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.

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?