The Longest Song You Ever Heard

Mascodagama wrote: Logan wrote: A rather interesting story that might be of interest: John Cage "As Slow as Possible" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible "It was originally a 20-minute piece for piano, but a group of musicians and philosophers decided to take the title literally and work out how long the longest possible piece of music could last. They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000." Mind you, there have been some VERY long pauses in the music.  Now if only it could be done on a mellotron.      I think Cage was probably influenced here by Erik Satie's piece Vexations, which consists of a short chord sequence that is to be repeated 840 times.  Apparently it takes upwards of 18 hours to play:   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vexations   I suppopse it was a joke!  Unfortunately  (or maybe not) I can't enter it in this thread as I haven't heard it.

Cage was one of the pianists who played at the debut performance.  They switched out musicians every couple of hours. 

Sadly, that Amarok thing. And an album by Devil Doll, "Fatality in something's arms and weird exagerated obscure wanna be stuff" (don't remember the exact name of the album, but I do remember the feeling). Too much fake soul pain for me, with a couple of good minutes.

The longest song I ever heard was the Jon Anderson version of Owner of a lonely Heart , it made 4 minutes seem like an eternity   

The longest I've heard is either Fates Warning- A Pleasent Shade Of Grey or Echolyn- Mei, not sure which one is longer though.

I wouldnt count DT's Six Degrees... as it doesnt even come close to working as a single song, just eight loosely conected songs.

Logan wrote: A rather interesting story that might be of interest: John Cage "As Slow as Possible" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/As_Slow_As_Possible "It was originally a 20-minute piece for piano, but a group of musicians and philosophers decided to take the title literally and work out how long the longest possible piece of music could last. They settled on 639 years because the Halberstadt organ was 639 years old in the year 2000." Mind you, there have been some VERY long pauses in the music.  Now if only it could be done on a mellotron.

Hahaha! The last paragraph of that article reads: "The performance follows a legal case in which composer Mike Batt was forced to pay a six-figure sum to Cage's publishers, who accused him of plagiarising a silent piece of music."
That's hilarious!

Longest song for me is George Thorogood's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer"  which, when played live, is 29:54! It's the same 2 minutes repeating over and over. It's PAINFUL!

Although I have heard songs whose length in time is longer, I personally find that song to be the longest song ever.

You can't really judge how long a song is by the length. I find repadative and simple songs that are even 5 minutes in length to be much longer than, say, Mike Oldfield's Amarok (over an hour in length). But that's a personal thing.

Prog -  Jethro Tull "A Passion Play" (it's slightly longer than "Thick as a Brick")

Edited by XTChuck - February 13 2007 at 15:01

XTChuck wrote: Prog -  Jethro Tull "A Passion Play" (it's slightly longer than "Thick as a Brick") Non-Prog - Allman Brothers "Mountain Jam" (33 minutes)

Edited by Slartibartfast - February 13 2007 at 20:29

This hasn't been said yet but i classify it as all one piece: Rick Wakeman - Journey to the center of the earth, it clocks in at 1hour 34minutes.

If no then i have to say tales from topographic oceans or six degrees of inner turbulence by DT

Edited by 2112 - February 14 2007 at 03:48

Mascodagama wrote:   EDIT: I've just been Googling for Nitsch and it appears that his music forms part of ritualistic theatre events involving the slaughter of live animals.  It sounds rather repellent frankly.  I don't think I'm so impressed with him after all.

Heh, reminds me of the "singing mice" in Monty Python's Flying Circuis for some reason.