Has any rock band released a double album where you thought the second record or CD was better than the first one ?
Nope for me. I immediately think of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. First record much better than the second. Same for the White Album. Same with both Quadrophonia and Tommy. I’d say the same applies to The Wall.
Works by Emerson, Lake & Palmer might qualify but it’s such a weird album. Side 1 disc 1 is taken up by a weird Keith Emerson attempt to write a piano concerto.
I don’t like any part of Tales from Topographic Oceans, maybe die hard Yes devotees like the second disc better?
If we throw out the rubbish Apple Jams extra disc for the triple album All Things Must Pass then it could qualify. George Harrison sprinkles masterpieces among the other good tracks on the first two discs of the set.
Sorry to be that guy, but should we act like sides 1 and 2 are on the same disc (3 and 4 on the other)? As opposed to 1 and 4 of one disc/2 and 3 of the other (for those us with record changers?)?
I can’t recall any double album where one disc was clearly superior to the other. Stretching a bit, I prefer the second disc of Chicago II over the first disc by a slim margin. Likewise the first disc of Chicago Transit Authority, mainly because I don’t care for Free Form Guitar on side 3. I find both Tommy and Quadrophenia to be very even.
I completely disagree about Tommy: “Pinball Wizard”, “Tommy can you Hear me?”, “I’m Free” and the epic 7 minute medley in “We’re not Going to Take it”. All on disc two.
But in general the OP’s thesis holds up. I played the groves off of disc one of Blonde on Blonde but after owning that vinyl for 30 years, disc two was still pristine.
Agree about Tommy. Disc one just about puts me to sleep. I listen to “Sparks/Amazing Journey” on Live At Leeds and wonder why they couldn’t have played like that in the studio.
Disk II of The Wall is in no way inferior to Disk I. We’re talking ‘Hey You’, ‘Is There Anybody Out There’, ‘Comfortably Numb’, ‘In the Flesh’, ‘Run Like Hell’, and ‘Waiting for the Worms’ plus some lesser tracks. You seriously going to argue that Side One puts those to shame?
I’m surprised that there are two disc releases of Tommy. From the length of my single CD version it’s obviously a double album, but I assumed all releases of Tommy would be on a single CD if they managed to do it for one particular release. I guess that means the single CD release is lower quality than the double CD releases, because why else would you double the price of the physical media being sold?
And yeah, Amazing Journey/Sparks in Live at Leeds is so much better than the album version. I bought the Live at the Isle of Wight album because it had the full album of Tommy live hoping to get something like it for the entire album, but I listened to it only once so it must not have been that great.
This is easy to explain. When “Tommy” was first released on CD, the maximum runtime of CDs still was restricted to 74 minutes, so the double album wouldn’t have fitted on a single disc. When the remastered single disc version was released, the runtime for CDs had been extended in the meantime and CD players were able to play these extended discs, so it got a single disc release. This release definitely is superior to the rather crappy remastered double disc because it was remastered and repackaged much more meticulously.
There are (at least) three different releases of “Live At Leeds”. The original single-LP with only five songs, the 25th anniversary edition (single CD, but with a double LP runtime of about 80 minutes) with about 14 songs including “Amazing Journey/Sparks” from the “Tommy” section, and a later double-CD release with the whole concert including the complete “Tommy” part. Of those, I prefer the single CD version because it includes all of Pete Townshend’s announcements and general stage chatter, which is sometimes hilarious.
There’s a film of the Isle of Wight performance that got a brief theatrical release in 2004. It’s the closest I ever got to seeing the Who live in their heyday, seeing as I was born 4 years after Keith Moon died.
While we’re in the topic of the Who, I’d like to cheat the format somewhat. The Who Sell Out was just one LP in its initial release, but the CD reissue from the '90s expanded it to double-album length by adding in various B-sides, oddities, and actual radio ads the Who recorded at the time to pad out the “pirate radio” concept of the album, and the songs that would comprise the second LP are mostly better than the mostly lighthearted pop on the original album.
Side three is up to the same standard even if I prefer sides 1 and 2. Side four is my clear least favorite, because it doesn’t have the same quality and quantity of guitar soloes, and several of the tracks are simply reprises of other parts of the album but not as good. It also feels like a different album to me, not only due to the solo character changing, but also because more of the tracks feel like a musical than the other sides, and there is a lack of interleaved samples that are found in the other sides. This break takes me out of the story and makes the end side feel tacked-on.
Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have its merits: side 4 is better at being a theme album than the other sides. A lot of the narrative on the first three sides is driven by exposition or action that take place outside of a song or using the aforementioned samples, whereas on side 4 the plot is driven directly by the lyrics without having to resort to those tricks. (With 1 exception: Mother’s scream right before she says “come to mother, baby” is impactful all by itself, but at the same time seemed somewhat nonsensical before I saw the movie.)
It’s not for everybody, but Soft Machine’s Third contains four of the spaciest, gnarliest jazz/prog/rock tunes ever, one song per side. And if I had to choose, I’d give disc 2 the nod on the strength of “Moon in June.”