fantomas

Long songs slated for extinction?

Jello Biafra likes short songs, but there's an undeniable pleasure in long songs. "Hey Jude" (7:11) was groundbreaking at the time, especially for a 45rpm single, but it's really a typical three-minute Beatles song with a four-minute outro. To me, the first true rock epic was Pink Floyd's 1971 opus "Echoes" (23:25). Unlike their 1970 record-breaker, "Atom Heart Mother" (23:44), which was four instrumental sections stitched together into a single track, "Echoes" was a real unified song with a traditional verse-chorus-verse structure--along with a really long … Read more