I bought Lou Reed’s wonderful (but very dark) ‘Magic And Loss’ album, which was re-released in the USA recently for Record Store Day. (I bought it originally on CD about ten years ago, which came in an extraordinary heavy duty aluminium case, with images screen printed onto the metal.)
I was intrigued to find there was music only on three sides of the two LPs, with the fourth side having a very striking image etched into the vinyl.
I have only ever seen that once before - on Bruce Springsteen’s LP ‘Letter To You’.
It’s rather fun finding these things, with people at record companies making an effort to do something different.
Keith Jarrett American Quartet Eyes of the Heart is an older one of these. When I bought it off Discogs a couple of years ago the seller was concerned that there was something wrong with it.
As a variation of the theme I remember a Monty Python ‘three sided’ record that I have upstairs somewhere or in the loft. This is, though, on just one piece of vinyl. There are two grooves on one side so it is pot luck as to what you get depending on which groove the needle lands in.
E.S.T. (Esbjorn Svensson Trio) Leucocyte is 3 side double vinyl.
However this is probably the poorest album from this usually superb Trio, and side 4 comes as a kind of relief
Neil Young Psychedelic Pill is a 5 sided triple vinyl, and such a fabulous album side 6 with nothing but an etching always arrives as a disappointment
That is very clever. I have never heard of an LP with alternative ‘plays’ on one side of the record. Typical of some lunatic genius at Monty Python to have come up with an idea like that.
Robert Plant, The Dead Weather, Gomez, Andrew Hill are four artists off the top of my head with 3 sided LP’s in my collection.
I think they are more common than you might erm…think
I had a double or triple LP which had one side with some artwork - as the whole lot were ‘coloured vinyl’ I didn’t realise that the side with artwork had no grooves - until that is the LP12 tonearm went flying to the middle nearly taking the stylus out.
Actually back in the good old days there were records that played from the centre out, used for cinema film soundtracks, I think the records were 15 or 18" something like that
First one I can recall was Johnny (& Edgar) Winter Second Winter 1969 - apparently they ran out of time to complete a couple more trax and Columbia just wore it.
I have a few Westwood One Radio Show live double LPs. They are a bit unusual as they have sides 1 & 3 on the first platter and 2 & 4 on the second. The radio show hosts could then cue up the music in order across two turntables to play the show without turnover breaks.
