24-05-2012, 05:27
Hmmmm I don't have any artists that appeal to me. I see it as their line of work to make the stuff. I don't really go out and get artists' discographies, not really. I used to when I was a record collector, but I stopped that when I went digital about 13 or 14 years ago. Most of the artists that I did collect are now dead, and that music for me is not living and breathing anymore because I can't go see them -- all I have is the souvenir, and I'm Mr. Minimal Living. I'm far more interested in someone I can go see than nostalgia, although my library goes back about 70 years. I don't think in terms of albums or singles or EPs. They're all just plain releases.
It makes no sense to me why:
The Orb's "Blue Room" is a single. The version I have is 70 minutes long. The song itself is 40 minutes long. There's a radio version, an alternate version, and another song on the version I have.
YET:
Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" is about 50 minutes long, it is one title, and it's an album.
Yes's "Close To The Edge" is about 36 minutes or so, it's got three songs, and it's an album.
Anoesis's "Blood And Sweat In London" has 8 songs, it's 2 12" records, runs about an hour, and it's an EP.
Most American Beatles albums were between 25 and 30 minutes long, yet they're albums.
Sun Ra has countless albums that have 3 songs that are shorter than most "EP"s.
Push's "Universal Nation" has about 20 songs on it, it's about 2.5 hours long, and it's a single. It's "different mixes" but most of them are like brand new songs.
Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" has four songs on it and it's an album.
Freakazoid "Da E.P." (despite the title) has four songs and it's longer than the Pink Floyd album.
I once had a copy of MC5 "Ice Pick Slim", with "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver" on the flip. It was a single. It ran longer than the Yes album.
Most of my favourite dance releases that were on records were four songs, and ran 25-40 minutes in play time. If they go over that, then they'd make it 2 of whatever -- 2 10" records, 2 12" records. Because dance tunes are about 6-9 minutes apiece they wanted the vinyl as hot as possible, so these were all "EPs" .... It just became silly to keep trying to make the distinction, and the more I thought about it the more I realised I was missing great things simply by making the distinction. They were just marketing terms.
Now back to the original question (the one that started the thread) .... I don't think it matters. Only record collectors seem to care about format -- the general public doesn't seem to care. Most people that I know just get a song or two, and that's it. You can go to any album, really, and pick and choose. I notice that Amazon frequently takes longer tunes and makes them "album only" so that you buy the whole thing if you want to get it, and they point out that you can buy the album cheaper than if you get all the tracks. Of course now with "albums" there's 5 or 6 different versions frequently depending on whether you get it from Amazon, the iTunes store, or some other format. A long time ago I decided that I was not going to be manipulated by marketers and I just decided I didn't have any favourite artists, and so I started listening without regard to who was making the music. You can't imagine how rewarding it is. I'd say my listening is about 40% dance stuff, about 25-30% "head music" (avant-garde, noise, what-have-you), and the rest is whatever. I have releases that are lots of songs (biggest one I have is a box that has some 168 songs on it), but I never pick an artist and listen to all on that one release.
Mp3s don't bug me at all. They're all listenable to me. I have a computer dedicated to being "the stereo", have it wired into a stereo, and it sounds alright to me. I have an mp3 player and listen to stuff in it when I'm on the move.
I'm a miser (you won't believe how miserly I am -- it took me 3 months to buy a pair of shoes because the prices were hateful), and I go for free stuff, so I listen mostly to radio shows. If I want to hear different mixes I normally hit up youtube or soundcloud. I'm really big on creative commons so I'd say about 40% of my collection came from http://www.archive.org. My tastes run so anti-mainstream as well, so most of my mp3s are sourced from old vinyl or cassettes (I was big into industrial cassette culture when it was happening, with hundreds if not thousands of cassettes. Long about 1990 or so I started getting DJ cassettes from the DJ's themselves -- promo things, and that's what I'd listen to. By then I just stopped caring if it were an album, and the last time I hung out in a record shop was about 1992 or so.
It makes no sense to me why:
The Orb's "Blue Room" is a single. The version I have is 70 minutes long. The song itself is 40 minutes long. There's a radio version, an alternate version, and another song on the version I have.
YET:
Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" is about 50 minutes long, it is one title, and it's an album.
Yes's "Close To The Edge" is about 36 minutes or so, it's got three songs, and it's an album.
Anoesis's "Blood And Sweat In London" has 8 songs, it's 2 12" records, runs about an hour, and it's an EP.
Most American Beatles albums were between 25 and 30 minutes long, yet they're albums.
Sun Ra has countless albums that have 3 songs that are shorter than most "EP"s.
Push's "Universal Nation" has about 20 songs on it, it's about 2.5 hours long, and it's a single. It's "different mixes" but most of them are like brand new songs.
Pink Floyd "Wish You Were Here" has four songs on it and it's an album.
Freakazoid "Da E.P." (despite the title) has four songs and it's longer than the Pink Floyd album.
I once had a copy of MC5 "Ice Pick Slim", with "I'm Mad Like Eldridge Cleaver" on the flip. It was a single. It ran longer than the Yes album.
Most of my favourite dance releases that were on records were four songs, and ran 25-40 minutes in play time. If they go over that, then they'd make it 2 of whatever -- 2 10" records, 2 12" records. Because dance tunes are about 6-9 minutes apiece they wanted the vinyl as hot as possible, so these were all "EPs" .... It just became silly to keep trying to make the distinction, and the more I thought about it the more I realised I was missing great things simply by making the distinction. They were just marketing terms.
Now back to the original question (the one that started the thread) .... I don't think it matters. Only record collectors seem to care about format -- the general public doesn't seem to care. Most people that I know just get a song or two, and that's it. You can go to any album, really, and pick and choose. I notice that Amazon frequently takes longer tunes and makes them "album only" so that you buy the whole thing if you want to get it, and they point out that you can buy the album cheaper than if you get all the tracks. Of course now with "albums" there's 5 or 6 different versions frequently depending on whether you get it from Amazon, the iTunes store, or some other format. A long time ago I decided that I was not going to be manipulated by marketers and I just decided I didn't have any favourite artists, and so I started listening without regard to who was making the music. You can't imagine how rewarding it is. I'd say my listening is about 40% dance stuff, about 25-30% "head music" (avant-garde, noise, what-have-you), and the rest is whatever. I have releases that are lots of songs (biggest one I have is a box that has some 168 songs on it), but I never pick an artist and listen to all on that one release.
Mp3s don't bug me at all. They're all listenable to me. I have a computer dedicated to being "the stereo", have it wired into a stereo, and it sounds alright to me. I have an mp3 player and listen to stuff in it when I'm on the move.
I'm a miser (you won't believe how miserly I am -- it took me 3 months to buy a pair of shoes because the prices were hateful), and I go for free stuff, so I listen mostly to radio shows. If I want to hear different mixes I normally hit up youtube or soundcloud. I'm really big on creative commons so I'd say about 40% of my collection came from http://www.archive.org. My tastes run so anti-mainstream as well, so most of my mp3s are sourced from old vinyl or cassettes (I was big into industrial cassette culture when it was happening, with hundreds if not thousands of cassettes. Long about 1990 or so I started getting DJ cassettes from the DJ's themselves -- promo things, and that's what I'd listen to. By then I just stopped caring if it were an album, and the last time I hung out in a record shop was about 1992 or so.