What Are You Listening To Right Now (Part IV)

[Zzzptm]

I'm playing Crossings by Herbie Hancock now because it was released in 1972, and that's where I am in working the playlist for my funk show on the 10th. Pop That Thang by The Isley Bros. is next...

[Zzzptm]

To-day, it has been a Mussorgsky day. Pictures at an Exhibition got things kicked off.

Boris Godunov will round out the day...

[Vyn]

Black Sabbath live in Montreaux, a band from England that attained some popularity in the early 1970s. You may have heard of them.

[Vyn]

Spinning a few 45s today.

First up is a brand new, lathe-cut bit of experimental music. Side A is put together by Small Cruel Party, and is titled, "Plutôt Vibratile Que Remuant". Side B is by called, "Kdi Dctb 340 (Maupas)" by Ingeos. This is number 8 out of 40 that are going to be made. I would be surprised if he sells 15 of them lol. He's been at it for decades, but it's a VERY niche market.





Taking a step towards normalcy with Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, performing, "Pachuko Cadaver," backed with the thoughtful, "Wild Life."





All the way back to what most would consider to be music: Black Sabbath's, "Devil and Daughter," in nifty promo box set 45rpm single.


   

[Zzzptm]

Ahhh, 45s! And the time to play B sides...

[Vyn]

For sure - play a stack on A, then turn them over, reload the arm and play the B sides. Unless there's no time for that.

[Zzzptm]

For sure - play a stack on A, then turn them over, reload the arm and play the B sides. Unless there's no time for that.

Or if it's the wrong mood for the party/event/time of day/whatever. From the early days, A and B sides often had a fast/slow thing where the plug side would be one tempo and the flip would go the other way. I'm finding out that there were tons of mushy ballads that were big hits with some snappy stompers on their flip sides that are way more fun to listen to.

That being said, there's also some singles like the one done by The Soul Clan in 1968. Solomon Burke, Don Covay, Arthur Conley, Ben E. King, and Joe Tex all five showing up and trading vocal parts. First side's a stomper, second's a tasty heartfelt ballad. Both sides are amazing and I don't think either one ever got much upper-echelon chart action because the label lacked distribution and stuff like that. But I got magazine archives and YouTube uploads that help me find the gold:

Here's the fast dance track:

And here's the one you want to slow dance to:

I spent a long time trying to figure out which side to play on my funk/soul show and... I just used both to close out the show, they're so strong. Much love for this bit of gold that I found.

[Charger]

The Crypt - Into The Crypt


Great groovy doom metal!

[Vyn]

This record has not been out of its sleeve in more years than I can remember. And even then, I can promise you that I did not listen to the entire thing.

So, for the first time in living memory, my Sgt. Pepper's record in its entirety caused sound vibrations to enter our universe.

And I have to say, jaded by the music that has been produced in the years intervening since this disk's creation in 1967 and today - much of which was directly influenced by what the Beatles did all those years ago...this collection of tunes is genuinely monumental.

What's the basic, fundamental point of pop music? So listeners can enjoy listening.

I'm enjoying it.

[Vyn]

Thinking a bit more about it - looking at the 45s posted earlier, Charger's The Crypt record, then Sgt. Peppers - there is so much clear distinction between songs written in and of themselves and songs written to be included as part of an album. For as much as the Beatles grew over time (holy shit) they were always at their tip-top best when they kept the length of their songs shorter. I think that has a lot to do with them having come up in a world dominated by singles. It was the paradigm - an album was just that: a collection of singles. Concept records were not a thing. Or a thought. So despite the complete pwnage of something like "A Day in the Life," it was about as long a song as they would create. By today's standards it's middling.

I mean, Sleep's Dopesmoker? Unthinkably long. But as these things go, even in the late 60's, once FM radio started being a thing, and airplay could happen for longer pieces, everyone jumped on board. And you ended up with bullshit like "American Pie" coming out as a 45 but so long it had to be split across both sides.

Anyway, just random thoughts on this hot-ass Thursday as Biden and Trump prepare to debate on the TV tonight. God help us all.

[Zzzptm]

About those long 45s... the Parts 1&2 were a thing even back in the late 40s with jump blues tunes either doing 2.30 or going for it at 4:50, very little in-between. Classical recordings on 45s had a similar situation.

But, it would be either part 1 *or* 2 as the plug side that the DJs would spin. Most radio singles stayed in the 2-3 minute range and the studio musicians like The Wrecking Crew would knock out single after single in one take and bang out 10 albums' worth in a day's work. All genres.

So what changed was Richard Harris doing Jimmy Webb's MacArthur Park in 1968. 7:21 in length, no radio edit. DJs that wanted to smoke AND have a piss jumped on it and opened the door for "album rock", where they'd pick tracks off of albums and could break the 3-minute barrier, as it were. It also meant that meandering rambles of songs (like American friggin' Pie) were more in demand. This was also when groups would insist on playing their own instruments in the studio, so session players got to have some time off, as it were. Even if the session system stayed intact, the sheer length of pop tracks meant they'd do at best half the number of tunes in a day as before. Also, with longer songs, there were fewer songs in a day that DJs would spin, those album cuts went further.

I see it in the singles reviews in Cashbox. What used to cover multiple pages in the 50s and 60s get summed up on one page by the early 70s. Album reviews, by contrast, take over more and more pages. And the advertising definitely shifted from singles to albums in the 60s so that by the end of the decade, most of the ads were for albums that happened to have a single and not the other way 'round. Heck, at the start of the 60s, albums were like you said, a collection of singles. Get 6 A and B sides, push out an album. So there'd be no need to review albums beyond what people already knew about the singles that were on them. Having album-only tracks slowly crept into the biz.

One of the big influences in album-only tracks was Elvis' Christmas Album in the late 50s, where he did original recordings that hadn't been released on singles. It pretty much invented the Christmas album as a concept and, well, that's not too far away from being able to adapt other concepts to an album. The Beatles' popularity opened the door for lots more concepts and lots more longer songs - how many years after Sgt. Pepper until we had Tommy, Prog Rock, and Concerto for Group and Orchestra?

[Vyn]

Fantastic - love the Cashbox and studio musician tie-ins. It all makes sense.

[Charger]

Death Anglel - The Ultra Violence

Best trash metal instrumental song of all time?

[Zzzptm]

7 and 7 Is - Love

[Vyn]

Some Youtubin' for a tune that used to get some airwave action: