Quadrophonic

 Ah, the double album: a concept that has become all but extinct in an era of streaming music. Once upon a time you had to think about releasing recorded music based on sides of a record. That was about twenty minutes per side. An LP (long-playing) record would therefore give you about forty minutes to get your songs out, and in a world of three minute pop songs, that was a pretty good deal. Six songs a side, twelve songs per vinyl disc. No need to test your audience's patience with a lot more than that, since hopefully you're going to go out on tour with those songs and shortly after that return to the studio where you can put together another album of songs that will be featured on the subsequent tour. And so on. 

But every so often, an artist or group would get it into their collective heads that forty minutes just wouldn't cut it. There was far too much music in them at that particular moment, and it became necessary to release the afore mentioned Double Album. The first of these that I recall was The Beatles, also known as The White Album. The interesting thing about this, for me, is that one of the most interesting features of any double album was the expanded canvas provided by the gatefold sleeve, providing so much more space for art. Only this one served to be the antithesis of that other quintessential collection of Beatles songs, Sergeant Pepper. That was one LP, but essentially delivered four sides of pictures, lyrics and puzzles to be decoded by fans for years to come. The White Album? Not so much. 

Then there was the question of "filler." There are few, if any, critics who would suggest that there is a single not of Sergeant Pepper that is not vital to the whole. It was conceived and sold as a piece. As endearing and entertaining as great chunks of the music on The White Album are, one might wonder if we might all have needed all eight minutes of "Revolution Number 9," for example. And since the album cover was painfully white, almost to the exclusion of Beatlemaniacs who wished for more insight into their musical deities, Why not just chop that bad boy down to the twelve songs that are vital to the story of the band? Send it out in a brown paper wrapper, not unlike the ones released by Captain Beefheart and later Led Zeppelin. Those last two weren't double albums, by the way, Led Zeppelin's entry into the studio double album was Physical Graffiti. That one had a cover that was perhaps more entertaining than the music inside.

So which double albums don't have any clunkers? Is it a form that is just far too susceptible to vanity and excess that artists' egos cannot be squeezed onto two sides of a record? Goodbye Yellow Brick Road? Tommy? How about Out of the Blue by the Electric Light Orchestra? Pink Floyd's The Wall? Or maybe it's best to let these become relics of a bygone era, when we had the patience to walk over to the turntable and flip that platter over,  moving onto side two, then three, then four. Who has time for that these days? And who really needs four sides of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk?