The Lunch Break Blog

Long Live the Long Player 03/29/2009

After catching up with recent posts on “The Lunch Break Blog”, I recognized a common theme of better days gone by. Whether looking closely at the state of higher education or our current political and economic situations, there seems to be a nostalgia for a time when things were better. Nostalgia for any idealized past can be a dangerous thing. As legendary musician/social critic Frank Zappa said in reference to a famous Robert Frost poem entitled “Fire and Ice”, “It is not necessary to imagine the world ending in either fire or ice. There are two other possibilities. One is paperwork, the other is nostalgia.” The word itself once meant “severe homesickness” and was considered an actual disease. With all of that said, I am going to contribute to this “disease” with my own thoughts on one of my favorite aspects of contemporary music that may be quickly becoming a part of our idealized pasts–the LP.

LP is the the abbreviated term for “Long Play” that was used to describe the approximately 12 inch vinyl records that were first introduced to the public in the late 1940s. They were played at 33 1/2 rpm, and provided roughly 45 minutes of recorded sound. This was a pretty drastic change at the time, since all previous recorded music came on smaller discs played at 78 rpm and contained about three minutes of sound per side. To backtrack just a bit without getting too far into the monumental impact of recorded sound all together, this three minute “single” is the biggest reason why most popular songs today clock in at roughly 3-4 minutes, even though the album is a forgotten relic (I showed a 12 inch LP to my 5 year old daughter the other day and she couldn’t get over how “giant” it was). Prior to that, most songs had much longer playing times, since being played only in live settings musicians could dictate how long the tune would last. Especially with the birth of jazz, where musicians began altering popular standards into new tunes with multiple extended solos that could last as long as the mood fit, limiting tunes to three minutes was often a challenge and, according to some, hurt the quality of the songs. The same can be said with a classical piece, which rarely lasts for such a short amount of time. Admittedly, the three minute length was not come upon arbitrarily–it was and still is a good amount of time for most popular music. Still, this is a case where the new technology dictated the format to which an art form had to adhere if one wished to have it heard by the masses (and of course make money off of it, which is for another post at another time). I can hear those old culture critics now, warning about how this new recorded sound disc will ruin the attention span of the youth, making them only able to pay attention for three minutes before losing focus…

Now back to the LP. When the “Long Player” was introduced, songs had much more room to breathe. In addition, artists could organize multiple singles on one album and sell it for a higher price. At first, these LPs were merely compilations of past material such as a greatest hits collection, but quickly artists saw the possibility of specifically creating songs that would all fit together and work as a single unit. Although there are many earlier examples such as Woody Guthrie’s folk music and Frank Sinatra’s 50s recordings, I will use The Beatles to illustrate. Pre-1965, The Beatles’ recordings released in both the US and Britian, such as Meet the Beatles and Please Please Me, were collections of their singles or songs they were playing live at the time. A Hard Day’s Night and Help were soundtracks to movies the band made partly to promote more potential hit singles. By the time Revolver, Rubber Soul and most clearly the concept album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band reached the public, the boys from Liverpool had embraced the idea of thematically or at least stylistically related songs arranged in a specific order that work together as a greater whole (to be fair, it is often noted that Paul McCartney got the inspiration for Sgt. Pepper’s from The Beach Boys 1966 release, Pet Sounds). The only single from any of these Beatles records to hit number one on the charts was Paul’s “Eleanor Rigby” off of the 1966 Revolver. Obviously, an artistic shift from creating a hit single had occurred. Many musicians now bought into the idea of producing an entire album of music that would work under a single title and be packaged in a sleeve that would feature appropriate art to match the music.

Enough history. Has the LP disappeared? Well, of course we have moved from the album to the cassette to the CD and now the mp3. And even though the technology and packaging have changed drastically, we still have musicians creating roughly forty-five minutes to an hour’s worth of music that works as a unified whole. With the mp3, there really is no reason for this time constraint, and with digital downloading music lovers can pick and choose individual songs to download. Sitting and listening to an entire “album” worth of music in the order the artist intended happens less and less with the rise of iPod shuffles and other portable mp3 players (Remember the A and B sides? Your children will have no idea what that means). Internet music sources such as Pandora and LastFM both allow people to create their own “radio stations” that play single songs for free, but do not allow for a listener to listen to an entire album. The music industry still hopes these kinds of sites will make people seek out the album if they hear something they like, and statistics have shown that many have, but you have to wonder how long this trend will last. As we move another generation away from the LP, will musicians and music lovers still value the time and attention span needed to appreciate an hour’s worth of music put together for a unified artistic effect? Will there still be a place in our culture for the LP, or will we return to the era of singles, or something entirely different? I don’t have the answers to these questions, but, nostalgic or not, I do hope that during my lifetime I will always be able to find enjoyable, new music arranged in a way to be appreciated as a unified whole.

To conclude, here are some great LPs from each decade since the 1960s (off of the top of my head):

1968: Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks

1972: Lou Reed’s Transformer

1988: Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation

1990: Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet

2002: Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

A final quick note about the last album: The 2002 documentary I Am Trying to Break Your Heart follows members of Wilco as they create their album, and does a great job capturing the long conflict the band had with their record label that felt the album lacked a catchy enough single that they believed was needed in order for the album to sell. Even for those who don’t know or enjoy Wilco’s music, it’s a fascinating look at how the music industry and their desire for profit affects the artistic integrity of a musician’s vision.