What double albums should be a single and why?

 imho....or further if one was knife happy that day in the studio.   

Actually Present is a single album.

The 2nd disc with the improvisations is only some kind of bonus disc. I never thought of it as a double album.

No way is anyone going to trim anything off Aerial.

Except maybe Bertie.

Aerial was barely 80 minutes in total (not far off a normal CD length). I think Kate Bush decided it would be better separated into 2 parts and I'm with her on that actually. It was her first release for 13 years and demonstrates a massive burst of creativity.

 

How many triple albums are there? But even before you wrote this, I was going to mention Godley & Creme - Consequences, a triple album consisting of three sides of music, and three sides of what is largely a comedy by Peter Cook. The problem with comedies is once you've listened to them a few times, they are no longer worth listening to. So, one might consider an album without the comedy part to be better. But in fact for me, it was actually the comedy part that was why I got the album in the first place. So, without the comedy part, I would've missed out on the other three sides of music.

 

 

 

Hi,

I'm not sure that anyone is "born" with anything ... the idea, and point, is, that if you know and see something inside well enough and are lucky enough to work on it and with it as a youngster, you will end up in the artistic circles, because you will know what it is all about for the most part.

I've never met, a music teacher that knew anything else about music, except what it was already known ... none of them even had the ability to even say ... there is a lot more that I will never know or understand in music ... and this sends the "teaching" towards the mental extrapolations that we think "IS" what music is all about. Even a place like Berklee, can not work on "improvisation" and help define something new, because there is no "process" that can teach free form ... all they know is a riff, sound off an effect, or all the notes in the instrument ... the rest ... sort of does not exist.

Conversely, I have met several instructors/directors in theater that are far and away superb and outstanding in this area of improvisation and expression ... maybe one day you will get the chance to see THE TIGHTROPE and watch Peter Brooke before he passes away ... he has been the most incredible artist in terms of expression in theater for 65 years ... going way back to the mid 60's which I think had an effect on Beatles and a lot of music that became "psychedelic" as, for example, his MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM is as psychedelic without the drugs as ever ... specially when you see it now, even though the prints available are totally horrible!

Improvement, is, all about expressing yourself better (you'll SEE that in The Tightrope) , but it is also (as you suggest) about the person learning to use the materials in front of him/her ... and this is probably the hardest part, since some folks never really grow out of what they see, specially when it has so much ... and all you can do is try to make some sense of it, which of course, is never really clear.

But, to go back to the double album thing (sorry about the digression), it is my contention that Jon knew pretty damn well what he was hoping to hear and see, and for the most part it got done, even if there was some "dissension", which I think may have ended up making some of the material a bit on the odd side when it comes to "popular music", however, the continuity of it all makes sense, even when you read a book like THE BARDO, where each new step is guarded by a "dragon" which is a sort of image for the UNKNOWN ... and here we are ... with an "unknown", and we tend to think it is not musical, and it is not good ... and essentially, we really do not have any criteria with which to judge it bad or good, since the only thing being stated is one's like or dislike!

A lot of the "double albums" are not just a bunch of songs ... unless you name was THE BEATLES, and they even stated ... they could do anything they wanted ... AND DID!

I suppose that we all HOPE that a double album is a conceptual idea that makes sense and takes us for a trip, but too many of them are just a bunch of songs, and their relationship is trivial at best ... it doesn't make them a bad album, but it makes them a good candidate for the "better as a single album" thought!

Off topic, but it would probably be even more accurate to say Warner Bros. released albums without Zappa's permission. Didn't know about Skylarking, though I do like that album.