Articles → Song Of The Day - 01 Aug 2008: Dopesmoker

Sleep / Dopesmoker / Dopesmoker (1) / Apr 2003

Personal One-Hit Wonder: The first of every month is reserved for Personal One-Hit Wonders. (See 01 Feb 2007 entry for details.)

This is the single longest song in my entire collection at 63 minutes! In fact, it's not even on the PC or any portable player. The only way to really listen to this track is on the CD. This release is also available as a double-LP, but this is one where you benefit from having the CD, since on the double-LP this song has to be split up over three sides.

Following on the previous discussion of songs exactly 2:42 in length, the same author of that original idea earlier had posted some thoughts about whether long songs are slated for extinction in this "random shuffle" era of the download that is shifting the market back to an orientation to singles:

"In this random-shuffle quick-twitch short-attention-span world, it's nice to sit in one place and just listen to somebody perform variations on the same theme for fifteen or twenty minutes."

He's talking about the "focused listening" experience here, something I definitely enjoy, which is why my collection of tracks includes close to 200 separate tracks that are over 10 minutes in length (not sure of the exact number since the main music-library PC is still down and I'm looking through a slightly dated library spreadsheet here on the laptop). They're not all Neil Young songs, though he does contribute quite a few, including both No Hidden Path and Ordinary People from Chrome Dreams - the album that sparked the author's original thoughts.

For a nice playlist of songs from that segment of the collection, see my Long-Ass Songs Playlist that was compiled this past winter. A list of selected non-live-jam favorites from the 10+ minute collection is below¹

"I'm as guilty as any fan--whenever a long song comes up on random shuffle, I almost always skip to the next track. Long songs just don't fit into the shuffle paradigm--I want to be surprised, to have my mood shifted rapidly between heavy metal and 70's R&B, not sit down and listen to an artistic statement from start to finish. (I collect records for that.)"

Here he's shifting from the "focused listening" exprience to "mobile listening" or using music as a background, but I think there's some implicit assumptions and over-generalization here. For one thing, "random shuffle listening" to a digital collection is not ONLY for listening on the go or for listening as background. The entire scrobbling community here on Last shows otherwise. How many plays are there here for songs over 10 minutes? And when I'm scrobbling on shuffle, I don't think I've ever used the skip button. In fact, unless I'm listening to a new album or sticking to a specific genre to aid a particular mood, almost all of my focused listening is on shuffle.

RE: "I collect records for that." - exactly! And apparently, the growing resurgence of vinyl shows that the younger generations are discovering the value of that same experience!

Even when on the go, not all of us will skip a long song. Some of us manage acutely what we put onto our portable players, and if I was always going to skip a long song, I wouldn't bother putting it on there in the first place. When mine runs on shuffle, it's true shuffle, not quasi-shuffle with liberal use of the skip button (but I could be in the minority). If a long song comes up, that's pot luck! (In fact, my 80GB Zune tends to love those long songs for some reason, and I usually let it have its way.) Those long songs are also great when listening on the plane, especially those long overnight international flights.

"In this world, I wonder how many artists will feel encouraged to stretch a song beyond the typical three-to-five minutes that most listeners will tolerate in the middle of a playlist. It's sad, but apart from live jams, the long rock epic is probably as dated as a wanking guitar solo and paisley. Of course, there's always classical music."

Well, this is probably true for the wide spectrum of "popular" music that is targeting radio airplay, I guess. A number of songs in that list of ~200 are live jams both old and recent (lots of Gov't Mule!), and it's true that many of the long songs are from the late 60s and from the 70s - mainly psychedelic, prog rock, and jazz fusion.

But close to half the songs on that list have been released since 2000. And that brings me to my main point: there are genres which are known for long songs² that are still alive and well, plus others that emerged since the golden era of "the wanking guitar solo and paisley" that the author is likely focusing on, all of which contribute plenty to my collection: progressive metal, doom metal, pagan metal, stoner rock, and ambient or what he calls instrumental "post rock" bands. (Yep, I too have some songs in there by Sigur Rós and godspeed you black emperor!).

It would be wrong though, to assume that because most of the 10+ minute songs are coming from these genres, that it means long songs are "slated for extinction." Most of the bands in these genres have extremely devoted, passionate, hardcore fans who will always be receptive to this length, and if you think about it, it's within these genres that the long songs have always almost entirely existed anyway!

I guess the question here is whether the major labels are willing to let these artists continue to elude them, because frankly, this burgeoning era of the single-oriented download is ALSO the era of increasing artist freedom from major label contracts & "oversight."

The artists that produce this length of music are totally content to work outside of the major label system, continue to NOT need radio airplay to promote their music, and their fans will easily and continually accept & pursue their product in whatever form they deliver it - and especially in physical form, including vinyl!

\m/ (ò_ó) \m/

¹Here's some of the longest of my favorite non-live-jam long songs in the collection, besides today's SotD and those mentioned above. One from each artist and (I think) in descending order of length. *Indicates a previous Song of The Day selection. Note that many of these are relatively recent:

godspeed you black emperor!: Providence
*Miles Davis: Bitche's Brew
*Pink Floyd: Echoes
Opeth: Black Rose Immortal
Rush: The Fountain Of Lamneth
Moonsorrow: Jotunheim
*Porcupine Tree: Anesthetize
*Iron Butterfly: In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
The Mars Volta: Tetragrammaton
Black Mountain: Bright Lights
Dream Theater: In the Presence of Enemies, Part 2
Electric Wizard: Weird Tales: Electric Frost/Golgotha/Altar Of Melektaus
Sunn 0))) & Boris: Blood Swamp
Type O Negative: These Three Things
*Dire Straits: Telegraph Road
Black Sabbath: A Bit of Finger/Sleeping Village/Warning
Iron Maiden: Rime of the Ancient Mariner (as you can guess, I NEVER skip this when it comes up on shuffle!)
Chimaira: Implements Of Destruction
Judas Priest: Lochness
Scorpions: Lonesome Crow
Hawkwind: Born to Go
Monster Magnet: 25
Marillion: Goodbye to All That: Wave / Mad / The Opium Den / The Slide / Standing in the Swing
King Crimson: Starless
Joe Walsh: Decades
Quicksilver Messenger Service: The Fool
Riverside: The Same River
*The Doors: The End
George Harrison: Out of the Blue
The Cure: Watching Me Fall
Temple of the Dog: Reach Down
The Juliana Theory: The Black Page
*Machine Head: Clenching the Fists of Dissent
*Wishbone Ash: Phoenix
Genesis: The Musical Box
*Funkadelic: Maggot Brain
Nile: Even the Gods Must Die
Deep Purple: Son Of Alerik
Grand Funk Railroad: I'm Your Captain/Closer To Home

²Especially:

Progressive rock, which according to Chuck Klosterman, is not only still quite alive, but actually expanding in scope as to what qualifies as prog these days.

Jazz fusion, which Blender a couple of years back cheekily defined as, "Any music that uses jazz as a prefix will make you want to saw your head off in boredom. But none is as tedious as the genre that thought what rock needed was month-long bass solos and time signatures even Stephen Hawking wouldn't understand."

But not understanding doesn't mean we don't love it! :D