Readers.
It seems that I have listened to ‘A Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis at 45rpm.
It was quite good.
Please offload here (as it were).
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Musings on the byways of popular culture
I did the same many years ago listening an instrumental album by some other act, and was so embarrassed that I’ve never listened to anything else of theirs since!
Didn’t Peel play No Pussyfooting at the wrong speed or backwards or something? Eno called to complain and he was rebuffed. Rebuffed, I say!
Yep, and the reversed & half speed tracks were added as bonuses to the 25th anniversary remastered CD.
Mighty fine they are too. Half speed must have consumed a lot of air time.
Some things are better at the wrong speed, like Jolene:
Brilliant – I’m nicking that and passing it off as my own discovery
Everyone used to do that. And apparently still do, if you look at how much a half-decent 45 of Jolene goes for.
Crazy Horses by the Osmonds sounds rather good at 33rpm, kind of like Black Sabbath.
Conversely, Bruce turns into Dolly at 45rpm.
Ain’t no sunshine by Michael Jackson at 33 sounds like Free. It really does.
Unbeknownst to me I played a Nigerian juju album on air at thecsame time as some Senegalese Mbalax music. A listener rang aaid they had both been going for 10 minutes “but leave them on, it sounds quite good” he said.
When I first bought the Cocteau Twins’ “Victorialand” album, I played it at 33rpm instead of 45.
I just thought “Well, it’s an LP – it must play at 33rpm.”
It took me quite a while to discover my mistake.
I still think it’s a disappointing album …
Me too! I couldn’t remember which album it was until I saw your post.
I’ve bought several 12″s and the odd LP over the years with no info as to which speed it’s to be played. I usually jot 33 or 45 in pencil on the (frequently white) label after the first spin, but there are a few where I’m still not convinced either way.
33 – parp
45 – tootle
78 – squeak
Try playing the Afterword podcasts at double speed.
You wont miss much!
Arf!
Hoy. Barred.
You can do this on VLC player. I expect everyone would sound like the disclaimers at the end of radio adverts which are played deliberately fast so you don’t really understand them.
“Typical APR 200,000%. Your house, belongings and children may be taken from you if you do not keep up your payments. All your details will be sold to our partners in the FSB and the Chinese Communist Party.” etc
I hate that. Is it even legal?
It is legal, but totally weaselly.
The newest ep of Chart Music (which namechecks our own Doctor Volume) is utterly fantastic but it is four and one half hours long and it’s a third in before they even start talking about Top Of The Pops – I can see how double speeding would start to look attractive to the busy girl..
The Smurfs single slowed down to 33rpm just sounds like a bunch of under-paid session singers going “La La La La La La La La La”.
Not really amusing, but a pointless bit of trivia to throw into social conversations when they begin to wane
As seen in the recent BBC doc, slowed down to half speed, The Laughing Gnome sounds just like David Bowie dropping the F-bomb.
I get Radiohead and Coldplay confused every time, every single time. And out of all my 22,347 friends I am Mr Music, the guy who knows everything, I’m like a Music Encyclopedia, I am Mr Music. I think Radiohead do the arty difficult stuff and Tigger quite likes them but then again is that the other ones..?
That is correct. I like Radiohead but not Coldplay.
It’s easy to remember. Radiohead are named after a Talking Heads track and I adore Talking Heads.
Whereas Coldplay are named after listening to a Moby album on a freezing January morning and you don’t like Moby…….
Rush. Twenty One Twelve.
Or…”alright lads, have you heard Two thousand one hundred and twelve?”
I always used to think “great!” whenever Jags/Back of My Hand came on the radio, time after time after time, even after I knew, thinking it was EC. Still do.
Similarly, the first time I heard Kaiser Chiefs “Everyday I Love You Less And Less”, I was thought it was XTC
If I was Andy Partridge I’d sue…
What would Alan do?
It sounds NOTHING like Eric Clapton!
Nah, I know what you mean. Used to think the same.
