It's a bit of a dying practice isn't it? In these digital days.

Can't say there's a Stones LP more recent than Tattoo You that I'd 'sit' all the way through. Steel Wheels maybe. And Stripped.

What LPs stay on your turntable for the duration?

LPs come and go in the rotation and I have a quite a few.I especailly dig the Stones mono stuff and much of pop, rock and R&B of the 60s. I really like listening to an album, LP or CD, all the way through because more often then not that is how the artist intended that it be heard. Right now I have a Hound Dog Taylor LP on. Woof!

The "big 4" (BB, LIB, SF, EOMS) almost always.
Blonde On Blonde, The Band's first couple of albums, Miles' Kind Of Blue and Coltrane's A Love Supreme and probably a few more I can't remember now.

In addition to the "Big four" mentioned above, I'll add the rest of the albums up until we get to Tattoo You as others I also listen to all the way through. Undercover has issues for me; Diry Work is...Dirty Work; Steel Wheels has some gems, VL would be one I'd listen through all the way if it weren't for some clunkers, B2B, like VL, gets an "almost" full run through if it were for a 1 or 2 dud tracks and ABB gets a lot of "skips" from me, sadly.

Exile On Main Street.

any beatles album

You're right, Roll 73, it's a dying habit. Can't remember the last album I listened to through and through. Must have been in the mid 80-ies.

Damn near every record I play stays on all the way through.

I very rarely sit down and just listen.
Usually I'm doing something around the house, listening to music at the same time, so I just listen to the lesser tracks while staying busy.

All the way through with almost every album I put on unless I've got to go out before it's finished.....I do tend to use the shuffle a lot though to give a bit of variation...............having said that there's a few albums this approach doesn't seem to work with though..........Exile, Do it yourself, The Wall to name a handful...and probaly more that I haven't got round to listening to yet since I bought this new Cd player with a shuffle.............



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-11 04:09 by EddieByword.

Are record clubs the new book clubs?

By David Sillito
BBC arts correspondent

A growing number of music-lovers unhappy about the way album tracks are enjoyed in a pick-and-mix fashion have decided to take action.

The rules are strict. No talking. No texting. You must listen to every song on the album.

Classic Album Sundays treat our best-loved records like great symphonies and are being set up in London, Scotland and Wales.

Groups of music fans sit in front of a vinyl turntable, with the best speakers they can afford, dim the lights and listen to a classic album all the way through.
This monthly club in north London is run by Colleen Murphy and for her it is a strike against "'download culture", the sense that music has just become an endless compilation of random songs used as background noise.

"Everyone, stop multi-tasking, sit down, open your ears and do some heavy listening."

The set album this month was Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. We sat in silence even as David Bowie's record was turned over to side two.
The seats were soft, someone had lit some incense. Some people closed their eyes, others nodded in rhythmic appreciation. There was a sense of being collectively submerged in Bowie's music.

"You're not even allowed to use the bathroom here, it's too noisy," says Ms Murphy.

Kate Bush's The Hounds of Love was a previous choice, and a popular one amongst the regulars. Most had heard bits of the record but few could remember sitting through it all the way through.

It is a topic that has been making the papers. Pink Floyd went to court to try to protect the integrity of albums such as Dark Side of the Moon. For music critics such as Neil McCormick of the Daily Telegraph they were totally justified.
"These are works of art at their greatest level. You can pick up a Dickens book and read a little bit of it and get some pleasure but you will not get the same pleasure as you would picking it up and reading it from beginning to end."
He took me through his vinyl collection, the albums you have to listen to all the way through. Top of the list was Blue by Joni Mitchell, then in no particular order came Get Happy by Elvis Costello, Dark side of the Moon, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and all of Led Zeppelin. The list was a long one.

"They've created works that have a beginning, a middle and end, that have nuances, themes, that take you on a journey that's as great as any novel, any opera, any drama."

One of the greatest crimes he feels is to split up the suite of songs at the end of the Beatles' Abbey Road, because each song drifts in to the next.
The little tune Her Majesty is a simple little coda to ease the tension left by the Beatles farewell to their fans, the song The End. At the end of the song there is a gap and a final crashing chord, then to relieve the tension comes 23 seconds of this little acoustic ditty. On its own it begins half way through that final chord.

"It makes no sense," says McCormick. "To split them is simply shocking, meaningless."

But to Peter Robinson of the website Pop Justice this is the past speaking.
"Most albums, you've got a pretty good idea. The bad songs are pretty bad, you know. We're busy people. Let's just get rid of them."

Every album he owns is split, analysed and re-ordered. This, he says, is progress. The listener is in control and we do not have to sit through bad music. If he were to spend time with a "classic rock" album, he says the solution is simple.
"What I would do is open the track as an audio file, take out any drum solos, look for any guitar solo, take it out, close it and put it back into iTunes."
Albums, he says, have often become meaningless. Some songs are given away as free downloads, track listings can change with bonus tracks being added or changed. You can, he says, listen all the way through but do not feel obliged to obey the whims of a pop star.

