{"id":8372,"date":"2011-07-21T00:01:50","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T04:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/?p=8372"},"modified":"2011-07-20T23:21:38","modified_gmt":"2011-07-21T03:21:38","slug":"the-two-lp-set-defensible-doubles-or-twofers-of-unearned-arrogance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-two-lp-set-defensible-doubles-or-twofers-of-unearned-arrogance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Two LP Set: Defensible Doubles or Twofers of Unearned Arrogance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>The following piece made its way up from the lp-jammed basement of E. Pluribus Gergely.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><iframe class='youtube-player youtuber' type='text\/html' width='425' height='355' src='http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/_lNP-x94-SE?rel=0&amp;fs=1&amp;ap=%252526fmt%253D18' webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen frameborder='0'><\/iframe><p>Once a month or so, I spend about 2 to 3 hours in my basement chopping up\u00a0cardboard into mailers for my record bidness. Truth be told, that&#8217;s when I\u00a0listen to music. When I&#8217;m in the car, it&#8217;s usually NPR. Sad but true. Anyway,\u00a0before the chopping ensues, I head over to the stacks to pick something out to\u00a0listen to while I chop. I can&#8217;t tell you how many times I&#8217;ve picked up something\u00a0like <em>Electric Ladyland<\/em> and said, &#8220;Too much work to get to &#8216;All Along the\u00a0Watchtower&#8217;,&#8221; &#8216;Crosstown Traffic,&#8217; and a few others.&#8221; Really, you&#8217;ve gotta have\u00a0a Hitler-like ego to think you can keep the interest of any listener for more\u00a0than a single serving.<\/p>\n<p>After racking my brain for a good half hour or so, I arrived at the following list of\u00a0essential double LPs.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Charlie Parker, <\/strong><em><strong>The Very Best of Bird<\/strong><\/em> (all the Dial sides with just a few\u00a0outtakes). And yeah, I know it&#8217;s like a greatest hits thing, but I&#8217;m letting this\u00a0one slide because it&#8217;s the best way to hear all that Dial stuff in one shot.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Beatles, <\/strong><em><strong>White Album<\/strong><\/em>. Yep, it&#8217;s all great. &#8220;Wild Honey Pie,&#8221; &#8220;Revolution\u00a0#9,&#8221; &#8220;Why Don&#8217;t We Do it in the Road&#8221;&#8230;absolutely necessary. It&#8217;s all over the\u00a0place, and it&#8217;s my favorite Beatles album, probably because it&#8217;s jam packed with\u00a0a lot of unexpected weirdness that works extremely well together.<\/li>\n<li>T<strong>he Rolling Stones, <\/strong><em><strong>Exile On Main Street<\/strong><\/em>. Still on my list despite the fact\u00a0that it dies after &#8220;All Down the Line,&#8221; the opening track on the fourth side. As\u00a0I&#8217;ve stated before it&#8217;s the ultimate statement of &#8220;Sex, Drugs, and Rock and\u00a0Roll.&#8221; The cover, the 3 decent sides, and the snapshots on the inner sleeves\u00a0(especially those of Mick and Keef and Jack at the microphone and Keef finishing\u00a0off a sandwich whilst having a smoke) make it the LP that mom and dad worry most\u00a0about in your teenage record collection.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Clash, <\/strong><em><strong>London Calling<\/strong><\/em>. The ultimate statement of life-changing rock.\u00a0Again, that killer album cover, 4 sides of doozies with only a track or two of\u00a0filler, and finally&#8230;2 inner sleeves jam packed with the lyrics to all the\u00a0songs. The revelation that Strummer&#8217;s M16-like yammering is actually on a\u00a0&#8217;63\u2013&#8217;66 Dylan lyric level is mindblowing. And continues to be so. On a recent\u00a0trip to Hellerstown to buy a bunch of garage 45s, I revisited <em>London Calling<\/em> for\u00a0456th time and still heard things for the first time.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>And that&#8217;s it. &#8220;What,&#8221; you ask, &#8220;no <em>Blonde on Blonde<\/em>?&#8221; Hell no. I can honestly say I never\u00a0need to hear &#8220;Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands&#8221; ever again. It goes on and on\u00a0forever, which is most probably what&#8217;s behind the meat of the thing. Dylan most\u00a0probably wanted the world to know that he was the first to be skillful enough to\u00a0fill a whole side with a single song. You know what? Nice try, but it doesn&#8217;t\u00a0really work.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No <em>Freak Out<\/em>?&#8221; Again, forget it. Jam &#8220;Trouble Every Day&#8221; somewhere on side 1 or\u00a02, leave out the second wax slab of Edgar Varese\/noise poop, and you&#8217;ve got a\u00a0real winner. Again, too much ego and not enough good ideas.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;No <em>Beatles Live in Hamburg &#8217;62<\/em>?&#8221; Just between you and me, I wanna add that thing\u00a0to my list in the worst way, but I absolutely and positively cannot defend 4\u00a0sides of monotonous <em>mach schau<\/em> &#8220;Red Sails in the Sunset&#8221; <em>sturm and drang<\/em>. My\u00a0weakness? Anything &#8220;Beatles&#8221; remains utterly fascinating. I would read a 600-page tome by <strong>George Martin&#8217;s tailor<\/strong> should he choose to tell all.<\/p>\n<p>As far as greatest hits releases are concerned, real thought went into <em>The\u00a0Beatles: 1962\u20131966<\/em>, <em>The Beatles 1967\u20131970<\/em>, <em>Hot Rocks<\/em>, <em>More Hot Rocks<\/em>, and <em>The Kinks Chronicles<\/em>. To put it bluntly, no filler. Come to think of it, add\u00a0The Rolling Stones&#8217; <em>Through the Past Darkly<\/em> (that &#8220;stop sign&#8221; looking thing) to\u00a0that mix and you more or less have everything found in <strong>Townsman andyr<\/strong>&#8216;s record\u00a0collection. That&#8217;s not an insult. That&#8217;s a high five. That&#8217;s andyr in a nutshell.\u00a0No time for bullshit.<\/p>\n<p>Who knows. Maybe I&#8217;m wrong about all this. Maybe some of you see <em>Refried\u00a0Boogie<\/em>, the 40-minute second LP of <strong>Canned Heat<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Living the Blues<\/em>, as an\u00a0argument for the existence of God. Needless to say, your insights are always\u00a0greatly appreciated.<\/p>\n<p>Sincerely,<\/p>\n<p>E. Pluribus<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The following piece made its way up from the lp-jammed basement of E. Pluribus Gergely. Once a month or so, I spend about 2 to 3 hours in my basement chopping up\u00a0cardboard into mailers for my record bidness. Truth be told, that&#8217;s when I\u00a0listen to music. When I&#8217;m in the car, it&#8217;s usually NPR. Sad <a href='https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/the-two-lp-set-defensible-doubles-or-twofers-of-unearned-arrogance\/' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[342],"tags":[483,482,206,45,22,36],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rocktownhall.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}