vinyl with a natural intermission

Yes. After listening to great Prog songs like "Close to the Edge", "The Gates of Delirium" and "Tarkus", the end of the musical piece on Side One gives the sense to the listener of an "intermission". The Side Two was the "second part of the show",with "lighter" songs, IMO.

Edited by Guillermo - November 10 2006 at 17:27

You raise a good point, Ursinus, but I think it very much depends on the album. I agree with your example "Tarkus", but I disliked the LP intermission and artificial break on "Brain Salad Surgery", "Thick As A Brick" and "The Story Of i", to name but three, and I prefer the CD versions.
    

Edited by Fitzcarraldo - November 10 2006 at 18:54

Bravo....... really good topic, never thought that way before about vynil albums.

The T wrote: The thing that worries me is, just like you said the advent of NEW technology (CD) changed the way albums were made, today's new crap (IPOD and related s&&t) will cause albums to CEASE to exist, in favor of just SONGS.....

IMO, with CDs we were to lose that nice size of album covers.

The main problem with cd's is that they invented 70 minute album (give or take). With the exception of Klaus Sculze, most album sides lasted approx 20 mins, a we bit more, or  a wee bit less. Thus crap fillers was invented for cd's and i personally hate them, bonus studio/live tracks and demos. If they weren't good enough for the original then they should not be spun on us just because a cd holds more music. I love vinyl, and the intermission is/was part of vinyl, also it is better sound.

Signori, my intention wasn't to create a situation vinyl vs. cd but simply to point out that in the era of vinyls the bands considered this side A - side B concept as a possibity. Now in the era of cds there exist other possibilities and other problems as well. Still I think that vinyl as a format has it's advances over cds.

I agree that 70 minute album isn't just a positive invention: I think that some add-ons on old albums disturb the beauty of the whole in some cases and for new albums the problem is often that they add perhaps songs that ones couldn't pass because of the limit of time. I'm sure that in the 70s the bands composed as many songs as today but now the percent on album is higher. And if they really wanted to publish more there was always possibity to make it double. Of course there are cases and cases but but...

Then I've to say that I really miss the cover art... Ok, also here the way of doing covers has changed but still. Think for example Bitches Brew or Camel's first album... Well, enough to say that ones people knew some names of these artists... and nowadays?

"And how about vinyl albums that jump or get stuck?" Just treat them properly... and also cds need to be taken care of.

Well, I've to say that also cds have their advances... It could be a bit difficult to take a vinyl into the car... or when I have music on the background while doing something else...

I vote for negative tracks! Also Tool's Aenima has its intermission...

PS Do you remember in the 90s when cd started its invasion and the prices of vinyls dived? At the beginning I simply bought vinyls because the cost was one third; obviously now its contrary - too bad though.

I`m still living in the dark ages and most of my collection consists of vinyl. As Gong pointed out about the size of the vinyl covers. I miss that on the newer CDs. As for continuity there are a few albums that I welcomed on CD such as Grobschnitt`s Solar music Live. On the original pressing side one just cuts out on side one and then cuts in on side two. On the remastered CD you get the whole thing with no interuption plus an extra 13 minutes. There are some albums that are best appreciated in their original vinyl anolog form IMO and Tarkus is definitely one of them. Others would be Mike Oldfield`s Tubular Bells and  Crises which were written with two sides of a record in mind. Iguess it`s a matter of how old you are. many of you guys out there didn`t live through the vinyl era and only know albums such as TFTO and others as a single CD. Look at all the albums released on CD which have to add bonus tracks not only for commercial reasons  but for filler. Some albums from the 70`s barely ran over 30 minutes! Bands of the future will probably be writing albums for whatever the next format. There will be probably 3 hour albums who knows. Anyway I stick to my vinyl most of the time because I like watching the disc go around.