Longest and shortest albums ever?

I was just reading Bruce Spizer's new The Beatles on Apple Records, and according to it the Live on the BBC double album runs about 130 mins. The longest side is 34 mins long.

 

Wasn't the Beach Boys' comp Endless Summer incredibly short for a double album? I recall you could almost fit it on one side of a 90 minute tape.

There was even a budget UK reissue in the 80's that put it all on one LP record, and didn't omit anything.

 

Yes - and when I started collecting them (1981) there were only even abridged, retitled versions of their albums (expensive US imports), leaving the one or two most obscure tracks for another compilation called "Be true to your school" - and "Cuckoo Clock" was too obscure for any re-release. Why did Capitol do that? They didn't mind to write "contains fewer tracks than the original release" on the back. Oh, and that vinyls were so noisy still...

Martin

BTW: My Sinatra "In the Wee Small Hours" (Capitol) has the top banner: "Special abridged compact disc version of the album". Sounds like really worth the money, doesn't it ;-)
The following CD ("Songs for Swinging Lovers" was the big improvement: "Compact Disc version of the original full-length album". Weren't they great, these pre-bonus-track days??

 

Yes! Paul Simon IS short.

Oh, I'm sorry...I misread the thread title, I guess!

 

Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by Smashing Pumpkins is just over two hours

The Punch Line by Minutemen is exactly 15 minutes

 

Brian Eno's Discreet Music - the title track on side one runs for just over half an hour, (though the ultra quiet volume and lack of bass means that we don't lose much in the way of sonic quality). The variations on Pachelbel's Canon that make up side two of Discreet Music runs for something like 25 minutes too.

 

Steve Vai - Passion and Warfare is pretty damn long. Sixteen songs, I believe. Great album, though.

 

Julian Cope Floored Genius 2 - 62 mins on one lp

 

That's the extended CD version, I believe - I once timed my original vinyl copy, and IIRC it ran all the way to 11:33. I don't think anyone would dare to go below that!

 

For live albums, Dream Theater's Live at Luna Park clocks in at 3 hours and 9 minutes. Live Scenes From New York is almost as long at 3 hours and 7 minutes.
For studio albums, Metallica's Garage, Inc. clocks in at 2 hours and 16 minutes. If bonus instrumental and cover tracks are permitted, the special edition box-set of Dream Theater's Black Clouds & Silver Linings is a triple-album and clocks in at 3 hours and 26 minutes.

 

The Kinks - 20 Golden Greats on the Pye/Ronco label clocks in at 50-plus minutes. They did manage to cut a nice sounding LP at 10 songs per side!

 

The camden album "Let´s be friends" by Elvis Presley clocks in under 20 minutes.

 

I remember The Lemonheads - It's a Shame About Ray being around 28 minutes in total and they added the Mrs Robinson cover to the 2nd press that pushed it over 30. Very fun album.

 

Queen's Greatest Hits runs 50+ minutes on the vinyl album and the Aussie version adds Under Pressure. It must have either no bass or no volume.

 

My partner has a picture disc of Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell II that I suspect must sound absolutely frightful - thankfully she's never actually dared play it (yet)...

As for the shortest album in our collection, this must surely be The Beach Boys' Friends. In fact, I seem to recall it being possible to fit Smiley Smile, Wild Honey and Friends on a "three-fer" CDR!

 

wings london town clocks in at 52 minutes

 

The winner on threads like this is usually a Barry Manilow compilation that came out in the mid 80s, had ten songs per side and ran about 73 minutes. Not sure of the title.

Shortest album side is probably the final side of Concert for Bangladesh?

 

Dance Naked by John Mellencamp for shortest.

Evan

 

My buddy just bought Bing Crosby's "Hey Bing!" (and yes, his "Hey Jude" cover is TERRIBLE) - and I realized the sides were only something like ten minutes apiece, and only four songs. Bing got lazy. XD

It made me feel better though, because I wanted to put together a faux Folksmen greatest hits LP (called "Chartin'") and even scraping the barrel, could only come up with 26 minutes of material.

 

Certainly one of the shortest of the "CD age"!

 

Todd Rundgren's Initiation has already been mentioned. A quick check shows it's less than a minute shorter than his double album, Todd.

 

The Dwarves' album Blood, Guts & Pu**y was 13 minutes, 7 seconds long.

 

Shortest: Something New, the Beatles

Evan

 

I actually read recently that he wanted Todd to be a single LP too, but for whatever reason, it went out as a double. Rundgren was really obsessed with squeezing as much music as possible onto an LP back then.

 

The soundtrack to the film 'Kes' states on the CD that 'This soundtrack is over 30 minutes long' what they don't tell you is that the last 3 minutes of that 30 is silence...