1984 running time

**el_jalepeno** · 10.10.02, 07:13 PM

I was listening to 1984, and I just happened to make note of the running time... right at 35 minutes! I think someone owes us another album to make up for it!

[img]graemlins/thumb.gif[/img] [img]graemlins/irked.gif[/img]

**rebel78** · 10.10.02, 08:00 PM

I put VH 1 and 2 on a single 80min cdr with plenty of time to spare, great to have it on one disc.

**5150guy** · 10.10.02, 08:50 PM

Yeah, all the Dave era albums are around 30 minutes long. Too damn short. VH1, 2 and two thirds of WACF could fit on one CDR.

**el_jalepeno** · 10.11.02, 07:00 AM

About 20 frickin' years of listening, and it never dawned on me the VH EPs I was buying! Save me lord... [img]graemlins/bounce.gif[/img]

**DreamIsOver** · 10.12.02, 08:37 PM

What's really funny is to look at the "Unlist" and see all the songs they left off or never finished for 1984.I can't imagine what the cover of "In The Midnight Hour" sounds like.

**shelookssofngood** · 10.12.02, 10:50 PM

Let's remember that VH between 1978 and 1983 put out an album a year. Which actually was somewhat common place during the late '60's and 1970's. Video changed the so called "saturation factor" that has been around since the dawn of MTV. NO ONE has put out an album a year recently except Pearl Jam in the '90's and Weezer in the 00's (who do not put out many videos). When Metallica put out the black album with over 75 minutes of music it was expected, because it took three years between albums. VH was on a album-tour-album-tour schedule with Dave between 1978 and 1983. And up to a including 1984 it was fueled by songs written between 1974 and 1977. They did not have to work as hard off the road to come up with material.

**RevolutionMan** · 10.16.02, 06:06 AM

haha what do you mean weezer in the 00's? their new album is their first in around 5 years!

**Raldo** · 10.16.02, 09:22 AM

So if you take this equation:

time between albums = length of song

does this mean that VH's next album will have song lengths of 10 to 15 minutes?

**Metal Marc** · 10.17.02, 02:10 AM

Originally posted by Raldo:
So if you take this equation:

time between albums = length of song

does this mean that VH's next album will have song lengths of 10 to 15 minutes?

Van Halen goes prog! Woo hoo!

====================
"We still haven't made our 'Tales From Topographic Oceans' yet." - Eddie (future quote)

**ross** · 10.17.02, 12:15 PM

Van Halen goes prog! Woo hoo!

10 minutes won't be so bad if they did it in a Tool type of way. A song like Without You didn't need to be as long as it was.

BTW, Weezer have put out 2 albums in the last 2 years.

**rogrwilco** · 12.01.02, 02:21 PM

one thing that people that are complaining about the short lengths of the early albums need to remember is that these albums were released when vinyl records were the dominant medium which held a lot less music than cd's....(does anyone happen to know the max. running length of albums? i can't remember off hand...)

for example, pearl jam's live on two legs album was one cd with a running time of around 74 minutes...but to fit it on vinyl it took 3 albums....so at the time the medium dictated the album length....something to keep in mind....

**Wolfman** · 12.01.02, 03:18 PM

When VH was putting out albums early in their career, very few artists were putting out releases that were more than 45 minutes in length. If I remember right, it wasn't until around the time of Def Leppards' "Hysteria" that releases started to get longer, and that was one of the few albums that actually stood up from beginning to end. I'd much rather have shorter albums with quality material instead of artists churning out 80 minutes of stuff, of which only half is listenable. I'd love to have seen more from them myself, but in listening to old boots, I'm not convinced there were more than a handful of really good tunes that could have been included. Besides, half of those unreleased songs were reworked later and showed up on albums (i.e. - parts of "Voodoo Queen" became Mean Street; "last Night" became "Hang Em High", etc.)

I don't doubt that Ed has vaults of unreleased music as he and other band members have said in the past, but that doesn't necessarily mean they were worthy of inclusion on albums. Van Halen rarely seems to miss with their songs, but they're quite capable of putting out a stinker just like everybody else, and they probably put a lot of effort into trying to avoid doing just that.

**therealdeal** · 12.05.02, 12:32 PM

One of the biggest negatives (for me anyway) associated with the CD era is the super-long running times of original albums. When the label asks its artist to fill 2/3 or more of a 74 minute CD, a good portion of it ends up being filler. The only two great full-length CDs of original music I've ever heard are 'Physical Graffiti' and 'The Wall', and even those CDs have a bit of filler (but not much...). Interestingly, the respective labels decided to issue both of those releases on 2 discs, when they both should be on one (although I think they both exceed 80 minutes...).

Oh well...

The Real Deal