allowed them to get away with on the A-side. It seems to me that if we wind up with some micro-charging mechanism for buying music that the companies will be unlikely to continue financing B-sides. That would be a loss.

''it forces music into a more automatic place in your furniture, less conscious, less meaningful (i'm talking about pop/rock music)''

don't quite see this. CDs are part of the furniture, no matter what music they play.

and also: why shouldn't some music be part of the background. what's wrong with that.

if I ever put out a CD, I'd probably sequence the running order with 'sides' of equal length in mind, just for my personal satisfaction, and just in case it ever got pressed on vinyl.

*I am listening to Yes this evening - thanks Norman!!

Rite. Particularly to Kirsty MacColl's "Don't Come The Cowboy With Me Sonny Jim".

I'd say that this is even more true of classical listeners - because in classical music the music is the actual written out thing - eternal and unchanging - which you can't even listen to - which is separate from the temporal performance/interpretation.

the sides on vinyl albums were/are traditionally labeled as sides 1 and 2. on 45s, they were/are traditionally labeled as sides A and B. the A side was where you put the "hit," the B side was where you put whatever the hell you filled up the other side with. and while it was the A side's job to actually sell the 45, the B side was pretty much free of any commercial obligation, which allowed all sorts of bizarre things to be slapped on to the B sides of classic singles. such as, for example, "you know my name (look up the number)." or "dogs (part two)."

when records stopped having two sides, i stopped noticing the last six or seven songs on them. i don't have the time, patience or sheer strength to listen to, say, "amnesiac" all the way through every time i put it on, and that's an album i love. i've got classic pop short attention span, and 20 minutes or so is perfect for me. i don't actually take the cd off after 20 minutes, but most of the time i start drifting about halfway through and forget that it's playing. i suppose i could pretend it's a vinyl album and start it at track 7 some of the time, but neither the cd nor my cd player was designed that way, and who in the world actually does that? with vinyl albums you did that because both the players and the records themselves were designed that way. and that, as o. nate says, does in fact make all the difference.

Worse is when the CD version adds things on...

I bought Love's "Forever Changes" on CD a few years back. The whole album is there, sounds as good as ever. But it keeps on going... Bonus tracks, including a 20-take attempt at one verse of "Your Mind and we Belong Together". This is historically interesting, to be sure. But it should be on A SEPARATE DISC! This kind of thing is at least as bad as bodging together two distinct sides as one whole.

Suggestion for thread: CD reissues that fuck up the perfectly good original.

Restless had the right idea with the 'Mats reissues.

Come to think of it, how do they address that on the CD version of the album? Never ocurred to me before.

on side two the title track for your pleasure ends with a gradually quietly collapsing and decaying mantra, again roughly 33 rpm, again leaving needles banging away at the consumer object, a reprise of the idea on side one

andrew : both songs have roughly 33rpm or 33rpm x2 territory rhythms(thanks all the same)

Come to think of it, how do they address that on the CD version of the album? Never ocurred to me before. "

on the DGC reish of Evol, they just kind of fade "Expressway" out, and then there's one lousy bonus track ("Bubblegum") that pretty much screws up their best album closer. i really should get it on vinyl just for that lock groove.

on "That's Incerdible" I saw a guy in America who could identify any classical work on lp by looking at the dynamics

(yeah i didn't believe him when i saw him on "That's Incredible" -- he managed to identify Tchaik. Pian. Conc. #1. for the cameras, which didn't strike me as overmelmingly convincing, but it convinced Fran Tarkington)

Side A: Earth's Impossible Day
Side B: Notebooks Out, Plagiarists!

(I love the Side B title).

Kate Bush's The Hounds Of Love is the most extreme example in my collection.

I also hear that there is a movement recently, that bands are returning towards having 40-minute albums, rather than trying to fill up an entire 74 minute CD, just because they can. A lot of albums, I like them, but they go on too long. If they were broken up into "sides" I think I would enjoy them more.

-No time to reflect on the side you just heard.. After 22 minutes you need to wake up again & reengage in what you're hearind. A few steps across the room can help with this.

-It's inconvenient (or, seems stupid) to start a CD in the middle to learn the songs at the end as well as you know the songs at the beginning. Many a great record was given new life when the listener discovered there was a second side!

