30 minute epics on vinyl?

Klaus Schulze had a few I believe. Maybe some Miles Davis from the '70s and possibly the live versions of ELP's "Karn Evil 9" and "Tarkus"(I don't feel like looking all this up right now but I'm about 95% sure of all that).

Supposedly once a side of vinyl went over about 25 minutes the sound degraded, so it wasn't done often. Oh, and speaking of Rundgren I think that long track on his Initation album was over 30 minutes too...about 95% sure.

Mike Oldfield's Amarok got a vinyl release and that album goes for an hour. So that's 30 minutes per side

I guess this doesn't count, since you said you don't want them split, but Focus had a song that lasted a bit longer than a side... I thin it was the Answers, Questions song, which ends at one side and continues for the last minutes on the other side before the other songs begin.

The live version of Scheherezade from Renaissance's Live at Carnegie Hall clocks in at 28:50.  The vinyl records we are most familiar with are what are known as long play, or l.p. for short and are distinct from the e.p. which means extended play.  18 - 20 minutes a side became the convention, probably due to production costs as much as anything else.  They can actually handle an hour on a single side but the sound quality will be horrible.  Both Genesis and Renaissance regularly exceeded conventional side lengths.  Some classical labels would only do about fifteen minutes or so.

^ Correct !! Incredible pieces of Prog, too.
Transatlantic had their All Of The Above epic on their debut, and some of Magma's epics are over a half-hour too. Pity they are split between sides these days. Sound quality over time quantity I suppose.

If its done really well you can fit 30 min on a vinyl, but you'll loose a lot of volume because of the thin grooves.

Todd's Treatise On Cosmic Fire was approx. 36 mins. It sounds fine (mostly just quirky synth noodling - in the true sense). About half is worthwhile to me. Side 1 has a selection of much better things.

Todd was notorious for half hour album sides - When I saw the thread I immediately thought of Utopia. The International Feel from A Wizard/A True Star is another 30-minute whopper, but is a suite of very loosely connected tidbits rather than a true epic.

"Wring That Neck" from Deep Purple's Scandinavian Nights is 32.06 minutes and "Mandrake Root" is 28.42.

Progosopher wrote: The live version of Scheherezade from Renaissance's Live at Carnegie Hall clocks in at 28:50.  The vinyl records we are most familiar with are what are known as long play, or l.p. for short and are distinct from the e.p. which means extended play.  18 - 20 minutes a side became the convention, probably due to production costs as much as anything else.  They can actually handle an hour on a single side but the sound quality will be horrible.  Both Genesis and Renaissance regularly exceeded conventional side lengths.  Some classical labels would only do about fifteen minutes or so.