Where's the ending?

[GuitarGeek]

OK, we've talked about the wrong track to open an album. How about somethign where, let's say it's not necessarily a bad track, but just something where it sounds like they couldn't figure out how to end the track, so it just feels like it wasn't finished or something. I can think of three examples:

King Crimson: Larks Tongues III (from Three Of A Perfect Pair)
DFA: La Via (from Lavori In Corso
Soft Machine: Virtually (from Fourth)

In all three of these examples, I just feel like the respective track fades out without a proper resolution or something.

Anyone have any other examples?

[klothos]

King Crimson: Larks Tongues III (from Three Of A Perfect Pair)

agree -- Track 1, the title track, would have made a better closing track imo

[JKL2000]

Rush's "Countdown" is like that for me. I love the rest of Signals, but nothing of note really seems to ever happen in Countdown.

[pb2015]

In "Virtually" I think of them mulling over that minor key theme forever (fitting in a way for the last album with Wyatt).

Free "Fire and Water" had a strange ending, fading during a drum solo. However, the unfaded take is on a "Deluxe Edition" and after hearing it I think the fadeout worked better.

[GuitarGeek]

agree -- Track 1, the title track, would have made a better closing track imo

I think Dig Me might have made a good closing track. The thing about Larks Tongues III is, as a composition, I like it. I think it could have been a good closer, if it had been given a proper coda, instead of just fading out on that vamp the way it does.

[Progbear]

“There No More” from the second Flash album. It doesn’t even fade out, it just...ends! Did the tape run out?

Another case where I think the tape ran out: “Perspective IV” by Heldon (off of the Agneta Nilsson album). And while it’s at the end of side 1, not the end of the album, “One More Night” by Can (from Ege Bamyasi). They made a clumsy attempt at fading that one, at least on the Mute CD that I own. Did they ever restore the LP mastering with the cold end?

[kid_runningfox]

Sabbra Cadabra from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Doesn't so much end as just stop. You can even hear Bill Ward putting his sticks down and getting up from the drum kit, IIRC.

[GuitarGeek]

Another case where I think the tape ran out: “Perspective IV” by Heldon (off of the Agneta Nilsson album).

I've always suspected that, as well, although I believe when tape runs out, there's a pitch change as the change of tension caused by the last bit of tape leaving the supply reel causes the tape speed to change during the last few seconds.

And while it’s at the end of side 1, not the end of the album, “One More Night” by Can (from Ege Bamyasi). They made a clumsy attempt at fading that one, at least on the Mute CD that I own. Did they ever restore the LP mastering with the cold end?

So wait, the LP version is different?

You remind me of one of the tracks on the Sparks album Big Beat, where apparently on the original album, it faded out, but on the CD, the track runs a bit longer, and stops abruptly, similar to Perspective IV, which apparently annoyed a lot of fans posting reviews on Amazon.

[progeezer]

Bear - "There No More" popped into my head before I scrolled down to your post & that's what I would have posted..

[GuitarGeek]

Sabbra Cadabra from Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Doesn't so much end as just stop. You can even here Bill Ward putting his sticks down and getting up from the drum kit, IIRC.

You remind me of...is it The Writ that ends Sabotage? That's another one that's always struck me as feeling unfinished.

[Koreabruce]

Every track on Calling All Stations.

[Scrotum Scissor]

“There No More” from the second Flash album. It doesn’t even fade out, it just...ends! Did the tape run out?

Wholly intentional and equally effective, IMHO - it's supposed to stay "unanswered" and "unsolved", partly due to the "perpetuating" nature of the theme in question there.

I actually think the riff ending to "Heart of the Sunrise" appears WAY more superficial, contrived and forced from an idea of naivité. The song should have succumbed after that final more quiet part, AFAIC.

Christ, song endings is such an extensive topic of possible dilemmas - it needs more stamina than what I'm up for right now.

[TheLoony]

Supper's Ready. I don't get the fade out as it's so anticlimactic for a epic track. But there is a load of stuff I don't get about early Genesis. It just seems like they had no idea of how to finish the track so they just faded it out. The cd I have also has CONTINUED at the end of the lyrics so maybe there was supposed to be a sequel and maybe there was as I just don't know.

IMHO it just ruins the song. After all that it just fades out?

[Socrates]

King Crimson: Larks Tongues III (from Three Of A Perfect Pair)
Anyone have any other examples?

