Michael
Lynch:
November,
2001

Man, has it really been one whole year since my very first FUFKIN piece? Fufkin A, man, it sure doesn't seem like it. Could twelve whole months really have been passed since my first steps in the Fufkin river with a review of Roadrunner: The Best Of The Gants? Well, I do remember telling Gants leader Sid Herring about it after The Gants' set at Cavestomp in November 2000, so I guess there's no argument, just an incredible feeling of fright that a year could have passed so quickly.

Anyway, this month I'd like to step up on a cyber soapbox and address a topic you've probably heard discussed many times before, but on which hopefully I'll hit some angles previously, uh, unhitted? Unhat? Well, I'll ponder the proper vocabulary later. Instead, right now, let me begin my eulogy for...the 45 RPM record. Yes, the single! That beautiful little seven inch piece of plastic the good folks at RCA developed one day almost fifty years ago, so much a part of the life of any true pop music fan, and that most people under the age of twenty have never owned (and could care less about.)

What made the forty-five such a gem? Well, for one thing, a song on a side of a 45 was all by itself. Big deal, did I hear you say? Damn straight it was a big deal. Being isolated on a side of plastic brought with it certain responsibilities, as well as benefits. Among its responsibilities was its double standard. The first song on the album side has to have a good kick-off. The last song on the album side has to make for an ideal act closer, one to bring the curtain down on. Well, a track on a single, being both the first and the last song on the side, had to meet both of these needs.

Think of The Rolling Stones' "The Last Time." Brian Jones' lead guitar line coming out of the dead silence pulls us immediately into a front row seat for the next three and a half minutes. And just as neatly as they led us in, they show us out, with a long outro that slowly fades and returns us to dead silence and where we were before, and we feel grateful that the Stones took us into their world for a few minutes.

The placement of the very same song on their album Out Of Our Heads doesn't bring quite the same pleasure. Coming third on Side One, Brian's riff doesn't kick off the show. Instead, it simply resumes things just after Mick and his buddies head down the road to "Hitch Hike." And whereas the long outro on the 45 brought us to a smooth peaceful landing, here we don't have time to breathe when it's over because the next song, "That's How Strong My Love Is," soon comes crashing in.

Which leads to one particular plus of the 45. A good single track placed at the beginning or middle of an album side merely strikes the listener as one of about six scenes in the act of the play that is the album side. By the end of Side Two of The Monkees' Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn And Jones, Ltd. a listener's mind will be replaying bits and pieces of half a dozen tracks (well, seven if you count Peter's heart wrenching poem,) with his focus not on any particular one. But with that side's standout track "Pleasant Valley Sunday" isolated on a 45, the record buyer can take all the time he wants to ponder the journey he has just returned from. The song gets individual attention on a single, instead of sharing the spotlight with five house mates.

And with the average 1960's single clocking in under three minutes, the music was more of a shot of adrenaline than an overdose. It didn't overstay its welcome, as a mediocre LP often did (especially in those days when an LP was simply a single or two plus ten or so half-hearted performances to fill the thing up).

Perhaps the only way to recapture that magic with a, pardon my language, compact disc, is to program your CD player to simply play one particular cut and then stop. Sit back and listen. Let the music take you on a two and a half minute roller coaster ride and then let you off. When the music has finished, sit still for a minute or so...let the sounds of home, your ticking clock, your fridge, slowly fade back into your life. You'll miss out on some of those important sounds, like the needle sliding across the runoff groove (come on, don't you all miss that ad infinitum needle-up-against-the-label sound? Did we not all, several times in our younger days, just lay there motionless across the room, in no real hurry to take the needle off, instead just letting that crackling sound go on forever and ever. See what our children will miss out on?), and the motor of the record player, but that's the point, isn't it?

