What got lost when records stopped having two sides?

*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.

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?