The longest song you know

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somnium_(album)

I think there's a sense in which the "song"/"track"/"suite"/etc. terminology we're using is kind of a relic of recording technology.  Thick As A Brick is clearly one song, but it's traditionally been listed as two because of the way vinyl works.  Plus, what you're recording it on sets limits: forty-five minutes in the vinyl era, seventy-five or so for the CD era.  Since record labels aren't ready to give up entirely on CDs yet (with good reason - people do still buy them), it seems like that's the limit for professionally published music for right now.  But there must be some band out there with a ninety-minute, two-hour song on mp3!  Where?

Didnt the Grateful Dead do songs that went on for days??

La Monte Young and the Forever Bad Blues Band - "Young's Dorian Blues in G" from Just Stompin': Live at the Kitchen  (I have this, and it's one live piece that needs 2 CD's to contain it. I thought it was an hour and 20 minutes or so, but the RS review says '2 hours.'  I'll check tonight when I get home.)

Young recorded Just Stompin': Live at the Kitchen with his band in 1993. Clearly influenced by the blues of John Lee Hooker and John Coltrane, the album also somewhat resembled the work of the Velvet Underground and modern rock experimentalists Sonic Youth. David Fricke gave the album four stars in his review in Rolling Stone. "Two hours, one song (never mind 'song,' one chord progression), no break—and zero boredom," noted Fricke. In his review of Just Stompin'in the Detroit Metro Times, Jurek said, "The band plays dynamically, from soft to hard and back, gradually building in both intensity and tension, laying back just enough—without letting the air out—to allowthe musicians (and listeners) to breathe and start again, until the music reaches an unbearable pitch [that] shatters all divisions between blues, Indian classical music, punk, heavy metal, grunge, modal jazz and noise, because it's all of them and none of them at once."

Some more about the piece here, if anyone is interested:  http://melafoundation.org/fbbpress.htm


Edited by dave-the-rave - November 16 2010 at 13:29

Yes, The Whirlwind IS one song just as Requiem by Mozart (for example), which has 14 movements, is considered one work (K. 626). I have The Whirlwind in one MP3 file (300mps) on my I-Pod.

Are we talking length or stuff that just seems to take too long? 

Textbook wrote: I don't consider The Whirlwind a song because there are clear divisions in it. It doesn't trundle along continuously from beginning to end. You can feel one tune stopping and another one starting. I mean by this token any album without gaps between tracks is song.

It's all about context. You have to read comments by the band as to whether they consider something like Six Degrees of Inner Turbulence (for example) to be a single piece of music or seperate songs.

I don't consider The Whirlwind a song because there are clear divisions in it. It doesn't trundle along continuously from beginning to end. You can feel one tune stopping and another one starting.

This. And it's one hell of a song.

A honourable mention goes to song/album Requiem Apocalyptique by Guillaume de la Pilliere. Very good, too.

Lol it reminds me of this...

Edit:
From Here:
http://www.cracked.com/funny-2359-progressive-rock/

Which is where I got my name from.


Edited by Mushroom Sword - November 15 2010 at 19:58