-Subtle guilt about turning off a CD before it's over. You could give up on an LP after it was half over if you weren't diggin' it. Both you and the record save face by ending it at that natural break point. A CD may be 70 minutes of torture because you can't admit that it's sucking.

-Loss of "Classic album sides" - e.g. Side 1 of "Flip Your Wig" - made that a classic record. But side 2 really isn't that great. If you have to judge a record in its entirety, it may score lower - and that could deprive a lot of college students of hearing a great 1/2 record because the whole CD got 3 stars, but side 1 was totally five-star.

The same goes for Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (between The Individual and Broken Heart), which is a 70+ minute record, but as we know J Spaceman is k-rockist so once again I reckon it was deliberate (ditto Lazer Guided Melodies).

Also the length of time it can for you take to feel ready to turn a record over / the sense of urgency with which you do, so can be almost like a form of participation which makes the experience more personal.

Certainly if you buy the Small Faces' "Darlings Of Wapping Wharf Launderette" the first CD ends where side 1 of "Ogden's Nut Gone Flake" ends and similarly I believe the first CD of "Love Story" ends where side 1 of "Forever Changes" ends - although whether that serves the same purpose in that context or serves merely to encourage the listener to play both discs one after the other is debatable (and how do CD multiplayers fit into this?).

["still the norm" poss. = "I was still buying them"]

Of course this also entailed the joy of having one of the records fail to grip properly on the one below and starting to slip....

< realises he's made appallingly embarrassing revelation regarding pre-punk listening habits; walks away whistling and attempting to look nonchalant whilst hoping no-one will notice and draw attention to this extraordinary faux pas >

you know if you look at an old (ie 20+ years old) record player, it often says 33 1/3 as opposed to just 33, which is all you see nowadays?

does this mean record manufaturing techniques have also changed in the intervening years? And if so, does this mean if I listen to an original 1968 pressing of The White album on my bought-it-last-year deck, I'm actually hearing the music a little bit slower than was originally intended?

I ask becaue a friend of mine played me some Magazine album or other on her ancient turntable a few months ago, and I mentioned that it sounded a bit fast, and she said she'd only ever heard it on that particular machine so didn't know if it was fast or not.

So maybe she's spent her whole life hearing music too quickly! Truly mind-frying implications, methinks.

LPs are much, much more interesting than CDs to me from a textual standpoint

Don't you think creating a (good) CD requires a similar process and discipline?

Just because the contraints are different doesn't mean they don't exist or aren't equally significant....

"I also think that for pop/rock/r&b, whatever, 40 minutes is more than enough for an album - these CDs that drone on and on and on for 70 minutes get on my wick."

Indeed, but doesn't that actually mean that knowing when to stop / what to leave off is a vital (additional?) discipline required for making a (good) CD?

A discipline that seems sadly lacking - especially with hip hop artists!

My parents gave my half-brother a copy of a record -- I think it may have been the Star Wars soundtrack, although I don't really recall -- and it turned out he already owned it. Rather than return it, though, he expressed his delight that now he could just put both records on the spindle (he, like me, had one of those nifty old hi-fi's where you could stack up multiple records, and when one was done playing, the next one would just drop on down) and listen to the whole thing in sequence, without having to get up and turn it over. I don't think this was for any particular aesthetic reason; he was just lazy. I don't think my mother ever really forgave him for that, although I'm not sure it was the waste or the laziness that galled her more.

An answer to Mark's question: What got lost? One more petty reason for families to squabble.

http://www.3e.org/nota/archives/pix/cbg.jpg

artists didn't put 40 minutes of music on classic vinyl albums because they thought that was a good platonic length; they did it because that's what the vinyl could hold. when vinyl used to spin at 78 rpm, they put less music on it. and if they could've figured out a sonically acceptable way to make the thing spin at 16 rpm, they would've put more on it.

we animals aspire to fill the time we have; always have and always will.

and when the time we had was 33 rpm vinyl, it was a good time.

I'm all for double-sided DVDs. People should be forced to get up and flip it over every six hours.

