The Longest Song You Ever Heard

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.

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!

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.

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   

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.

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. 

Syzygy wrote: anael wrote: Merzbow. Akasha Gulva (73:41), Rainbow Electronics (73:22) Acid Mothers Temple. What's Your Name? (70:46), The Holly Mountain In The Counter-Clock World (65:36) Koji Asano. Crevasses (73:32)   You beat me to it with Acid Mothers Temple - although What's Your Name does drag on a bit. It was part of a 4 CD set where each CD contained 1 song, each clocking in at 60 + minutes.

Sounds interesting, but exhausting.
I don't know if I could take 4 hours of Acid Mothers Temple mania. I won't end up sane, that's for sure.

anael wrote: Merzbow. Akasha Gulva (73:41), Rainbow Electronics (73:22) Acid Mothers Temple. What's Your Name? (70:46), The Holly Mountain In The Counter-Clock World (65:36) Koji Asano. Crevasses (73:32)

Merzbow. Akasha Gulva (73:41), Rainbow Electronics (73:22)
Acid Mothers Temple. What's Your Name? (70:46), The Holly Mountain In The Counter-Clock World (65:36)
Koji Asano. Crevasses (73:32)

Klaus Schulze:  Into the Blue 78:25        He actually has longer songs than that, but that is the longest of his I have personally heard.  (for example Picasso geht spazieren, which has three movements that total over 154 minutes!!!)

Flower Kings:  Garden Of Dreams 58:17 (this is the correct time, as I joined it into one track on my computer.........the CD booklet is wrong, which happens a lot with times on Flower Kings CD booklets for some reason)


Edited by infandous - February 12 2007 at 16:33