Double Albums

By this I mean double studio albums, which are rare.  Since a headliner’s concert show lasts about 90 minutes, and an LP is 40-60 (usually 40, 60 minutes only with the best recording engineer, Iron Maiden seems to be the only band to bother) this means a full concert will take two LPs and won’t even fit on a single 70 minute CD.  But for those brave souls who dare to inflict 90 minutes of new material on an unsuspecting audience…what are the results?

 The Who Tommy.  Concept album about a boy, Tommy, who looks like Roger Daltrey and whose parents resemble Oliver Reed and Ann-Margret.  Also known as “rock opera”, with a plot (fairly convoluted).  Pete Townshend’s attempt to top Tommy with Lifehouse wound up as Who’s Next instead, hardly a bad album but well beneath his lofty ambitions; as Daltrey explains, “the problem with Pete’s ideas is that he is the only one who can understand them.”  This was turned into a movie with the afore-mentioned Daltrey, Reed and Ann-Margret, but also Keith Moon, Eric Clapton, Tina Turner and Elton John.  I found the music to be fine, but the plot to be a bit Byzantine.  In any case I prefer Who’s Next.

   I've seen the movie, Quadrophenia, but not heard the double studio album of the same name.

 The Beatles, White Album.  Now we’re talking.  I think Sgt. Pepper is heavily overrated, especially relative to this one.  Although it has a few turds like “Wild Honey Pie”, “Why Don’t We Do It In the Road”, and “Revolution #9”, the gems more than make up for those: “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” (stunning guitar solo by Clapton), “Back in the USSR”, “Rocky Raccoon”, “Don’t Pass Me By”, “Happiness Is A Warm Gun”, “I’m So Tired”, “Helter Skelter”, “Birthday”, “Long, Long, Long” and even “Good Night”.  I have fond memories singing along to “Back in the USSR” in a hotel room in Kiev with my ASP buddies.

 The Rolling Stones, Exile On Main Street.  Let me say this: the Emperor has no clothes.  This album, far from being the masterpiece that rock journalists – who would bear Keith Richards’ children if male pregnancy were at all possible – make it out to be, has not ONE “Jumping Jack Flash” or “Gimme Shelter” on it to justify the purchase.  The “hit”, “Tumbling Dice”, is mediocre, as are all the rest.  Its mystique appears to be solely supported by Keith’s drug habit.

 Led Zeppelin, Physical Graffiti.  For an album of tracks simply thrown together at random, this has no turds and several gems: “Kashmir”, “In My Time of Dying”, “The Rover”, “In The Light”, “Ten Years Gone”, with the rest being no worse than mediocre.  

 Pink Floyd, The Wall.  Waters’ epic story about a jaded rock star (himself) who builds a wall between himself and his audience.  Like Tommy, this is one where I think the story is less impressive than the music itself: “Another Brick In The Wall (Part II)”, “Comfortably Numb”, “Mother”, “The Thin Ice”, “In The Flesh”, and “Waiting For The Worms”.  I’ve grown tired of the movie itself (I much prefer “Live at Pompeii”, as anyone who follows my blogs will guess) but I do like the marching hammers and Gerald Scarfe animation.
   Does Ummagumma count? It's one disc of live material and only the second is studio.  Of the latter, Gilmour's "Narrow Way" parts I-III are by far the most enjoyable.  I'm not keen on animal noises, ranting Picts, Sisyphus or the Grand Vizier.  Likewise, Cream's Wheels of Fire album is half studio, half live.

 Miles Davis, Bitches Brew.  I'm not a jazz fan, but I do like psychedelic music, so this "free form jazz odyssey" didn't tax my patience.  Along that same line, I like Can's Tago Mago (mentioned in my "Psychedelisch" blog).

 Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ladyland.  Not too bad, but too much of it doesn't match up to the quality of the two tracks most often lifted from this one, "Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)" and "All Along the Watchtower".

 Baroness recently atoned for their noise-laden Blue and Red albums with the double Yellow/Green album, which has more normal singing and a proggy feel to it.

 Frank Zappa has his Mothers of Invention debut album, Freak Out!, and his later triple album, Joe's Garage Acts I-III.  Both have a heavy dose of humor (as we expect from him) to avoid the length being tedious.

 Double studio albums seem to be a relic of the vinyl era, when sound concerns limited bands to 20 minutes per side of vinyl, or just under 45 minutes total for a single LP; some bands like Iron Maiden were able to cram almost 60 minutes of new studio material onto a single LP with no loss of sound quality.  Martin Birch: "the best sound engineers can do that, and Maiden only use the best."  A modern CD can fit 80 minutes of material, almost double the vinyl capacity, so as of this point, the only double studio CD album I know of is Judas Priest's Nostradamus concept album.  Give them credit for mixing it up a bit, because after the Ripper Owen Experiment, Priest then went "prog" for this project.  

 Techincally not double albums, but honorable mentions:

 Judas Priest, Turbo/Ram It Down.  The band originally intended to release them together, to juxtapose the commercial sheen of Turbo with the rough-edged metal of Ram It Down.  Of course, the record company argued that no one wants to buy a Judas Priest double studio album, and got their way.  I actually like Turbo, though, and Ram It Down doesn’t impress me nearly as much as Defenders of the Faith.  While I can understand the fans’ antipathy for Turbo – it certainly SOUNDS like a sellout album – to me, even with the synths and goofy lyrics (worst offender: “Parental Guidance”) it still rocks.

 Guns N’Roses, Use Your Illusion I & II.  They were released simultaneously.  Unfortunately it seems that GNR had one good album’s worth of music and another’s worth of mediocre tunage; had they distilled them to one album, they would have had a classic arguably stronger than Appetite For Destruction.  But the best song here, “Estranged”, ranks as possibly the best GNR song ever.  “Civil War”, “You Could Be Mine”, “Pretty Tied Up”, “Locomotive” (all from II) and the nice epic “November Rain” and impressive Wings cover “Live And Let Die” (from I) fill out the highlights.  Having heard Chinese Democracy (which, contrary to the rock press’ predictions, was released before true democracy did in fact make it to Red China) I’d say that it’s not as good as the “best of” Use Your Illusion.  Not a bad album, but to take 14 years to put out you’d expect another Pet Sounds.