While I do like the two-side structure, I think that most really great albums (with all terrific songs, sequenced well) are probably equally great either way - especially now, in the CD era, when good sequencing involves figuring out how it's going to sound all in one shot. For more average albums, it seems like the programming template has just changed. It used to be that Side A would have most of the best songs, and Side B would kick off with a particularly strong song (often a single), and then slide into filler after that. Now, with CDs, the best songs tend to come at the beginning and end of the disc, with the filler towards the middle.

I do like it when a CD reissue of an older LP puts a little pause in between "sides," but I don't think it's really necessary (you can put it in mentally, as long as the songs are grouped the original way on the back cover). For (usually indie) albums released after the advent of CDs, in which the band knew they'd be issuing a vinyl version as well as a CD, it's kind of interesting sometimes to see how the songs are arranged. (Like with Pavement's Crooked Rain, which is a prime example of the "LP-era" filler-on-side-B template.)

The switch from 2 sides to 1 changed the emphasis from space (or time-geography) to simple pure time. That is, the 30 or so minutes of 1 side was a terrain that could or probably would or is markedly possible manipulable: it is a geography, a country, a map reliable or not. And you had two to play off in a civil war or dance or a fuck. Whereas, the switch to CD expanded everything out into the formless size of a universe. Or another way to put it, perhaps, '2 sides' is equivalent to poetry where the sure marshalling of scansion, space, pacing, footings and holdings are all dictated as part of the form. (Constraints sediment content; form sediments content.) '1 side' = prose, woah free for all till the paper runs out. (But obv. structures develop within the loose of the novel / 1 side, so as in novels we accept the Chapter, in CDs [or albums?] we accept certain memes [the classic British hopeful end-song eg Mazinquaye, OPM, Boy in Da Corner]). Huh.

this was deliberate but nice marketing -- the thing won't work over a whole lp, you've got that backup career of coverds, -- but essentially a prog rock /canterbury/ guild style jibberish country and western as sung by Frank Sinatra Jr. -- mr america

this was a challenge to the whole format
each side had a different length
because sometimes you are forced to get up and flip the record over
to get back to the mangnificant a-side -- all the songs are about war or dirty deal aor post-hippie -- with this record you're meant to take the needle off after the second song on side two, perhaps

the b-side is consumerism -- 15 minutes of commercial material -- plus two songs that seque into each other

but yeah, the only record lp i know of with three different lengths and again that london scheme of making lps not '45s

laurie uses it to move her voice down a scale so she can sing and using a vocoder satarise Dolly Parton, that's "Walk the Dog", the b-side -- sick and sped up and dolly parton at 45, same but different at 33\1/3 -- and o superman would work better as music when sped up (so as not to get monotonous, but to propel the words at a real rappers wollop of politics

just one 20 minute jab of "Sandanista" every so often is enough for a while, but i might change the side

buying "Sandanista" the big cardboard and vinyl 3lp set (never done before except by Yes when in decline,) so yes to Escalator over the Hill, and no to the science fiction prog rock drips, no to yes

"Sandanista" is the first record set which imposed a semi random sequence of moods on the listener, ie the format ensured that enough different sides meant a different engagement would ensue, that you would get lost in the middle of this music thing, 6 sides on random play, thier would be enough permutations and just not too many to ensure a quite different broad geo-political perspective

so it's an early example of random play you can only just do with cds -- selecting the next side to play was throwing the coin/lp

the format theoretically ensured you just kept changing sides all the time, or went off and did something else

that first situation where twelve inch 45rpm lps were accepted and used by artists, which gave them a whole new sonic palette,
eps with different songs at different speeds and the anderson certainly fits that case (done in new zealand on yinyl b.t.w.),

could be used to modulate and distort the sound, degradation into what MTV calls its "lo-fi" category (for the white tripes) spectacularly and fool radio listeners that their radio was melting (just for instance)

i missed the dead c play canterbury university the other day and that was annoying, and i do love bits of trapdoor..exit and the various DRx flavours -- more deserving of the lo-fi award i thought

lo-fi is that much more potentially self-destructible on vinyl, many sorts of frequency screw ups and bad needle counter-weighting (of course that's abstract art though, not rock music) problems, meaning you'll hear the record once spotless, and every time after that it will distort more and more (and you might want to cheque your needle)

because i haven't finished but i don't want to terminate the thread accidentally by boring anybody

"THE 2-SIDED LP MODEL"
    Side A
1. Big Opening Number for Side A
2. Hit Single
3. Knockoff of Hit Single
4. Filler
5. Filler
6. Peppy Number to close out Side A
    Side B
7. Big Opening Number for Side B
8. Possible other Hit Single
9. Knockoff of Possible other Hit Single
10. Filler
11. Big Symphonic Finale Number and Outro! TADAH!

