I try hard to just enjoy what I enjoy, but my suspicion of both novelty and nostalgia complicates things sometimes. (Yes, I am also suspicious of my suspicions.) So when I listen to albums from the ’90s I try, mostly unsuccessfully, to tamp down on the a-time-and-a-placeness feelings they evoke in me. I had a lot of anarchic, carefree fun in at a time when I might have been better served knuckling down to something serious. Or whatever. No ragrets!
One thing I can state objectively is that albums from that period, the CD era, are too bloody long. I don’t want to hear any band drone on for 50+ minutes. If you think you’ve produced enough good material to fill to brimming all 74 minutes of a compact disc, I assure you you’re wrong. By including the dross you had lying around in the back pages of your lyric book, you’ve downgraded an album that was potentially great to a merely good album. A good album to okay. An okay album to please-stop-already.
But there was a band smack dab in the CD era that did not fall into that trap: Morphine. Their releases all clock in at the sweet spot of 30-40 minutes*. This is the perfect length for an album. Morphine knows exactly how much Morphine I want to hear. Morphine’s first three are also soundtrack albums to my post-college life when I lived alone in what amounted to a garret, one of those lovely old houses they divide into 8 student slum apartments, and tried to figure out how to become a songwriter. Times of high romance! Which makes me a little suspicious of my judgement, as I said above.
I’ll bet you can think of a few albums that are too long. Or maybe too short or just right?
One LP that has been playing long enough is Republican control of Congress. Let’s make that needle dragging sound this November with the fund that’s split between all eventual Democratic nominees in House districts currently held by Republicans.
*except their last which was released after their singer and songwriter died, so gotta give them a pass.
Major Major Major Major
I love Morphine, especially Cure For Pain (the post title is from the title track). My very first fan letter was to their saxophonist, who played two at a time.
Oh, and to answer the question, My Aim Is True is the perfect length.
burnspbesq
The 90s were, in retrospect, a lost decade. Even artists who did great work both before and after (John Hiatt, Wayne Shorter, Mary Chaplin Carpenter to name only three examples) mailed it in, or worse.
There is literally only one album recorded in the 1990s that I listen to on a regular basis: Skip, Hop & Wobble, by Jerry Douglas, Russ Barenberg, and Edgar Meyer.
Ceci7
I hardly ever post here, but I often read BJ while waiting for the start of the Vapors of Morphine set at the local bar. The sax player sits in with a lot of other local acts. So good! One of my favorite things about living in this town.
Raven
Johhny Winter knew the great “Second Winter” was too long for two sides and to short for four so side 4 if the double album is blank.
Achrachno
They’re all too short, except for the ones that should never have been recorded at all.
JR
@burnspbesq: not a fan of hip hop, I take it.
SFAW
Morphine? Well, I guess I just don’t know.
James Powell
@burnspbesq:
To begin with, I’m not fond of dividing things by decades. Most things don’t change just because the year ends in a zero. That said, all taste is taste. The years 1991-2000 produced some of my favorites.
I loved Morphine. Saw them twice. Listened to them constantly back then. Still do from time to time.
Raven
@James Powell: I hated fucking disco at the time, I kinda like it now.
Chet
Disintegration by The Cure was a bit long. I could do with one less track on side 2.
But Gordon by Barenaked Ladies was the perfect length.
wenchacha
@burnspbesq: I got into Richard Thompson when he released Mirror Blue in 1994. His Rumour and Sigh came out in ’91.
A fan-site I frequented was all about why wasn’t this guy famous, already? And we all watched the stops and starts of new management, marketing, capturing internet following. Thompson ended the decade with a great album, Mock Tudor, which really bumped his career.
It was exciting to follow; to see him get recognition and be able to make a living at it. Not quibbling with your assessment of the 90s; I was pretty blind to all others during that time, a total Dickhead.
M4
@Ceci7: the sax player is super nice!
Another Scott
A certain Mr. Beethoven would like a word…
Depeche Mode’s Violator is too short.
Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse is too long.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raven
@wenchacha: google “A Heart Needs a Home” with Linda. Killer song.
swiftfox
I’m long in the tooth for the 90s, especially since I spent most of the decade in the backwaters as far as modern music is concerned (Memphis; the Zion Curtain). So I’ll throw out (almost literally) Chicago VII, the double LP with the beige-crap-colored cover. They wasted one side of the first LP on trying to fuse horns and synthesizer. The second side had some mediocre pop stuff. It should have been one LP that would have been a decent pop record what with the three successful singles they had. After this album they never experimented again and they became the Peter Cetera pop single factory. Then again, their first three studio albums were all doubles as was the live album. It was not all high-quality product. I remember listening to a bootleg eight-track of Chicago and Santana hits from 69-70 with my dad and best friend and they preferred Santana. Now I agree with them.
