Instead of my regular “random 10” posting, I decided to pick ten of my favourite long tracks – no more than one per artist. It’s easy to do this in iTunes – simply sort by playing time – but it’s also misleading. For example, one of my favourite long tracks is the 25 minute 22 second “Who Do You Love” by Quicksilver Messenger Service, from Happy Trails, but for some reason the producer elected to carve this continuous piece of music into six tracks. Oh, well. Check out this little lot:
- “Kincajou (Duck! Asteroid)” by Banco de Gaia (from Last Train To Lhasa) [36:09]
- “The Sky Moves Sideways (Alternate Version)” by Porcupine Tree (from The Sky Moves Sideways) [34:42]
- “Dark Star/The Other One” by Henry Kaiser (from Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It) [30:56]
- “The Great Wheel” by James Asher (from The Great Wheel) [30:31]
- “Dazed And Confused” by Led Zeppelin (from How The West Was Won) [25:25]
- “Andromeda Suite” by the Legendary Pink Dots (from Chemical Playschool Volume 8) [25:08]
- “Dark Star” by the Grateful Dead (from Live/Dead) [23:07]
- “Bare Wires Suite” by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers (from Bare Wires) [22:59]
- “Heaven Taste” by No-Man (from Heaven Taste) [22:30]
- “Tarotplane” by Captain Beefheart And His Magic Band (from Mirror Man) [19:09]
Several hours of blissful stuff there. It’s particularly interesting to compare the original 1968 version of “Dark Star” with Henry Kaiser’s re-interpretation* from 1988.
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* If you don’t know Kaiser’s album Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat It, I can heartily recommend it. He tackles classic tracks by the Dead, Captain Beefheart, and Country Joe and the Fish, as well as unexpected fragments of pop history like “Ode To Billy Joe”, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”, and “The Fishin’ Hole” – yes, the Andy Griffith Show theme!