"THE 1-SIDED CD MODEL"
    Side That Ain't Shiny
1. Big Opening Number
2. Hit Single
3. Knockoff of Hit Single
4. Feebler Knockoff of Hit Single
5. Filler
6. Filler
7. Filler
8. Filler
9. Filler
10. Filler
11. Filler
12. Filler
13. Filler
14. Suprisingly good song stranded at the end.
15. Filler
16. Big Finish and Outro! TADAH!
17. (Silence)
18. (Hidden Bonus Track)

if you get the lp sized 3lp, set, you get a nice box,
and the 32 page guide/ libretto forms the coffe table book

(and lot's of secret studio tricks)
(2 years to make 3lp six side set)

(and inter-galactic action with the radiophonic masterpiece "Dr. Why" -- nerdy ?)

- Music fans' health decreased considerably as they did no more have to get up from their sofa to turn the record over
- Doubled album length means that most major acts will wait 2-3 years between every album release.
- Those useless throwaway efforts that would be put on a single b-side earlier on (or hidden away to appear on a box-set or as part of a remastered album 20-30 years later) are now put at the end of the album instead

Plus, there's nothing that turns girls on more than when having sex and stopping to to flip the record over.

sonic youth programed four 12" eps at 33\1/3 and an album or two well

i think that album and the companion whitey album, that sonic youth showed us all their ideas -- DN was their crossover hit album, along with whitey -- theiw best two or three albums

And whenever there's bonus tracks, I program them last as a third side.

Two notes to this: There are certain albums that I've never seen on vinyl, so sometimes I have to make my own guess at when one side ends and the other one ends. Sometimes I am wrong. On All Shook Down by The Replacements, I always thought that "When It Began" ended side one and "All Shook Down" started side two. Not so.

I do prefer the CD copy of Big Star's Third. I can program the album with two sides. I can rearrange the sequencing to mimic some of the other issues. And I can go ahead and add "'Till the End of the Day" as the song to finish with.

But yeah. Definitely bring back two sides. Didn't Bob Mould stick fifteen seconds of a needle hitting the label between "sides" of his Bob Mould CD?

Umm. Come to think of it, good riddance.

Ha ha indeed! And another ha ha! to the group (whose name I infuriatingly cannot think of right now, altho I know that they were quite popular) whose first LP had a "Side One" and "Side A"!

Here's what I lament the loss of the most: The lack of a Side One Closer - Many classic bands over the years apparently considered that final slot to be the "prestige" position where they inserted the tours-de-force that they were proudest of at the time. I'm thinking of "Light My Fire", "Marquee Moon", "Stairway to heaven", etc. Not any more.

.

Joni, before I got my own first record player in '75, I used my parents' old 1960s-vintage 4-speed hi-fi, and I too was always curious about the 16rpm function, never having seen ANY records that played at 16, so I looked it up recently. Turns out that it was apparently used primarily for spoken-word things, like books-on-disc or recordings of famous speeches. Main priority was to maximize playing time, of course; sound quality was a non-issue.

1) does dave q still listen to everything on random?

2) what does cozen mean by the "classic British hopeful end-song" or, well, anything else he writes in this thread?

3) why doesn't a gap in the middle of a CD accomplish exactly what two sides did? yeah you can skip it but it's a manual gesture prompted by a silence and that does the same trick (provisional ans: since it is obviously not necessitated by any formal constraint, the "artistic whole" of the musician's bi-partite scheme takes on a different cast, is just (possibly) pretentious rather than ingenious; in any case, it niggles and feels imposed, because it is)

4) what does george gosset (where is he, by the way?? i am suddenly alarmed) mean when he says "twelve inch 45rpm lps were accepted and used by artists, which gave them a whole new sonic palette" ... i am only familiar with this on "dj copies" of singles and sometimes albums, where i assumed it was at 45 in order to spread out the song spatially so that it was easier to find a spot in the song to drop the needle into. also it has bizarrely only now that it's occured to me that 45s (and 78s) have better sound quality than 33s, given that the needle travels over more space - more space = more "resolution"? is this why john fahey released that set of 78s? (besides his being a cantankerous old you know what.)