The sixth Chicago LP (the dollar bill one) was their best musically (two songs were good attempts at country pop) and near perfect length – it could have been longer.
Raven
@swiftfox: hit the live 25 or 6 24 on YouTube and watch Kath kill it. I saw Santana the day after I came home from the Nam. Changed my life!
swiftfox
@Raven: BeeGees Nights on Broadway was good. LeFreak was interesting. Tavares was ok. The rest of it…..
Raven
The Maryjane Girls!
Jeffro
Morphine = awesome
So many great songs. Even my kids love “Thursday”…great groove, raunchy story.
lgerard
I have many fond memories of seeing what would become Morphine woodshed their concept at The Plough and Stars, taking it from spoken word and free form jazz to a more traditional song structure without losing much in the process.
Good old days!
Captain C
I love that Morphine track. I actually transcribed and learned to play the bari solo. Dana Colley is one of my favorite bari players.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@James Powell:
I’ve noticed that fashion and other cultural/stylistic choices linger on for a few years into each new decade, and what we commonly associate with each decade didn’t develop and solidify until the middle-to-later years of each decade.
I’m not sure if this is just a product of looking back or not
M4
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: hell, the late 20th century didn’t end until 2016. See also the “long 19th” century.
captnkurt
Here’s to Sarah N. Dipity!
“All Your Way” popped up just yesterday on shuffle.
James Powell
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I just don’t think the zero year matters unless something happens in the zero year. For example, in 1980 Reagan & the Republicans win. But when did what we call the 60s begin? November 22, 1963? February 9, 1964? Or maybe earlier, October 4, 1957? The 70s was supposedly disco, but most of that was post 1975.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@M4:
The “short 20th century” (1914-1991) is also a thing I found out about after you mentioned at
Johnnybuck
He was un a band called Treat her Right in the 80’s and did sime kilker tracks wirh tgem as well.
Sloegin
My musical taste mostly froze in the late 80s, but Morphine was one of the handful of bands that broke thru the ‘I’m an old-guy now, all new music sucks’ embargo. Their album Like Swimming finds its way to my current play list quite often.
encephalopath
The hidden track preceded by the silent track that takes up all the unused capacity of the CD. God… How was that a thing?
germy
I’ve never heard Morphine before.
Usually, Rock Saxophone makes me want to pull my ears off. But I like this one. Bass saxophone?
EDIT: Ah, baritone sax!
Captain C
@germy: Baritone.
wenchacha
@Raven:Oh, absolutely. I guess I had heard of Richard and Linda Thompson, mostly through Rolling Stone, but they were pretty obscure to me. A tapehead at one of my jobs gave me some old bootleg Dylan and some Richard and Linda music in the mid-80s. For all the folkies, Bonnie Raitt, Pentangle stuff that I knew, they and Fairport Convention were not in my circle of friends’ playlists.
dnfree
My only connection to music of the 90s is that in the mid-2000s one of my daughters was vocalist in a band. I asked what kind of music they were going to do and she said “Retro music from the 90s, Mom. You wouldn’t know any of it.” It was shocking enough to me to contemplate that music of the 90s was already retro 5-10 years later. I still thought music of the 60s and 70s was retro.
MagdaInBlack
Morphines “You Look Like Rain” ?
Another musician gone too soon, btw.
M4
@Captain C: he plays bass and contrabass too, and also all the others, but yes his main is bari.
germy
Soros!
Anthony Cooper
Morphine CD’s are short and uneven, but yes awesome albums don’t overstay their welcome.
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
Morphine was an excellent band, still enjoy listening to their music occasionally (Cure For Pain mostly), sorry I never got to see them in concert.
I understand where the OP is coming from re: album length (plenty of albums out there that have dross mixed with some good stuff). But there are albums from the 90s that are good/excellent from start to finish that are significantly longer than this 30-40 minute limit — Radiohead’s OK Computer and Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup (both longer than 50 minutes) are just two that spring immediately to mind. There are others.