I was playing Pink Floyd instruments and Tangerine Dream at 45 rpm in the 70s, so inadvertently invented Acid House.
For a very long time I thought Roberts Plant and Palmer were the same person, and the lion-maned rock god had gone on to a stellar eighties pop career.
Actually it is a fashion to reissue 33 rpm albums as doubles spinning at 45 rpm. This improves sound quality allegedly. I thought this is what you were talking about.
* or is yet another method to get you to buy something you already own.
well at least it didn’t last as long, I´d go for 78.
In my young teens I bought a 10cc compilation and played it as soon as I got home. I knew that besides their poppy hits they could be a bit arty farty, which is why it took me some time to realise that I was listening to Un Nuit A Paris at 16rpm.
Incidentally, I seem to recall we had one 16rpm record in the house when I was a young kid, which was a spoken word one. Can’t remember anything else about it, or even, to be honest, whether I am remembering correctly, but I certainly know that I have never knowingly seen another 16rpm record in my life.
16 rpm was only ever used for spoken word as far as I know, and I’m not sure I ever saw one. Presumably the slower speed doesn’t provide enough information to be a music carrier..?
A few labels experimented with 16 RPM records. Prestige put out a handful of jazz LPs at this speed, each one packaging up two previously released albums, one per side, including one Miles Davis title. In South Africa RCA also put out some 16 RPM LPs. Another label, whose name escapes me, put out some 16 RPM LPs of ‘Dinner Party Music’ – the idea behind this was that you didn’t need to get up to change sides as often.
The speed was also used in the 7″ format for the Highway HiFi – an short lived in-car record player from the late 1950s available in the US. Columbia pressed records for this format, mostly if not all of easy listening music.
Seeburg also used the speed for their canned music system, using 9 inch records with huge centre holes. Here’s a video of one in action from Techmoan.
I bought this very strange single on the recommendation of my brother and it said it was 33rpm
It’s nearly 7 minutes long. I still wonder if it’s meant to be 45rpm, even hearing it now I am not sure.
There goes Concorde again – Native Hipsters
I obsessed over that record when it came out, even wrote a full page article on it. I felt it’s existensial angst. Try it at 45rpm. Life passes by more quickly.
You want to try being the driver of a train.
More existential angst with a greater risk of assisting a suicide.
Forget it Jake, it’s Chigleytown.
Straight Outta Trumpton
A Camberwck Carrot.
Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, John, Paul, George and Ringo
This Heat’s Health & Efficency 12” EP features a track entitled Graphic/Varispeed whose label indicated that it can be played at either 33 or 45.
When they issued a collecection of their albums and EP as a CD boxed set some years ago, the EP featured this track at one speed, whilst the CD of bonus tracks had it at the other.
Also, as a nipper, I inherited a Dansette and a load of old knackered 45s, including some from Pinky & Perky.
I had great fun playing them back at 78! I was an odd child – I still am!
Atlanta Rhythm Section’s Imaginary LoverLP cut played 45rpm is reputed to sound like Stevie Nicks fronting Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac.
Cor, yes!
I used to play most of our records on all settings (45, 33 and 78) a lot as a kid. I’d listen to all of “Fiddler on the Roof” at 45 and imagine a stage full of mice in costume. I’d often listen to Jethro Tull’s “Living In the Past” at 33, that was a favourite when slowed down.
And then of course there was the infamous incident involving the Bee Gees and the Saturday Night Fever OST. A friend of mine at school had a father who worked as a TV producer, and had access to all the records in the radio archive, so when the buzz around SNF began we begged him to tape it for us so we’d be the first ones to own it. I don’t know how and why, but the cassette we received was of the album playing at 45…but as we hadn’t really heard the music yet at that point but knew that the Bee Gees supposedly sang in very high falsetto voices, we didn’t understand that it wasn’t supposed to sound that way…! We brought it to a school/class disco the same week and everyone happily danced to it for quite a while until someone dared to ask if it wasn’t just a bit too fast and high pitched? As soon as it was pointed out, we could all hear it…but before it was put into words we completely accepted it as the real deal!