[cbg.jpg]

Gosh, I wish I remembered what that meant...

Some things are lost, but some things are gained.

Filler existed then. Filler exists now. At roughly the same ratios.

One can always "regress" the sequencing of a CD to vinyl standards if an artist/band wishes so. It's not as if anything in that regard is lost. It's very well documented, in fact. It's just that it's not the only choice anymore.

And now with mp3s, free 3rd party download sites etc. the contraints have changed not as much to what will fit within 80 minutes, but what will make the minimum requirements for a free YouSendIt link given your choice of bit-rate compression for a zip file of mp3s, or a long mix CD-R.

And this will change again, as media changes.

Standards/constraints rarely get lost. They get lost only if they are grossly impractical.

For example, someone could try to sequence an album today using 8-track tape standards, but why?

But the Side 1/Side 2 Of A Vinyl Album standard is not going to disappear at least anytime soon. Vinyl pressings have become more generally popular since the dearth in the 90s -- except in country and classical, if we're talkin' major mass markets and new releases.

i take your point about vinyl still being alive. i wonder, though, if bands think about it much these days. if a band was being smart it WOULDN'T since only crusty old freaks would be hearing it that way (or DJs, who have 0 use for track sequencing, anyway)

crossposts

Kid A isn't an LP, though - it was issued as a double 10" on vinyl (same as Amnesiac). Pulling out my copy - the sides are

Alpha: Everything In Its Right Place, Kid A
Beta: The National Anthem, How To Disappear..., Treefingers
Gamma: Optimistic, In Limbo
Delta: Idioteque, Morning Bell, Motion Picture Soundtrack

All of this is just making me want to put on Kid A for the first time in a long while. I will say, though, that much as I agree with almost everything said in this thread, particularly about the sequencing possibilities of having two "first songs" and two "last songs," it really falls apart with double albums. It's way too much getting up and sitting back down, but more importantly I think it's very hard to come up with FOUR different "first songs." Take the White Album, for example - I know every song on it by heart, but I couldn't tell you what side ANY of them are on, except that "Goodnight" is the last song and "Back in the USSR" is the very first. Whether "Piggies" is on the same side, or even the same record, as "Helter Skelter," I haven't a clue whatsoever. (All that said - "Dear Prudence" is in my mind the definitive "second song.")

Double LPs by '90s and '00s bands are often unlistenably sequenced because, composing with CD in mind, you end up with sides where there are maybe two songs total, and albums that as a whole could have easily been one-and-a-half-LPs instead of doubles, except that the long songs are all in the wrong places. I'm thinking here of The Moon and Antarctica, whose vinyl pressing is a disaster in many ways besides this. (The worst moment: the way the transition into "Tiny Cities Made of Ashes" starts up on Side A and then is simply cut off as the needle hits the end of the record.) It's all especially shameful because they seemed to get it so well on The Lonesome Crowded West, which to my memory actually has a completely different order to the tracklist in order to better flow for the format. It's also in a quietly unique package - two separate inner and outer sleeves, rather than a gatefold - which is neither here nor there, but I like it.

Props to Sleater-Kinney on The Woods, for just leaving side 4 blank rather than spreading all the tracks a little bit thinner and creating a superfluous side. They use the 4th side for a momentarily diverting screenprint of some tree rings, much the way Psychic Hearts has an illustration etched into the vinyl. This kind of shit may not necessarily be a selling point in itself, but it definitely beats creating a four-sided album for no good reason.

"what happens to LPs which had difft names to their sides when they come out on CD?"

The first time I ever heard Grin's 1+1 album, it was on a CD, and I was wondering why in the hell they put all these mushy love songs towards the end of the disc. Found out later that the vinyl version was split into a rockin' side and a romance side. Just like those OLDIES BUT GOODIES compilations on Original Sound.

