Deeply inconvenient (for the audience) artistic choices that aren't necessarily gimmicks

Record collectors run into this all the time with un-renderable/un-pronounceable titles, etc... and bookshops are forever bemoaning where to file weirdly-sized books but it feels like movies are a lot more constrained with things like guild rules that prevent you from releasing a movie unsullied by credits, for example. I remembered reading David Lynch was adamant about not putting in chapters for DVD releases because he wanted you to watch from beginning to end in one go.

What's the most inconvenient thing you've enjoyed?

The Melvins' Lysol is a six-track album that's formatted as a single track on CD. When I interviewed them for The Wire, Buzz Osborne told me, “When we were doing it, we were thinking, ‘Everyone’s going to skip this first song, because it’s so long. I don’t think that’s fair to the song, so we’re not IDing it.’ And that’s my favorite song on the record. They have to listen to it now, or fast forward through it. Or they have to buy the vinyl, which nobody’s gonna do.”

Prince beat em to it with Lovesexy

maybe Von Stroheim's original 8 hour cut of Greed.. but I never seen it, and not many have

https://www.discogs.com/master/360467-Pescado-Rabioso-Artaud

Titled after french poet Antonin Artaud, this album is Luis Alberto Spinetta's second solo effort, but ended up being credited to Pescado Rabioso.

The original LP is notorious for its amorphous sleeve, an irregular octagon, which made it hard to keep in regular shelves and forced several retailers to cut off its edges or simply refuse to stock it. Most of the later editions used regular sleeves picturing the original shape on a white background, or simply presented the colors in regular shape.

Not deeply inconvenient, but the long end-credits opening of Tár.

Was just coming to mention Prince.

Also, the comedy CD label Uproar release a bunch of stand-up CDs as single tracks.

I still haven't played my copy of Actress's AZD album that came in a sealed foil wrap because i don't want to damage the packaging

(have played it on streaming though)

there are some much better examples though in classical music where some pieces require deeply inconvenient positioning of the players to create a spatial arrangement of sounds. don't ask me for examples though because i'm tired as shit and brain's not working. Stockhausen's Helicopter String Quartet is obviously an extreme version of this though...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13D1YY_BvWU

If I enjoyed The Flaming Lips I’m sure I would have found Zaireeka deeply inconvenient.

The Zaireeka *vinyl* box is even more deeply inconvenient

Really funny that its like a decade-old Record Store Day colored vinyl 4LP box set from an incredibly popular major label band and you can cop it for less than $40

there was a fad for reverse-groove vinyl years ago (from the inside>out), but that's definitely a gimmick

there's pieces with super long durations, like Satie's Vexations that lasts for a day and a half or something. What was that one that goes on for several years?

My friend does an annual 24 hour free improv gig that i've been to that a couple of times. But as a listener you kind of drop in and out of these things, you just accept that you cannot physically hear the whole thing, and that's okay

there was a fad for reverse-groove vinyl years ago (from the inside>out), but that's definitely a gimmick

I used to own a Monty Python LP that had two sets of grooves on the second side, so two different collections of material would play depending on where/how you put the needle down.

https://www.discogs.com/master/58504-Monty-Python-The-Monty-Python-Matching-Tie-And-Handkerchief

there was an early form of stereo vinyl where there were actually two needles in the cartridge, R/L

John Cage calling: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_as_Possible?wprov=sfti1#

I used to own a Monty Python LP that had two sets of grooves on the second side, so two different collections of material would play depending on where/how you put the needle down.

I have a De La Soul record that does this as well, advertised as a 3-sided single

my mum had a 7" record with commentary of a horse race and it had four different winners which it could skip to at the end, this was in the late 60s so some amazing technology afaic

There was the Clue movie with different endings depending on which theater you saw it in

https://i.discogs.com/FFz4zsOcPhrv8VSV8bynQ__2ww8j1AFLC9r9RdDRFjQ/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:405/w:400/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTc5Nzcx/LTExMDc1MjYwMzMu/anBn.jpeg

Gallagher or Gwar

Probably more inconvenient for the theaters than the willing audience members

Gallagher = GIMMICK

see also: GG Allin

Julio Cortázar doesn't make it easy for readers of Hopscotch:

An author's note suggests that the book would best be read in one of two possible ways: either progressively from chapters 1 to 56, with all subsequent "expendable chapters" being excluded, or by "hopscotching" through the entire set of 155 chapters according to a "Table of Instructions" designated by the author. Chapter 55 is left out all together in this second method, and the book would end with a recursive loop, as the reader is potentially left to "hopscotch" back and forth between chapters 58 and 131 infinitely.

There was the Clue movie with different endings depending on which theater you saw it in

iirc this was the inspiration for that eno documentary.

The CapriSun juice “box” is a totally classic design, imo, but getting that straw in there is not that easy.

100 Years (Rodriguez, 2115?)

I love him, but the Building Stories box set from Chris Ware is really trick. Same to the gigantic ass bio he has

Art pop-up books are a bit like that I guess. Tristram Shandy is also a good call, with all the visual stuff on it. This edition is really cool, I had it for a while https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9524501-the-life-and-opinions-of-tristram-shandy-gentleman

I have a Brazilian edition of Bartleby that is fully printed without trimming the booklets, and you need a thingy to rip them apart (that would come with the edition) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/731686.Bartleby_o_Escriv_o_Uma_hist_ria_de_Wall_Street

The Flicker, by Tony Conrad – a film that can only exist when the reel is act. being played https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Flicker and also will cause side effects easily

DJ HVAD did a 24 hour concert a couple of years ago, in an underground art gallery at an abandoned waterworks. This year he released the entire thing on vinyl.