Klaus Schulze recorded the album “Tonwelle” as Richard Wahnfried, feat. Manuel Göttsching and Michael Schrieve. As other releases from his label the album was supposed to be played at 45rpm – but there were rumors that it actually was correct at 33rpm. To top the confusion, when it was officially reissued on CD they made it a double CD – one was the (in the reissue label’s opinion correct) 33 version, the other one was the 45 version.
Turned out they were all wrong – and they didn’t even use the original versions (they tried to get the intended results by pitch-shifting the digital master). Mr. Schulze posted a disclaimer on his website: “this nonsense double CD release is completely wrong… one CD version is circa 26% slower and the other version is circa 26% lower in pitch. The original version is not included (!)”
The original CD of Kind of Blue was in the wrong pitch. This wasn’t corrected until the 1997 remaster.
Moosy you rascal, leaving a gaping open goal like that. I know you´re hiding in the bushes with a hose pipe.
I was in here anyway…. looking for discarded grumblies. Probably.
There’s a theory that the only Robert Johnson album, “King of the Delta blues singers” was speeded up by the record company.
Years ago listening to a Stockhausen LP, it sounded as if the record had stuck.
“Is the record stuck?”
After a pause to listen.
” No, listen the rhythm has changed, it’s starting at a different point”
After ten minutes we realised the record had stuck.
To be fair, that album of Ramones covers of his was pretty samey.
An old friend of mine had a Dylan LP that always stuck in the same place and had to helped every time by gently moving the sylus on. To this day, and I’m talking 50 years here, he still expects the CD to stick in the same place.
My single of American Pie stuck on the phrase “jester sang” so it went “jestang, jestang, jestang” till you moved it. Every time I hear it I expect it to do this.
A long time ago I put on Side Two of Frank Zappa’s Weasels Ripped My Flesh in a slightly discombobulated state, and was enthralled by The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue at 45 rpm.
You too can try this folks, I recall it was fab. Might try it again after breakfast.
I got Tom Waits ‘Real Gone’ as a suggested gift for my birthday when it came out, my suggestion that is since none of my friends would buy me music without asking. Happily stuck the CD in the player and bumbled around for quite a while. Started thinking ‘this song cycle doesn’t half go on a bit’, and when my wife could stand it no longer (something along the lines of ‘can we *please* listen to something else’) I realised someone had hit the track replay button (v young kids most likely) and we’d heard the first track ‘Top of the Hill’ (quite a dirge if I’m honest) on repeat for the thick end of half an hour. She won’t let me play that one on the stereo any more.
At my 40th, quite some time ago now, we hired a pub and had a really good night. I had made a CD of choons for the dancey bit of the proceedings later on, with civilians in mind. The landlord (an old punk from Essex) thoroughly enjoyed the perks of running a pub, had a mighty thirst and as a result was probably the most pissed up person there by the end. It took a while to realise, but my compilation CD seemed to be stuck on Train in Vain, a fine Clash tune of course, but three times in a row…? The landlord claimed the CD player was shtuck or shomefing. Couple more songs came and then back to Train in Vain – mein host pogoing and punching the air in the middle of the dancefloor. Honestly though, he was a really good bloke and he helped the night go really well.
A few years ago I was in a v v dark place during an ayahuasca ceremony. I had just about enough sense of self and time to work out that I would return to the everyday world in about 5 hours. South American folk music was playing, and as a track ended I had a moment of relief, in that a different track would indicate that time was passing. Except that the same track came on again. And again. And again. Fearing I was in a time loop a la the final episode of Sapphire and Steel, I simply ‘gave in’ to the process, and then/thus went on a magnificent voyage of discovery.
The next day I checked with the organisers, and they confirmed that they’d played the same song 31 times in a row.
A couple of weeks ago I inadvertently played the “Hooked on Classics” 45 at 33rpm on my radio show. There’s (obviously) no vocals so there wasn’t really a clue. Sounded quite good actually – and filled up some time too !