I've recently added a few records to my collection with one classic side, where i've just decided to stop flipping the record over:

Steve Miller Band - Recall the Beginning...A Journey from Eden: Side 1 is a bunch of retro pastiche throwaways, and then side 2 is like he suddenly sold his soul to the devil to learn how to write perfect mellow psych-blues songs
Hall & Oates - Abandoned Luncheonette: I found a beater copy in the dollar bin recently, and i'm not even sure what's on side 2, but side 1 is wall-to-wall jams and i can't stop playing it. My kids are walking around the house singing "i'm just a kid don't make me feel like a man".
Bobby Hutcherson - Solo/Quartet: Solo = unique and classic, quartet = fine

Am i missing anything by not flipping these over?

Other examples of an entire skippable side?

This is a variation on the same idea, but I've started skipping the second record from Fairport Convention - The History Of Fairport Convention. It's a chronological best of compilation, and it just so happens that Sandy Denny's vocals stop right at the end of the first record, so i've realized that's all I need from that set.

ummm I don’t dislike it or anything, but I tend to eschew side b of discreet music

TS: Black Flag's My War side one and its descendants vs. Black Flag's My War side two and its descendants.

ELP's Tarkus is one of these, Side 2 just feels like a pile of bonus tracks that were cranked out in a couple of days. even though I kinda like 'em they also feel totally divorced from the main piece, it doesn't even really feel like a proper album to me

I also skip Side 2 of the first Roxy Music album a lot

Am i missing anything by not flipping these over?

"Laughing Boy" on the Hall and Oates record is an interesting mysterious ballad.

I tend to eschew side b of discreet music

So do I, and I dislike it too! An unsuccessful Eno experiment. On the other hand, I couldn't live without "The BOB (Medley)" or "Chance Meeting".

Other examples of an entire skippable side?

Side 1 of Silk Degrees and side 2 of Tangerine Dream's Cyclone are forgettable, but I love the other sides.

This feels like a chance to bring up something that I've heard, but have no idea if there is any truth to it: I've heard that back in the days of the LP, records would be sequenced so that the softer tracks like ballads would be sequenced to be near the end of a side for reasons related to sound quality. Is this true, or mostly made up?

that's definitely true, basically at the end of a side theres less space per revolution and the centripetal force of the needle increases, both which cause the sound to be more compressed, so if you put a softer/less dynamic track at the end it's much less noticeable

I think good engineers can get around this effect so long as the sides aren't too long but I don't know how good they were back then

x-post

True (mostly). When you get to the inner grooves of a side linear resolution goes down as the inner grooves move slower across the needle than the outer grooves. A really good vinyl mastering engineer can mitigate some of this, but audio dynamics are still constrained. This page gets into the specifics:
https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-record-inner-groove-distortion-simple-explanation/

There was a Strawbs record called Bursting at the Seams where the last two songs on side 1 had to be flipped for this reason, they've restored the desired running order on the CD.

The beginning of the second side was the best because the band got to deliberately choose a track to get you energized for the second half.

CD era and beyond, nobody gives a fuck if it's track 5 or track 8

I can't find mention of this anywhere, but I recall that some classical labels were advocating for classical LPs to play from the inside out so that symphonic climaxes at the end of a piece would land at the edge of vinyl where the highest fidelity is.

There must be a lot of albums that were specifically structured so that the two sides were their own thing. Off the top of my head, Bowie's Low and Heroes work like this.

Beach Boys - Today, basically

Spacemen 3 - Recurring. One side each for Sonic and Jason

xp second side of Surf's Up is utter perfection - i rarely want to put on the first knowing "student demonstration time" will appear.

enochroot at 2:54 18 Sept 23

This is a variation on the same idea, but I've started skipping the second record from Fairport Convention - The History Of Fairport Convention. It's a chronological best of compilation, and it just so happens that Sandy Denny's vocals stop right at the end of the first record, so i've realized that's all I need from that set.

Side 2 of

oops, pressed send too quickly

I meant to say Side 2 of Neu! 2

I enjoy the sheer audacity of just playing the same recording at different speeds because you haven't recorded a side 2, not keen to actually listen to it though

ummm I don’t dislike it or anything, but I tend to eschew side b of discreet music

OTM

I had this thought some years ago, that if you're a hardliner about "listening to music as it was originally intended" you should actually pause the CD or stream of classic albums when a side is over, wait a few seconds to simulate the record being turned over, and then turn back on.

Lost opportunity during the CD era to make Authentic editions where each side gets a CD.

