Favourite Double Albums

[RollPlymouthRock]

Trout Mask Replica 

As much as I love it I find it impossible to sit through the entire thing from beginning to end in one go!

Yeah i know! Did you like the album the first time you listened to it?

I honestly never found it anywhere near as difficult as writers seem to want to make it. It's crazy, all over the map, if you try to figure out parts and organize it in theoretical terms. But I've always found it to be--and I mean this, always, since first listen--extremely accessible as a listening experience. It didn't sound like anything else I had heard, but it wasn't unpleasant by any means.

I know what you mean when i first listened to it based on reviews that i'd read, i was expecting something a la Metal Machine Music, I always found that the way to get people into the record was to play Moonlight on Vermont first as that seemed the most accessible song to me.

[MBE]

Together Through Life is ok but not up to the three LP's that came before it. It's better then all of his 80's albums save the Wilbury's.

[Dead Parrot]

Quadrophenia by The Who, is a personal favourite of mine. There's not a single song i'd want to take off that album.

[MBE]

Quadrophenia was great when I saw it live in 1996, but the album never worked for me as a concept. Not that the songs save Helpless Dancer are bad (though none are among my top Who songs), but I feel they should have made them mod style recodings due to the subject matter. They felt way too modern for an album celebrating the era the group rose to fame. I love that original pre Tommy Who sound and really missed it here. I guess I'm just not as big on the seventies Who though I do like Leeds, Join Together, Relay, Long Live Rock and By Numbers quite a lot. Still it's the pre Tommy Who that made me a fan.

[punkinhead]

I don't know how I forgot: ELO's Out of the Blue

[hypehat]

Whoever said Something/Anything is so OTM.

[Alex]

Beach Boys In Concert,  Barenaked Ladies Are Me(n), Endless Summer, Around the World With Three Dog Night, Carl and the Passions/Pet Sounds...

[punkinhead]

Beach Boys In Concert,  Barenaked Ladies Are Me(n), Endless Summer, Around the World With Three Dog Night, Carl and the Passions/Pet Sounds...

IDK about CATP and Pet Sounds....but there has been mention of mixing the CATP material with Holland/Mt. Vernon & Fairway as one whole double album as a fan mix, and that right there would be one hell of a double album! Of course, some have included some un-used songs from that era like We Got Love (studio version), Out in the Country, and Blondie's/Ricky's Hard Times to fill the holes where needed. If I had the know-how and technology, I'd take Mike's early cut of Big Sur and make that the first song of the "California Saga" if it could have a linking part in the tracks to Beaks of Eagles.

[Peter Reum]

Little Feat-Waiting for Columbus, Who-Tommy and Quadrophenia, Allman Brothers-At the Fillmore East, Who-Who`s Zoo, Stones-Exile on Main Street

[pancakerecords]

Lot of good stuff here, but no one has mentioned Adam Marsland's Go West.

[JK]

Trout Mask Replica 

As much as I love it I find it impossible to sit through the entire thing from beginning to end in one go!

Yeah i know! Did you like the album the first time you listened to it?

I honestly never found it anywhere near as difficult as writers seem to want to make it. It's crazy, all over the map, if you try to figure out parts and organize it in theoretical terms. But I've always found it to be--and I mean this, always, since first listen--extremely accessible as a listening experience. It didn't sound like anything else I had heard, but it wasn't unpleasant by any means.

I know what you mean when i first listened to it based on reviews that i'd read, i was expecting something a la Metal Machine Music, I always found that the way to get people into the record was to play Moonlight on Vermont first as that seemed the most accessible song to me.

According to Magic Band guitarist Zoot Horn Rollo (Bill Harkleroad), "Vermont" and "Veteran's Day Poppy" were recorded much earlier than the rest---hence their greater accessibility, one would suppose.

I was already familiar with the two previous albums when UK DJ John Peel started playing tracks from Trout Mask on his show. I was sold----and I still am.

I used to listen to it regularly at a single sitting but I'm too old for that now. 

[Julia]

I used to be a bigger critic of The White Album but it's grown on me over a few more listens the last five years. There's definitely some mediocre songs that bring it down from what could've been their best album had it been a single disc but I enjoy what we got.

I dont really like double albums. Every single one has at least some filler--it was a way for bands in the pre-CD era to release a somewhat longer album than 45 minutes but then they'd have to stretch it with AT LEAST 10 and up to 20 minutes of filler to fill out both sides of a second disc. I dont think any band would've released an hour and 15 minutes of music if it were in their power to stop at 50-odd minutes like bands of the 90s.

Like, my other favorites are Frank Zappa's Freak Out but I pretty much ignore the second disc entirely. And Electric Ladyland has some of Hendrix' best songs but they're broken up by these boring jam sessions that just kind of go on forever and aren't too impressive in my opinion.

[JK]

Freak Out! was reduced to a single LP in the UK -- I knew nothing about a double LP until this millennium! -- and I think it was all the better for it. It sounded great to me anyway.   

Two of the "songs” ("Go Cry On Somebody Else's Shoulder” and "Any Way The Wind Blows”) were dropped to accommodate the other nine on side one. The second US album was short enough to fit on side two, with “Trouble Every Day” fading out early during the harmonica solo.