"I Like the Second Song on the First Side..."

This post may not make sense to those of my readers who were born after, say, 1975. You'll have to think of this as a history lesson. You see, not only didn't there used to be MP3 players, there weren't even CDs until about 20 years ago—or at least that's when people we knew started getting them. Andy and I received our first CD player and a pile of CDs from some friends for our wedding, and that was in 1988. So, up till then, we listened to records and cassette tapes. I rarely bought tapes, but I did frequently make tapes of my favorite records so I could play them in the car or on my Walkman.* Anyhow, what we all did was just play a record over and over and over again. Then maybe get up and flip it over and play the next side for a few hours. What happened, of course, was that you'd get to know the songs on each side of the record in order, so that when one song ended, your brain immediately expected the next one to start. (And, for those records that we put on tape, you'd even expect the first song on the second side after the last song on the first side ended.) Well, as it turns out, my brain will never forget the sequence of songs on all the records I listened to nonstop during my late teens and early twenties. Here I am, listening to iTunes, when, say, the Clash comes on singing "Hateful" from "London Calling." As soon as the last few notes start to fade, I immediately start to  hear in my brain the opening to "Rudy Can't Fail." Or, Elvis just finishes up with "Accidents Will Happen," and I would swear I hear those first few bars of "Senior Service" from "Armed Forces." And Squeeze, don't get me started on Squeeze. Or the English Beat, for that matter.

It makes me wonder whether musicians/producers care much these days about the order of songs on their CDs; it used to matter but doesn't anymore.

*I was the first person I knew who had a Walkman. I got it right before I left for London in 1982. It was big and clunky and expensive ($200, if I recall), but MAN! Was it cool! (And me, too, by extension.)

Comments

[Margaret]

I know what you mean; I hear one song, and I'm ready for the next one to come on--but it doesn't! Also, we have all your sunshine here in the Pac NW. It's supposed to be in the 80s this week! Eek--we have no air conditioning.

[nomadshan]

Green Day's American Idiot is the only recent concept album I can think of. Definitely rewarding to listen to it in order, but the tracks stand alone well, too.

[Kate Fitzpatrick]

I had that walkman in 1983 when I got back from Rome. Do you remember how many batteries per week it took to run it?

[Mark]

“London Calling” is the perfect example of an album that wouldn't be the same on random. Not having two sides (or four in the case of LC or six for Sandinista!) is that it limits the artist to just one "opening song." For "Girlfriend," Matthew Sweet solved this problem (somewhat) by having the sound of an album being flipped over separate the two "sides."

And here's a blasphemous post on "London Calling," if you're in the mood to scoff.

http://pc.blogspot.com/2006/05/london-calling-redux.html

[jo]

Not only do I remember the glorious sound of a needle falling gently into the groove of an album (of which i still have hundreds along with my Technics turntable - which, by the way, needs a new needle, where on earth do you get one of THOSE?), but I also remember having both an 8-track player in my bedroom as well as a 'Dynamite 8' that I took with me EVERYWHERE including on the bus and to school (carried lovingly in a multi-hued macramed early version of a messenger bag) where it was often confiscated by the principal.

I will still always hear the "KA CHUNK" sound of the tracks changing on the Eagles 'Hotel California' between Wasted Time and Wasted Time (reprise) - tracks 3 and 4 I believe.

I'll admit to falling in absolute love with the shuffle feature on my first auto CD player. Since it was only a single CD player it could only shuffle one CD at a time. Now the whole world is my shuffle oyster. I almost can't imagine listening to anything straight through anymore. I wonder if artists still take as much time as they used to in planning how an album would flow.

[Elisson]

It's the one tragedy of the iPod generation...not having those song sequences permanently burned into the memory.

Abbey Road, Side 2.
Sergeant Pepper.
Tommy.

Lose the sequence, lose the magic...

[Leah]

And the mix tape...what will the world be without mix tapes. The work we put into those things. Recording your own audio at the beginning or between songs. Then, mailing them, waiting for them to arrive, such a lengthy process. Burning a CD for someone just isn't the same.

Not only do I remember my Walkman, I recall skiing with it, crashing and having it fill up with snow.

[DJ]

I got a Walkman in 1980, the big boxy model that records and takes four AA (I think) batteries. I used it a lot to record stuff "in the field" that I mixed into my "tape pieces" (I'm a composer), another term that has no meaning any more.
A friend of mine made a compilation disk years ago of all the versions of La Bamba he could get the rights for and the producer hired a "sequencer", a person whose highly-paid profession it was to put songs in sequence on an album.
Ah, the good old days.
And by the way, yes it was technically illegal to copy your vinyl disks onto cassette tape but as a pirating technique it was so incredibly slow, unwieldy and low-fi (HSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS) that no one bothered to prosecute anyone for it.

[Susan]

Love the Squeeze reference. The most underappreciated band ever.