And burnsie is even more objectively wrong that the 90s were a “lost decade” for music. Tons of good music from sundry and diverse genres was created, performed, and recorded in those years; more than I can count, or am even aware of. Just not, apparently, to his taste. Labelling the 90s as a musical lost decade because he only listens to one newgrass album from that time anymore is absurd on its face; not sure why anyone would make such a ridiculous claim.
Though I’m about as long in the tooth as almost anyone around here (past SS eligibility, let’s just say; on the music front my first concert was Led Zeppelin in ’69) I mostly listen to new music these days (just went to our 10th Coachella, and almost every act we caught there this year was performing stuff that was brand new to at most 5 years old). I still listen to some music from the 90s, though, and find the good stuff from that time to be as interesting and enjoyable as my favorite new music.
I seriously don’t get growing older and becoming stuck in some time warp for music (like my baby brother who’s not gotten past Bon Jovi and Van Halen and the like) anymore than I grok judging the entire musical output of the 90s as “lost” (much the same dismissive nonsense — even more, I’d say — has been hurled at 80s music, of course). Lots and lots of good stuff overlooked when people allow their judgment to be so narrowed like that.
germy
Here’s proof the ’90s were great for music:
Mary J. Blige.
TriassicSands
And I can assure you that you are wrong. Or maybe you aren’t even aware of the existence of classical music. Either way, Mahler’s Second Symphony completely fills a CD and every minute of it is worth hearing. (Otto Klemperer with the Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra)
Incidentally, Mahler’s Second was finished and first performed in the 90s. The 1890s. Oops.
bk
“Spiderwebs”. Most stuff from Wilco and Old 97’s.
Another Scott
Just slightly outside the ’90s, but Outkast’s Hey Ya! (5:02) is quite fun.
J reminded me that Matthew Sweet did a lot of good stuff in the ’90s.
Cheers,
Scott.
(“There’s a smog moon (4:13) coming I can always feel it…”)
MagdaInBlack
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
“I seriously don’t get growing older and becoming stuck in some time warp for music ”
My theory goes something like “They don’t love music so much as the memory/feeling it evokes: > no memories attached to newer music.”
Just a theory.
ET Ask: have you noticed a more “folky” trend to music lately?
schrodingers_cat
@Raven: How was your crab dinner?
Humdog
@Raven: I saw Santana sitting on the grass, three “rows” back, in San Diego in 1989. It was so awesome! It felt like he was playing just for me.
raven
@schrodingers_cat: It was an old school florida fried fish and shrimp plate with slaw and hushpuppies. It was great and I had the gastro blues for hours. We just got home after the long drive and are unwinding.
raven
@Humdog: Hell yes, it was 40 years between shows for me!
M4
@MagdaInBlack: I saw a tweet the other day that said “by the time you’re 35, you should hate your favorite band’s three newest albums.”
Humdog
@raven: is that unwinding like a clock or unwinding as in releasing your gastro blues.
Never mind, don’t really want to know…
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@Humdog:
I first saw Santana in ’74 at a stadium concert in Cleveland, where CSN&Y closed out the night. That was an epic fucking day of live music! I next saw Santana at some chapel at Oberlin College, opening for John McLaughlin’s wonderful Shakti. He (Santana) had a completely different band that time. Try as I might (and I really love his music, particularly his McLaughlin-like fusion) I’ve not seen him perform since. Still listen to Santana’s records now and then.
raven
@Humdog: It’s like spending 10 days at the beach fishing like mad and hardly sleeping.
raven
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot: Mahavishnu?
Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot
@MagdaInBlack:
I don’t know — make some new memories? Stay young in spirit thereby?
Amir Khalid
@germy:
On the other hand, I cherish the memory of Clarence Clemons.
Another Scott
OBTW, I don’t think I’d ever heard of the band Morphine before. Thanks for the pointer.
Thermometer++
Cheers,
Scott.
raven
Saxophones- Jimmy Buffett
Yeah, if we had saxophones
Big baritone cleanin’ up the muddy breaks
If we had saxophones
I could get some recognition from that Mobile, Alabama D.J.
Dorothy Winsor
@Amir Khalid: Finally you have reached my era. RIP Big Man.
laura
@Humdog: former brother in law was his Tour Manager. I got to see him from the side of the stage until he waved me and my sisters in law out to dance on stage for a couple of songs.