But back at the pub in Islington in London, we were coming to the emotional climax of Rock and Roll Suicide at the end of Ziggy Stardust.

The £12,000 speakers were revealing little nuances of sound that some of us had not heard before.

The remastered vinyl seemed to capture the feel of the 70s and I had stayed awake for almost all of it. Heads nodded, a foot quietly tapped and as the final string chord faded out the lights were turned back on.

For Gina Tapsley, it was a revelation: "Listening to an album like this shows me something new, it's always an emotional experience."

DJ Shadow, The Stone Roses, Kanye West, Carole King. The blackboard was already filling with suggested classic albums for the months to come.

I only listen to albums. Have 1000 store bought CDs - my burned stuff is all bootleg. I own albums where I know it's not a truly great album (or even good) but I find unsuccessful albums are as informative about the artist as the successful ones. I prefer anthologies for older artists (Chuck, Muddy, the Wolf etc.). Albums represent a snapshot in time. Some things don't age well but that doesn't mean it's uninteresting.

Any Beatles album--

"Let it Bleed", any Stones album from 64-66

"Nashville Skyline", "Blood on the Tracks" - Dylan

"Pet Sounds" Beach Boys

"McCartney"

"Bryter Later" Nick Drake

"Stardust" Willie Nelson

" Midnight Souveniers" Peter Wolf

Thanks for sharing the BBC anecdote Beast! I agree that record clubs are the new book clubs. The majority of people don't read good books anymore though, so what does the future hold for album lovers?

off the top of my head,
CCR's Cosmo's Factory
Neil Young's On The Beach and Tonight's The Night
The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds
The Velvet Underground's Loaded and their first album

all killer and no filler, as they say.

When I first buy an album, I'll usually attempt listen from start to finish. After that, the skip function makes an appearance. Despite enjoying vinyl, I'm from the digital age, so I guess I'm not alone.

Not too many Albums are filled with good songs, there are usually one or two Duds on an Album. Most Beatles Albums you can listen too every track but even they have some Album fillers. I cant listen to the White album all the way through and Exhile on Mainstreet doesnt do it for me either, even though thats Heresy here, I think its over-rated. Sticky Fingers is a more complete and better Album, so there,



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2011-06-11 09:50 by lapaz62.

I'm with you "lapaz62" about Sticky Fingers being better. And I'm in agreement that it's nearly impossible to listen to any newer releases all the way through. It's a time gone by, and hate to say it but Rock And Roll is probably not to far away from disappearing itself. I suspect it's only being kept alive by people like us.

Rock & roll started with singles, cohesive rock albums were non-existent in the 50's and early 60's, they were mostly a compilation of singles, b-sides and filler. So now that people don't give a crap about albums is kind of a return to the roots isn't it?

Until Steel Wheels I enjoy listening Stones albums as a whole.
But last 3 studios albums have too many fillers and are too long anyway. They should go back to the 12-track (or even 10-track) format if they ever release another one.

Quote
Roll73
What LPs stay on your turntable for the duration?

Metamorphosis. My favourite post-Sticky Fingers Stones album.

Only one album comes to mind:

Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am. - Lou Reed on Metal Machine Music.

Quote
ineedadrink
Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am. - Lou Reed on Metal Machine Music.

Thanks!

don't thank me!

...no seriously...who skips any somgs on Some Girls?...really??

LP sides would be 15 to 20 minutes when CDs nowadays last at 45, sometimes up to 90... It's understandable people get bored.

Even in the CD days I was changing CDs after two songs, sometimes even in the middle of the first one. For instance I was a big fan of LZ Celebration solo and would be playing the song until the solo and then change the CD...

Nowadays, most of the time I listen to my digital library (ripped from my CD collection). More than 19 days in total, usually playing in random, which helps discover or remind of obscure or forgotten pearls. Even in this mode I do skip a lot of songs.

I agree the shuffle feature is a bit of a spoiler when artists and mastering engineers spend days deciding of the tracks order, and working on transitions...

But when I feel like really listening to music (and not background music), I play CDs or LPs and in this case, in the right order and for the whole album.

The LP side is the perfect listening unit: 15-25 minutes, get up and change the record.

Then CDs came along with, first 74, then 80, minutes of music. They're just too long. Because CDs cost so much, people felt the need to provide max music. Trouble is, that just led to poor editing and inclusion of songs that would have been b-sides on the albums proper.

I end up listening to a lot of albums all the way through just because a lot of my listening is in my car or office.

...Last Stones-album that recently 'worked' that way for me was Bridges to Babylon...

["I can hear the Bullfrog calling me..."]

Time permitting, I always listen to albums all the way through. If you pick and choose you sometimes miss some great music. Sometimes I'll have listened to an album dozens or more times and all of a sudden, a song that was just ok, all of a sudden just pops. I love when an album you been listening for years, all of a sudden for some reason a song just grabs you.

It's so very lonely, you're 2,000 Light Years from home

Just listened to Sticky fingers SHM-SACD all the way through, now I'm listening to Highway To Hell. Who's Next is next.
Almost always listen to albums as a whole.