Thursday, April 07, 2005

Deceptive


Been listening to the Beatles' 1967-70 hits album tonight (the blue one...remember my cousin Pat's gatefold vinyl version?).

Anyway. This is great music -- I'd forgotten just how great: they did so much innovation in that period -- arrangements, instrumentation -- and married that to the melodic/harmonic gift that Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr had. Beautiful.

What surprised me was the track lengths: Let it be is 3:52, Across the universe is 3:47, The long and winding road is 3.37, and All you need is love is only 3:48. when I used to listen to these songs on my brother's borrowed vinyl, they seemed to last for ages. Maybe that says something about the depth of the music, the number of songs per side, or the consistency of the sound world that they created. I dunno. But it's weirdly counterintuitive to think about the music's original impression, compared to the naked reality of the track timings.

1 comment:

Andy said...

Hah! That rings so true.

I used to be 6 feet and 3 inches tall, too.