33 at 45

I have nothing to say about this Elton John album (it's the one with the 'White Powder, White Lady' song on it LOL and also 'Little Jeannie' or whatever it's called). I just thought I could launch into a post ruminating on the increasing obsolescence of references to gramophone record speeds in the 21st century when music  is no longer seen as a tangible item that goes at a speed. I actually misremembered this album title as '33 at 45' (I remembered the reasoning behind the actual title though: 'I've made this many albums at this age'). 

You know I understand the idea mastering 12" records, even albums, at 45 for sound quality but it also slightly annoys me, selfishly, because sometimes my turntable belt slips off and I think it's more likely to happen if I go back and forth between 33 and 45 too much, or indeed, at all. So various great records like the Waterfall Person album or my Rip Rig and Panic albums don't get much play. 

The first two Rip Rig and Panic albums were released as 2 x 12" 45s (the third was a standard 12" 33). I am not entirely sure what the rationale was, but I'd bet there was an element of Virgin records saying to the band, 'this is how much we love you, we're not going to invest in videos or anything (I wonder if they did? The only video I have seen of them is not really video, it's their appearance in The Young Ones) but we will double the manufacturing/shipping cost of your albums'. I assume the cost was not substantially passed on to the consumer - you can't really call these double albums. I do remember a time, incidentally, when quality was generally assumed and quantity was most important (hence all those budget-priced 'Golden Hour of...' albums, I guess) and I know The Numbers, oddly enough, bore the brunt of this when it was revealed that their first self-titled album was under 30 minutes long (which is why the second album's title sardonically references the playing time). I also recall people saying in 1979 when Lipps Inc's album Mouth to Mouth came out that it was only 28 minutes long (though Wikipedia says it's just over half an hour) and this was more scandalous than the fact that it only had four songs on it. Half an hour seemed to be the magic number for album length, despite the fact that you could feasibly fit 30 minutes a side on an album - well, just - but it would be quiet and of course the grooves would not be as deep. Nevertheless, the music industry profited for a long time from the weird scenario whereby too much music on a record was regarded negatively by 'serious' consumers (if the Lipps Inc album had gone over 45 minutes, it would have been seen as a different kind of scam, although that's a bad example of something 'serious' consumers would be interested in). Todd Rundgren, as always, is an interesting case though an outlier, once again as always. The first Utopia album, if I remember correctly, has a song that goes just over 30 minutes and takes up one side of the album. (yes I do remember correctly and here it is to look at not listen to:)

You can well imagine Todd working backwards from the knowledge of how much time he has to play with. Healing, which came out a few years later, came with a 33 rpm 7" single which was a case of 'uh oh, there was too much stuff to fit on one 12" record, had to give you this as well'. I bet the 7" went at 33 because there were enough snobs in the world who never used the 45 speed on their turntable - for all I know, there were turntables made that just went at 33, because people were such adherents to the snobbery of 33-dom. It's still messing with the form/expectations though because of the way Todd is toying with audiophile expectations (over 30 minutes a side?! does it sound tinny?) or that snob aspect ('ugh, a single'). Since you can't set and forget a single, and it has to be pretty fuckin' special for you to play it that often, there are certain expectations around it aren't there. That makes me want to play that single now - 'Time Heals' - sounds like Hall and Oates, a lot. Well, H&O and TR have shared geographical/generational heritage so that's not surprising. I played the other side and have already forgotten it, I'm sure that says more about me.

The other group who regularly turned to 45 as a speed of choice is Pere Ubu.

Song of the Bailing Man (above - I just noticed, some clever clogs trimmed off the first numerals in '10' and '11') was the first of their records to be mastered at 45, then David Thomas' Sound of the Sand and Winter Comes Home, the famous 'disappeared' album. 

After that it was back to 33s for Thomas/Pere Ubu material (or more commonly since then, CDs) but I do have a copy of Lady from Shanghai which is two 45 12"s. 

There are some other anomalies. I wonder what the reasoning was behind the way this Albert Ayler album was put together? I mean it's possible that someone figured the two variations on 'Ghost' should sit together so if you put an LP on, you don't have to listen to the 'same' track twice, although to be fair, if you're that into Ayler you're probably not going to grizzle too much about that. Looking at those timings - three tracks over 10 minutes, and only one track under 4 minutes - it possibly made sense to have one long disc and one shorter one (I'm not even sure you could have three sides at 33 - I could be wrong). I'd have to imagine that the 'EP' is not an 'EP' for audiophile reasons and the decision to master it at 45 was probably arbitrary. 

I'm going to assume that it was Public Image Ltd and Metal Box which started this schemozzle, and while I don't really know I am also going to guess that the idea of releasing an hour-long album as a three 12" 45s with one or two songs on each side was a statement in itself. The packaging was of course in part about getting away from convention in all kinds of ways, including the way in which you were expected/ the way you expected to play a record and how it would be 'sequenced' (though there were sides A-F, and 'Careering' was always going to come after 'Poptones'), unless you yanked your needle off or plopped it on in particular places). Of course once CDs came along with a random/programming function, that was all swept away

What is probably more/most interesting is the seriousness/ephemerality associations with formats. 45s were for kids/girls, and albums were for men/proper people. It's just incredible that people were unable or unwilling to view these prescriptive restrictions for what they were. But Nancy's trying to tell me something... what is it Nancy?

'Shut the fuck up'