I’ve often busted local bands for making albums that are too long, often treating the CD as place to store a bunch of songs instead of creating a coherent statement. Too often, CDs are over an hour long because they can be, not because  all of that hour-plus of music is equally strong, and not because the music makes sense together. The attitude seems to be that instead of making a great 45-minute project that can be absorbed and grasped, artists figure they won’t make another album for a few years anyway so they might as well empty the pantry now.

This thought comes to mind because yesterday on the drive to Baton Rouge for the LSU-Florida game, I took a CD of Jerry Lee Lewis on Sun, one of Jerry Lee on Mercury in the early 1970s, and one of Charlie Rich on Smash. All three albums are excellent, but those albums were compiled with maximum storage in mind, and at some point each became a little tiresome, great as Jerry Lee is and Charlie Rich was. I suppose such albums were intended to serve a library function, and this was the first time I ever listened to the Mercury set straight through. Still, if treating the CD as a unit of storage can make Lewis and Rich wearying, imagine what it does to mere mortals.