Another joy of the 45: Hindsight may play into it, especially for someone like me who wasn't alive in the 1960's, but in the case of a group like The Beatles, one joy of the new single was hearing the newest "step" of their musical evolution, hearing them lay down the next brick of their wall of musical magic. Especially neat was the fact that most of their singles placed a Lennon song on one side and a McCartney song on the other, and as a result, it was a double treat. For not only was it the new Beatles single but also the new Lennon song AND the new McCartney song. The buyer could experience what each of the two geniuses had come up with this time on their ever-evolving path as well as their own ongoing competition. Fans could groove to "Strawberry Fields Forever" AND "Penny Lane."

Or "Revolution" AND "Hey Jude." "Rain" AND "Paperback Writer." Yeah, sure, one could also sense the evolution by playing their albums in chronological order to hear them transform a few pixels at a time from the beat combo of
Please Please Me into the hippie artists of Abbey Road, but the playing of their singles chronologically beautifully serves as a quicker alternate route between the same points. The stops along the way may be different, but you will pass through the same districts, such as Merseybeat, Folk-rock, Mod, Psychedelia, Back To Basic Rock, etc. The singles may be the mere perimeter of their recorded output, but you can see inside from there fairly well and get the general idea of what they're doing. They were little windows or peepholes. "Strawberry Fields Forever" / "Penny Lane" may not have been Sgt. Pepper, but it was no less a hint of where they were musically at in 1967.

Gone also are the days of the 'tie over' 45. The Beatles, Stones, Kinks, and the rest might only release only one album a year, but they wouldn't leave fans hungry during the wait. They would release a special single of exclusive material to make the wait a little easier. It was as if they were saying "Sorry, luv, that dinner isn't fully cooked yet, but here's an appetizer to enjoy in the meantime."

For example, those long months between December 1965's Rubber Soul and August 1966's Revolver were broken up with "Paperback Writer." Likewise, Rolling Stones fans didn't starve to death between December's Children (November 1965) and Aftermath (June 1966) because Mick and the Jags offered "19th Nervous Breakdown." Even Paul McCartney kept this up through the 1970's, as several of Macca's singles from that decade, including "Another Day," "Give Ireland Back To The Irish," "Mary Had a Little Lamb," "Hi Hi Hi," "Junior's Farm," "Goodnight Tonight," "Wonderful Christmastime," and his smash "Mull Of Kintyre," were served up only on 45's, and were not part of any of his regular studio albums.

This practice would actually make much more sense nowadays than it did in the 1960's, as today's top artists usually take two years between full length releases. By breaking up these long dry spells with a single or two here and there, they could help themselves not only keep fan's interest from fading away but also demonstrate a little consideration to the fans. Throw into that the fact that many of these groups appeal to the fickle youth, and two years of discography inactivity is a big chunk of youth thrown right out the window.

But such is the industry today that the thought of releasing a single without a related album is unthinkable (read unprofitable). Their frame of mind revolves around the thought that if, say, The Backstreet Boys release a new song exclusively on single, and fans don't care much for it, they won't buy it, whereas if it's a single from a new album and fans don't like it, fans will probably buy the whole album thinking there's probably something of value on there somewhere.

Also, since the 1980's, some labels seem intent milking more and more singles from one album. Remember how many extractions there were from Thriller? Born In The U.S.A.? Whatever that late 1980's Def Leppard album was called? Sure, in this sense, the artist continuously had a "new single," but what good did this do the fan who already bought the album? (Never mind the cheap trick of intentionally placing alternate mixes and non-album tracks on the single. That's a whole other issue I'll save for another time.)

The days of those little black seven inch frisbees are gone. But I'm hanging onto my Fisher Price record player just in case of a revival.

___________________________________________________

To reach any other page contained in this month's update on Fufkin.com, read the home page for the appropriate link and click on it. You can also search the site from any page using the search box located at the top of each page. Merely type in the word, phrase, name of the band, recording, name of the Fufkin writer that you are looking for or Whatever in the search box, and then click on "Search". If you would like to e-mail us, go to the About Us page for a list of e-mail addresses.

Go back to the home page by clicking here

____________________________________________________