# Python's "Matching Tie and Handkerchief" album had 3 sides? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 13, 2004, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272 "2004-09-13T17:16:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![nitroglycerine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c5a1d2/32.png) [@nitroglycerine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nitroglycerine)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 8:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/21 "2004-09-14T08:46:37Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > One big thing missing from CDs were the elaborate covers – die cuts and gatefolds and all sorts of fancy stuff they can’t do any more. nitpick: What do you mean? They still make records…die cuts, gatefolds, colored vinyl, oddly shaped 45s, picture discs…hell yeah…vinyls still kickin’! ---
**Author:** ![owlstretchingtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/958977/32.png) [@owlstretchingtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlstretchingtime)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 10:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/22 "2004-09-14T10:20:52Z")
I have the three sided record. I also have the “instant record collection” which does what it says on the box. Rather tragically I only have one shed. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/23 "2004-09-14T10:35:43Z")
> [@owlstretchingtime](#): > > I have the three sided record. I also have the “instant record collection” which does what it says on the box. > > Rather tragically I only have one shed. Have you ever been attacked by someone wielding a banana? _The LARCH_. ---
**Author:** ![owlstretchingtime](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/958977/32.png) [@owlstretchingtime](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlstretchingtime)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/24 "2004-09-14T11:28:25Z")
> [@Ilsa\_Lund](#): > > Have you ever been attacked by someone wielding a banana? > > . Thankfully not. But I did get quite badly hurt once for saying “jehovah”. There was something not quite right about those blokes throwing stones at me too. I can’t quite put my finger on it. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/25 "2004-09-14T11:32:08Z")
Just wanted to add that the US domestic copy of MT&H was on Arista Records, and not an import. I still have my original vinyl. I also have it on CD in the rather annoying “complete” Monty Python Collection that went the opposite way and has “1” track on each CD, so you cannot jump to your favorite sketch. Bastards! ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/26 "2004-09-14T14:51:54Z")
Some of you have been quite helpful, and some of you have been nothing but wise-acres. I appreciate all responses. > [@pesch](#): > > … I wanted to understand if you have the die-cut cover. That is, the cover has a hole that allows you to see the inner sleeve. That’s the one that has the 3 tracks. Yes, that’s the cover I have, _but no,_ the vinyl doesn’t have three tracks. Just the two. I hauled the record out last night and inspected it visually. (As opposed to sniffing it, say, which I didn’t think would be as helpful.) As best I can tell from looking at the outer and inner rings, the vinyl has only one groove on each side. Each Side 2, that is. > [@BwanaBob](#): > > Just wanted to add that the US domestic copy of MT&H was on Arista Records, and not an import. Sure enough, my edition is from Arista, published in New York. > [@Maus Magill](#): > > I don’t think you’re actually missing any content, though. > [@jjimm](#): > > I also have the tape which combines the two tracks - thinking about it, they’d probably only be as long as half an album side. To those of you who have the “3-sided” edition of this LP: Do the doubled-up tracks total to 20 minutes, give or take, as **jjimm** hazily remembers? Or 40 minutes? Or something else? I assume that interleaving N tracks on a vinyl record requires reducing their lengths by a factor of N in order for them to fit into the same space. ---
**Author:** ![Nonsuch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nonsuch/32/2922_2.png) [@Nonsuch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nonsuch)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 3:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/27 "2004-09-14T15:13:21Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > To those of you who have the “3-sided” edition of this LP: Do the doubled-up tracks total to 20 minutes, give or take, as **jjimm** hazily remembers? Or 40 minutes? Or something else? > > I assume that interleaving N tracks on a vinyl record requires reducing their lengths by a factor of N in order for them to fit into the same space. My memory tells me that each of the “half sides” is shorter than a normal side, so 20 minutes sounds about right. And **Magus Magill** is correct: the reprint edition has the same content as the 3-sided edition. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/28 "2004-09-14T15:22:47Z")
**Bytegeist,** even if you’ve played your album a thousand times, it’s still possible that you have the three sides. Let me explain. A lot of turntables will rotate precisely the same number of times, **every time,** before setting down the needle. Also, a lot of people customarily set a record down in the same orientation, **every time,** (e.g. with the label facing front.) If you’re one of those people, and you have one of those turntables, you’ve played the same side every time. To check this, try placing the rercord on the turntable in the opposite orientation just this once, and play it. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 4:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/29 "2004-09-14T16:51:37Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > …even if you’ve played your album a thousand times, it’s still possible that you have the three sides. Let me explain… Your hypothesis is intriguing, but I’m pretty sure that can’t have happened. I’m decidedly not one of those people who align a record first, even approximately, before playing it. I would just mount it whichever way it slid out of the sleeve. Moreover, although my record player does have the “auto-start” mechanism — or whatever it’s called, where the needle can place itself automatically — I usually ignored that feature. I would normally place the needle by hand right after mounting the record. As I recall, that’s because the automatic mechanism was slow, slow, slow, and I was too impatient to wait for it. ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2004, 7:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/30 "2004-09-14T19:43:50Z")
It’s also worth noting that both sides of MT&H are labeled “Side 1”. I penciled over one on my copy. …off I went on a perfectly ordinary seeming day… ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/31 "2004-09-15T00:44:00Z")
All right, listen up! Here is the definitive answer, the one we were all too lazy to find. One of the two-sides-on-one-side starts with John Cleese saying, “Evening, Mother.” then two other Pythons, doing women, fawn over him as if he were a tot, until one of the women explodes. The other one starts with, “The background to history.” An odd, boring lecture, interspersed with energetic music. So, if you have heard both bits on one continuous side, you have the 2-sided version. Johnny Winter also had a 3-sided album, _Second Winter_. His was on 2 discs, and the second had music on one side and no grooves at all on the other. ---