His and the Mrs.’ National Anthem the other evening was swell:
https://youtu.be/p4ks7ugdJMo
raven
@laura: Was that in his recent incantation of including up and comers? Who did he feature when you saw him.
maurinsky
I also never heard Morphine before. I missed a lot of music between 1989 and 2005ish because I was raising kids and missed a ton of popular culture of all kinds.
laura
@raven: this was in the late 90’s. The bil was replaced just before the Rob Thomas “Smooth” collaboration, so probably 97 or 98.
According to the bil, he’s a lovely, thoughtful, soulfull hard working man.
Mike J
Loved Morphine. Saw them a couple of times at the Black Cat in DC. Whisper is still my favorite track.
Also like Treat Her Right.
raven
@laura: sweet
Mike J
@swiftfox:
Wasn’t the Hi Tone the place to be back then?
My time there goes back to the Antenna days.
Tbone
Gaaaah! I love morphine, and was just singing some of their stuff yesterday. RIP mark sandman. I was lucky enough to catch them at Hordefest 97, alpine valley. Seeing their sax player wail on 2 saxes at the same time was killer!
debbie
@wenchacha:
I saw Richard Thompson with Fairport Convention in 1971, along with Traffic (sans Dave Mason). That same year I saw Muddy Waters.
In the 1990s, I was listening to the Ramones, REM, and anything Baroque. I liked a lot of the then-new stuff, but living in NYC with two college radio stations within range, I didn’t buy many CDs and so remember none of the names.
I’m still listening to the same kind of stuff, but the only names I can remember are Kurt Vile and Phosphoresence.
As to song length, the Ramones had it right: Leave them wanting another verse or two.
Mnemosyne
@MagdaInBlack:
My mom, now 74, listens to the music that her kids and grandkids introduce her to, though I don’t think she ever got into hip-hop. The last one I remember her mentioning was fun., because one of the teenage grandkids sent her some of the songs. She still loves Pink Floyd and AC/DC from when my older brothers listened to them.
TL;DR — I agree with you. ?
(((CassandraLeo)))
I definitely don’t agree that albums shouldn’t be longer than forty minutes. Just from the ’60s and ’70s there’s plenty of counter-evidence: anything Genesis released from 1970 to about 1977 or so; most of Zappa’s longer earlier releases, plus the 160-minute Läther; Trout Mask Replica; Exile on Main St.; the White Album; London Calling; Soft Machine’s Third; for that matter, since someone brought up Chicago, there isn’t much stuff I’d cut from their first two albums, both of which were double LPs. My favourite album this year, Panopticon’s The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness, runs for some 121 minutes (though it’s also really two separate albums that happen to share literary themes – one black metal, one progressive bluegrass). Other pieces of contrary evidence: most of the Smashing Pumpkins’ output from the ’90s (I’d quibble with some of the song selections from Mellon Collie, but even the B-sides from that era are often great); nearly any great ’90s hip-hop record you care to name; Prince’s 1999 and Sign o’ the Times; Opeth’s Blackwater Park; Janelle Monáe’s output; and so on. Some people might quibble that there’s some filler on some of these, and maybe so, but they’re often greater than the sum of their parts. “Wild Honey Pie” would be awful on its own, but somehow, in the context of the White Album, it kind of works.
Anyway, I like long albums a lot of the time.
MagdaInBlack
@Spinoza Is My Co-Pilot:
Exactly my thought !
(Some people were born old)
MagdaInBlack
@Mnemosyne:
I’m 60. I have a great time sharing music w/my 20 something friends….and introducing them to something new on occasion. ?
P.S. I think Id like your mother.
M4
@(((CassandraLeo))): sorry, Trout Mask Replica is bad.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@(((CassandraLeo))):
But Genesis didn’t reach international stardom until the early 80s. After they stopped making long albums. Checkmate!
(((CassandraLeo)))
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Duke (1980) is actually around fifty-five minutes long, and We Can’t Dance (1991) is probably around seventy. I like a lot of their later songs, but I don’t like most of their later albums from start to finish, so I didn’t list them. Their early albums were mostly unusually long by the standards of the era, even the ones that weren’t double albums. I think Selling England by the Pound, surely their masterpiece, is about fifty-two.
@M4: Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, uh, your opinion, man.
(I actually hated it the first few times I listened to it, too. It doesn’t open up for several listens. Matt Groening famously described going from thinking it was the worst thing he’d ever heard on his first listen to thinking it was the best thing he’d ever heard on about the seventh or eighth listen, which is a fairly common experience with the album. Also in this category: Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation, which I forgot to include in my above list.)