Phrasing

Just now, over my morning coffee, I’ve been listening to an album from the 70s, deep in the Era of LPs. Fortyish minutes long, twenty-odd minutes to a side.

I know the topic was flensed to death all through the 80s and 90s by the pro-LP mobs on the A-side and the pro-CD thugs on the B – warmth & loudness, shrunken cover art, longevity & durability, blablabla. But the only thing that I ever really thought about was how LPs were comprised of two parts while CDs were one long arc.

And it occurs to me that even now, after nearly three decades of CD hegemony, I still have not quite gotten used to the longer phrasing. I like to feel the pause between Act 1 and Act 2, even if I don’t get up from the couch to flip the platter or anything so quaint and sepia-tinted as that.