There's an AMM CD which includes a track of 10 seconds silence, included for precisely that reason – so you could program a pause and thereby simulate listening to the original LP.

Tom Petty: “Hello, CD listeners. We’ve come to the point in this album where those listening on cassette or record will have to stand up – or sit down – and turn over the record – or tape. In fairness to those listeners, we’ll now take a few seconds before we begin side two. Thank you. Here is side two.”

I enjoy the sheer audacity of just playing the same recording at different speeds because you haven't recorded a side 2, not keen to actually listen to it though

― the world is your octopus (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Monday, September 18, 2023 1:38 AM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

reading the history of Neu! it really doesn't seem like they had any other options, they just ran out of money and time so they had to cobble something together

Neu! 75 is another cool LP the likes of which don't really get made anymore, you've got the Rother side and the Dinger side, both of which are like great EPs

I think it was The Whispers (maybe?) whose albums had a so-called dancin' side and romancin' side.

I think it was The Whispers (maybe?) whose albums had a so-called dancin' side and romancin' side.

The Isley Brothers were the masters of this, as Ice-T explains in this clip:

The Game Has Changed.. I miss Solid Albums. 👊🏽 pic.twitter.com/KxO1qGLaZv

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) September 6, 2023

Nice! I bet a lot of R&B artists did something like that.

was just listening to the sonny rollins album "brass/trio" where its a big band on one side and trio on the other, cant think of any off the top of my head by there must be a bunch of other jazz albums that do versions of that

I think it was The Whispers (maybe?) whose albums had a so-called dancin' side and romancin' side.

I have 3 Bohannon records on vinyl and they are all split up into a driving disco side one and a lush smoove jam side two.

Now you mention it I virtually never listen to second side of Bohannon albums.

Napalm Death did one better and had a completely different lineup on side 2 of Scum

Christmas and the Beads of Sweat by Laura Nyro had different line-ups on it's two sides: the Muscle Shoals session guys (including Duane Allman) on Side 1, free jazz players (Alice Coltrane, Richard Davis, Cornell Dupree, etc.) on Side 2.

Henry Cow ran out of material for their second album _Unrest_ so they just did a bunch of improvising

and then there's this track from the cassette version of _Neil's Heavy Concept Album_:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyL1tOogHPY

I've heard that back in the days of the LP, records would be sequenced so that the softer tracks like ballads would be sequenced to be near the end of a side for reasons related to sound quality. Is this true, or mostly made up?

Peter Gabriel resequenced So in 2002, moving In Your Eyes from the start of the second side to the end of the album. He apparently wanted it there in the first place but the bass of the track would have been lost there on vinyl.

I've read Todd Rundgren on this very subject, but I think I have it backwards. I thought that the sound quality was better on the first half of a side as there is more real estate there.

xpost Iirc that was the (questionable) justification given for "Silver Springs" getting left off of "Rumours."

Personally, I can't stand "In Your Eyes" as the last song.

Are there any books of music criticism out there that are entirely about record sequencing, choices that were made on specific records, how the final sequence affects how we hear the record and the narrative/vibe/sound that emerges from it? Because if not, I kind of want us all to go in together on writing one.

I've read Todd Rundgren on this very subject, but I think I have it backwards. I thought that the sound quality was better on the first half of a side as there is more real estate there.

― henry s, Monday, September 18, 2023 5:51 PM (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

had Todd said otherwise? feel like this is the sort of thing he knows about and yeah it's definitely better on the outer grooves. though again a good engineer can practically eliminate that, not that Todd could be helped much given he routinely stuffs 27+ minutes on a side

No, Todd had it right. I misread the Peter Gabriel post.

I had this thought some years ago, that if you're a hardliner about "listening to music as it was originally intended" you should actually pause the CD or stream of classic albums when a side is over, wait a few seconds to simulate the record being turned over, and then turn back on.

I'll sheepishly cop to this: when I'm listening to albums from the pre-CD era, I'll sometimes stick a "10 seconds of silence" track between side A and side B. Also useful as a reminder to take a few minutes break from listening if needed, to give my tinnitus-blighted ears a rest.

belle and sebastien added a 10-15 second gap between “sides” on the cd version of boy with the arab strap, maybe on sinister too?