**Author:** ![Bytegeist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/9dc877/32.png) [@Bytegeist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bytegeist)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/32 "2004-09-15T18:58:03Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > So, if you have heard both bits on one continuous side, you have the 2-sided version. Yep, mine is like that, so that confirms it’s a later edition. I still wonder why Arista switched the format: if it was a cost-cutting measure of some kind, or they wanted to avoid complaints? Anyway, this thread seems to have met its Maker, to be pushing up the daisies, to be ceasing to be. In case this is the last of it, I want to thank everyone who participated. If you’ve had half as much fun as I have, then I’ve had twice as much fun as you. (And remember, so versatile is the Monty Python _Matching Tie and Handkerchief_ that it isn’t even necessary to own one. Simply buy it, and the sales clerk will throw it away for you.) ---
**Author:** ![js\_africanus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/87869e/32.png) [@js\_africanus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/js_africanus)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/33 "2004-09-15T20:31:47Z")
> [@jjimm](#): > > Just wanted to confirm that the three-sided version does indeed exist. You should have seen me the first time I played the second track on that one side. I thought one of my frat brothers busted into my house and switched albums as a prank. It also has one of the best lines ever: > [@](#): > > Your Majesty is like a dose of clap: Before you arrive is pleasure, but after is a pain in the dong. ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/34 "2004-09-15T21:15:43Z")
Just some technical notes here. I happen to have an original, 3-sided copy of this record and am somewhat familiar with how records are cut on the lathe. By the time the Monty Python LP was made, the original of most records were cut using “variable pitch,” pitch being the term for the horizontal distance between grooves. For most records, the source was a stereo tape mixdown, and specially-made tape players had an advance head positioned so the tape passed across it first, before the main playback head. This extra head sensed the sound level only, and controlled the pitch of the lathe cutting head. If a loud passage was due to happen soon, the cutter would move inward a little faster, just in time, to leave some room for the louder, wider signal wiggles on the vinyl on the next revolution. Conversely, softer passages caused the lathe to cut closer grooves. As long as some music was soft, this allowed much more music to be cut on a single record side. It worked especially well for symphonies, less so for pop music. But for the Python LP, the cutter was set to a fixed, not variable, pitch, and the grooves were cut about twice as far apart as normal. This of course reduces the amount of time on one side to about half as well. On the next pass, with the exact same pitch (important!), the cutter was started midway between the first spiral. They both come together at the leadout groove. So one side of the 3-sided Python should look a little different (a diff “sheen”), since it is fixed pitch and the other, variable. I don’t have my copy handy to check, but this is how I remember it. The MAD magazine novelty record had to have been recorded with a 8X pitch width, since it contained 8 different spirals. As far as reproduction, the stamper cares not what pitch, how many grooves, or whether it is a Beethoven symphony or “Roll Over, Beethoven.” It will stamp whatever is on the stamper, music or a Hello Kitty image. So if the 3-sided version is no longer made, it must have been a conscious decision by the record company to re-cut a new original in a more conventional manner. Maybe they had too many complaints from ignorant or confused listeners? ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/35 "2004-09-15T21:28:21Z")
> [@Maus Magill](#): > > Option #3. IIRC, only the first printing was three sided. Cutting two groves into an album must have been horribly expensive. Probably not (see my previous post), although the mastering lab probably charged a little extra and may have scratched a few masters before they got it just right. Still, making the master was only a few hundred dollars then, a negligible part of a record company’s budget for an album. I had two sides of a 45 single mastered in the 1970’s for US$50. And once the master is made, then the mothers, the stampers work the same way as normal records. ---
**Author:** ![Mockingbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mockingbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mockingbird)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2004, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/36 "2004-09-15T22:02:00Z")
> [@Ilsa\_Lund](#): > > Have you ever been attacked by someone wielding a banana? > > _The LARCH_. _ **Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, is not in this bit!** _ ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/37 "2004-09-16T03:05:46Z")
Oh, heaven forbid: I am one who delights in all manifestations of the Terpsichorean muse! ---
**Author:** ![TV\_time](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f17d59/32.png) [@TV\_time](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TV_time)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 2:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/38 "2004-09-16T14:38:45Z")
I think I have he album. But since I have no player, I am not certain. I recently opened up a storage space that I had all but forgotten I had and found a number of 33s that I had totally forgotten that I had. Many had been given to me in the 70s that I had never played. Some real finds too, it turns out. an early Big Brother and the Holding Company, Elvis’ Gospel album, The first Beach Boys, two Jonathen Winters albums, one of Abbot and Costello, a Firesign Theatre and this one by Monty Python. I now have to hit the pawn shop and get a good stereo so I can listen to them. I will listen for the third side. TV ---
**Author:** ![don\_t\_ask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@don\_t\_ask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/don_t_ask)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 2:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/39 "2004-09-16T14:57:08Z")
> [@AskNott](#): > > Johnny Winter also had a 3-sided album, _Second Winter_. His was on 2 discs, and the second had music on one side and no grooves at all on the other. Thank you. I used to own this album and it was driving me crazy that I **knew** I had seen a 3 sided double album. I guess Johnny was just a passing fad - I obviously didn’t listen to it much. ---
**Author:** ![williamweigand](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/b3f665/32.png) [@williamweigand](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/williamweigand)\ **Post date:** [September 16, 2004, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272/40 "2004-09-16T18:14:27Z")
> [@sqweels](#): > > It’s also worth noting that both sides of MT&H are labeled “Side 1”. I penciled over one on my copy. Odd…on my copy they’re both labeled “SIDE 2”. To tell which side it actually is , I look at the serial(?) number in parentheses under the boldface number - there’s an SA for side one and SB for side two after the number. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pythons-matching-tie-and-handkerchief-album-had-3-sides/264272.md?page=3)