Disco made pop songs longer (advent of 12" vinyl)

Subject: Why Disco made pop songs longer (vinyl)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 06:49 PM

For those who are interested in the medium of vinyl, this short documentary is an interesting look at how disco DJs pushed the length of dance songs, resulting in the release of 12" vinyl singles (the previous singles were 7" 45s, so compressed the audio suffered, or split into two sides of the disk). The larger album's grooves were farther apart resulting in a much richer sound.

Why disco made pop songs longer.

Did this longer vinyl single format stay just within the disco world or were other genres of music released this way? For anyone interested in better quality sound, this would be a good development. Those of you who were buying vinyl back in the day, did you see these?

Subject: RE: Why Disco made pop songs longer (vinyl)
From: punkfolkrocker
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 07:21 PM

Stilly - in provincial small town UK we first read reports of these in music papers eg NME...

The first 12" I bought in a local shop was "You + Me = Love" by The Undisputed Truth 1976...

I was the only one in our band who's dad had a real HiFi stereo system with huge speakers.

The sound quality of this 12" was a more dramatic improvement than expected.
I spent many sessions playing along practicing disco funk rythm guitar to this record...

By the late 70s just about every new single was getting the gimmick of a Ltd Ed 12",
to get kids buying them asap on week of release to boost push records up the pop charts..
Then coloured vinyl and picture discs were added to keep the kids from getting bored
with the novelty...

By the early 80s 12 inchers were so common place...

But it was still the best way to hear music back then...

All mine are still boxed up at my mum's house...
I haven't seen them for over 30 years,
so haven't a clue if moulds set in or not...???

Subject: RE: Why Disco made pop songs longer (vinyl)
From: GUEST,Phil d'Conch
Date: 26 Apr 19 - 07:49 PM

"...were other genres of music released this way?"

Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd started back in the '60s in Jamaica & New York. Close ties to Island Records which was brand new at the time.

The LP format was commercially available in 33rpm 7-10-12" and 45rpm 7, 12". It just depended on the track count & sound system - record changer, jukebox, live DJ &c.

Subject: RE: Tech: Recording from Vinyl
From: GUEST,BBC Music Extra
Date: 27 Apr 19 - 09:03 AM

The story of sound recording

Music ExtraA History of Music and Technology

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3csz428

Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason tells the story of how we first captured sound, giving birth to a global recording industry.

While music has advanced in its complexity over the millennia, the means of recording it remained the same: it had to be written down.

It took until the back-half of the 19th Century before credible attempts were made to bottle sound for the first time, and in 1877 Thomas Edison produced the Phonograph.

Over the next century, major advances were made in recording formats, recording duration, and sound quality, from the Gramophone record to the cassette tape to the compact disc.

But as this programme reveals, cost and convenience played a major role in this progress, rather than the quality of technology - sometimes the best inventions didn't win out.

The series is produced in association with the Open University.

CONTRIBUTORS

Prof Mark Katz, University of North Carolina
Richard Osborne, Middlesex University
Nick Morgan, writer on music history
Sophie Maisonneuve, Université Paris Descartes
Prof Andre Millard, University of Alabama at Birmingham
Sean Williams, The Open University
Greg Milner, author of Perfecting Sound Forever: An Aural History of Recorded Music

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Subject: RE: Disco made pop songs longer (advent of 12" vinyl)
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 15 May 19 - 11:32 PM

This evening I dove down one of those YouTube musical rabbit holes and landed on an interview with Tom Petty about working with the Traveling Wilburys. I always knew the first song (Handle With Care) was intended to be a "B" side, but it wasn't until listening to this that I realized it was a B side of a 12" album, making a lot more sense than putting it on a little 45.

Tom Petty interview on Norwegian TV, 1989

Now back to YouTube. Leon Russell induction to the R&R Hall of Fame coming up next.