I'm tired of (most) 79 minute albums!

Robert and David of King Crimson acknowledge that The Mincer was filler.  

darqdean wrote: ^ but this is a Prog site and we are discussing Prog albums, hence through-out the 70s from a Prog perspective, albums were the be all and end all of producing music. Few Progs band released singles and they had no effect on album sales. A Prog band would not put substandard material on an album to fill-up space because it would go against the whole ethos of producing the album in the first place.

darqdean wrote: micky wrote: Dean -  reading your post, the part I bolded... an album comes immediately to mind.  Some think Yes were guilty of doing just that... others.. see it completely differently.  What do you think.  To some it is a the most glaring example of doing just what you say prog bands would not do.. which.. I agree completely with you that they wouldn't.  Anderson and Howe were not  just throwing sh*t on the wall to fill 2 Lp's... but unbelievable ...some do actually think they did.  That the driving concern.. was not the music... creating a sonic painting.. but meerly trying to fill out the album from a limited pot of musical ideas.  So what do you think Dean.. is TFTO the 'classic' equilvalent to the chronal outrages heeped upon us by modern prog groups. Ha. Got me.   I missed Tales From Topographic Oceans when it first came out because I couldn't afford it on my meager apprentice's pay. So for me it came after Relayer, not Close To The Edit Edge, which I think set me up better to take an instant liking to it, eventhough by then it's notoriety of being pretentious and inpenitrable was well known, but it didn't - it took a while.   I think it is paced and balanced perfectly, I don't like pieces of music that are crammed full of musical ideas that don't link together, I like ones that grow and develop - at a minimalistic level that's what Phillip Glass and Steve Reich do, at a more complex level that's what Mike Oldfield did on his pastoral pieces and that's what Tangerine Dream do best, damit - that's even what Echoes is all about.   And I think that TFTO achieves that, whether by accident or design I'm not sure - is the "padding" a band bereft of ideas or is it a carefully crafted aural landscape (echoing Roger Dean's cover painting, which is also a "constructed" landscape collaged together from different ideas from himself and each band member) - I'm inclined to think it is the later, I think Anderson and Howe (and Eddie Offord) are wise enough and sharp enough to realise that, but I honestly don't think it matters either way because it works.   If you're setting off for a marathon you don't want to do the whole thing at a frantic sprint, so if TFTO were the equivalent of an 80 minute Gates of Delirium then I think listener fatigue would have set in very rapidly and all the critisisms would be justified, but as it is you don't get that (at least I don't, but maybe I have an abnormally high attention span). Stick this on your iPod and play it from beginning to end without the unwanted excercise-break where you have to get up and flip over the LP or change the CD and it can keep your attention without your mind wandering anywhere excpet where the music takes you, especially with the up-lift you get from hearing Nous Sommes du Soleil at the end of the journey.   My only crit of the whole thing is for the remastered CD - the two extra versions of Dance and Ancient are unnecessary and spoil Ritial's perfect ending.   So to answer your question (finally!) Yes No - modern bands seem to take this as the blue-print of what not to do, whereas it should be the master-plan of how to do things right.

not much to say but....



and you are 100% on the money...

ghost_of_morphy wrote: micky wrote: ghost_of_morphy wrote:   And I still think that albums were more likely to include substandard material back in the Vinyl Age.   had to read that twice to make sure I read that correctly... more likely?.... more likely that trying to expand finite musical ideas into 75 or 80 minute album rather than 40 or 45 that doesn't make sense on the face of it.. care to ellaborate?  You have me curious there   Yep, I'll elaborate.   Back in the vinyl age, unless you were a big name hell-bent on producing yourself, you were signed to a multiple album contract by one of the big 5 record companies.  Music sales were album oriented and became even more so with the decline of the 45 in the '70's, but still the main exposure of a successful band's work remained FM radio singles.  This led to a situation where a band's sales of 8-10 songs were really determined in a large part by the success of three or four songs.  Throw in the insane pressure to release albums as quickly as possible that prevailed in the first half of the '70's and the last half of the '60's and you get a lot of crap included.  Of course, a lot of you will object to the word crap, so let's just politely call them tracks that seemed like a good idea at the time.   About two decades ago, various factors (the rise of independent artists, the rise of urban music, cheap recording, and the internet), began chipping away at the traditional album production and distribution methods.  Groups that followed the old model found those albums marginalized.  Pressure grew on groups to increase the quality of the whole album.   Although I can think of a lot of examples, these changes probably had less of an effect on prog, which was album oriented and bucking the FM oriented scene to begin with.  Stil, I imagine that a close examination of what was released in the '70's compared to what is released today will show that album quality has indeed improved.

darqdean wrote: ^ but this is a Prog site and we are discussing Prog albums, hence through-out the 70s from a Prog perspective, albums were the be all and end all of producing music. Few Progs band released singles and they had no effect on album sales. A Prog band would not put substandard material on an album to fill-up space because it would go against the whole ethos of producing the album in the first place.

exactly

Morphy -   we are discussing prog... as far as what other artists were doing?... it doesn't pertain to the conversation.  Nice post though.. for a general music site.

Dean -  reading your post, the part I bolded... an album comes immediately to mind.  Some think Yes were guilty of doing just that... others.. see it completely differently.  What do you think.  To some it is a the most glaring example of doing just what you say prog bands would not do.. which.. I agree completely with you that they wouldn't.  Anderson and Howe were not  just throwing sh*t on the wall to fill 2 Lp's... but unbelievable ...some do actually think they did.  That the driving concern.. was not the music... creating a sonic painting.. but meerly trying to fill out the album from a limited pot of musical ideas. 

So what do you think Dean.. is TFTO the 'classic' equilvalent to the chronal outrages heeped upon us by modern prog groups.


Edited by micky - November 28 2007 at 16:03

^ but this is a Prog site and we are discussing Prog albums, hence through-out the 70s from a Prog perspective, albums were the be all and end all of producing music. Few Progs band released singles and they had no effect on album sales. A Prog band would not put substandard material on an album to fill-up space because it would go against the whole ethos of producing the album in the first place.

I'll tell you my perspective on 'More Fool Me', and why I think SEBTP is the pinnacle of the genre (alongside, yes, CTTE). Every long track on SEBTP is followed by a shorter one and I think that works perfectly. A problem I encounter with modern prog CDs is the lack of 'breathing space', and you could technically say the same about 'Tales From Topographic Oceans'- there is just too much, with epic after epic after epic. With SEBTP, there is a perfect structure to the album, IMHO.

I think the whole issue with filler is it is a reflection of it's creators' taste (or lack thereof).  When a group (general consesus implied) of interior designers can all agree that a room is poorly decorated, chances are high that it's because somethings in the room don't seem to belong--not that there wasn't enough decorative stuff in the room.  When someone in a creative role throws in everything including the kitchen sink, there's a good chance that it just comes across like haphazard mish-mash.  Perhapse some people still like that, but the concept remains that it takes more skill and talent to excercise some tastefull culling when necessary than to just throw every idea that you've recently worked on together on a CD. 

ghost_of_morphy wrote:   And I still think that albums were more likely to include substandard material back in the Vinyl Age.

had to read that twice to make sure I read that correctly...

more likely?.... more likely that trying to expand finite musical ideas into 75 or 80 minute album rather than 40 or 45.

that doesn't make sense on the face of it..

care to ellaborate?  You have me curious there

I have to agree with The T, I also think that sometimes enough is enough, I think 60 minutes is good enough to project someone's feelings IMHO

I'll put it on my things to do list....along with writing reviews

In the mean time, you get two cheesy stars, the equivalent of .5 clappies