I actually like the way it ends. If I recall correctly, Bruford hardly uses cymbals at all on the album until the final vamp, so it strikes you with a sense of going somewhere different, as if signalling the end of the sound and the approach of the 80s KC. When it fades it is like the band riding into the sunset out of sight - bit like the ending to Lord of the Rings.

[zravkapt]

What about 'false endings' that go on way too long? It's like, "Okay I get it, you're being clever...just end the fucking song already"

[pb2015]

You remind me of one of the tracks on the Sparks album Big Beat, where apparently on the original album, it faded out, but on the CD, the track runs a bit longer, and stops abruptly, similar to Perspective IV, which apparently annoyed a lot of fans posting reviews on Amazon.

This also happened on the track "Palladium" from Weather Report's Heavy Weather (it fades on the original LP, but runs a bit longer and then stops abruptly on the CD remaster).

[GuitarGeek]

Supper's Ready. I don't get the fade out as it's so anticlimactic for a epic track. But there is a load of stuff I don't get about early Genesis. It just seems like they had no idea of how to finish the track so they just faded it out. The cd I have also has CONTINUED at the end of the lyrics so maybe there was supposed to be a sequel and maybe there was as I just don't know.

IMHO it just ruins the song. After all that it just fades out?

The "continued" appeared in the LP lyric sheet, too, but I think the explanation I heard was that it refers to the eternal peace and whatever that's supposed to accompany the Second Coming, which is what's being depicted at the end of the piece.

I always thought it was a very intense, emotional ending, with the lyrics, the arrangement, and Hackett's guitar solo. If you think of the majority of the piece as a long, dark, stormy, trying night (particularly the Inhknaton & Itsacon, Willow Farm, and Apocalypse In 9/8 sections), then As Sure As Eggs Is Eggs represents the dawn. I think that feeling is very well captured in Genesis In Concert.

I can't imagine the piece ending in any other way. I certainly think a more "dramatic" coda (say, similar to The Musical Box or Return Of The Giant Hogweed) wouldn't have worked.

[Dave (in MA)]

A clever way to open Thrak would have been a fade-up into a conclusion of LTIA pt.3 to open the album.

[GuitarGeek]

What about 'false endings' that go on way too long? It's like, "Okay I get it, you're being clever...just end the fucking song already"

Electric Blue by Icehouse is like that. There's this long, slow fade with them reiterating the intro again and again. I heard the song on the radio once and the DJ, instead of fading it out early, simply turns on the mic and says "You know you guys can stop playing any time you like!".

Then of course there's the live arrangement of Free Bird. They took a song that already something like 10 minutes long (yeah, I know it's 8 minutes long on the studio version, but they added a piano solo when they played live, and I think the guitar solo/duet goes on a bit longer in the live arrangement too) and drag it out to something like 12 or 13, just with that false ending section.

Maybe not quite the same, but live versions of Casey Jones, with seemingly endless chorus repeats, turn an obnoxious song into an unbearable one. I still say it's like Jerry Garcia kept forgetting to give the band the cue to wrap up the song. And let's not forget the unnecessarily long dramatic pauses when they finally got to the false ending..."Don't you that notion....just crossed....my mi-iiii-iii-iii-ind". Dude, wrap the damn song up so we can go home!

[Progbear]

So wait, the LP version is different?

I have owned the United Artists LP and the Mute CD, and there’s definitely no fade on the LP.

This is apparently the version from the old CD, with a slight fade, but the tape cut left intact. Still not the original vinyl mix:



The 2004 remaster adds a stronger fade where you miss most of Karoli’s little guitar riff at the end there.

[kid_runningfox]

What about 'false endings' that go on way too long? It's like, "Okay I get it, you're being clever...just end the fucking song already"

See just about every Flower Kings song ever...

[Garden Dreamer]

What about 'false endings' that go on way too long? It's like, "Okay I get it, you're being clever...just end the fucking song already"

A dreadful song on a dreadful album - Humble Pie covered "Rock n Roll Music" on their 1975 "Street Rats" album and faded the song out... then faded it back in!

[Garden Dreamer]

Rush's "Countdown" is like that for me.

Rush didn't do many fadeouts. Two that disappointed me were "Madrigal" and "Different Strings" because it sounded like they didn't know how to end the song.

[Scrotum Scissor]

Rush didn't do many fadeouts. Two that disappointed me were "Madrigal" and "Different Strings" because it sounded like they didn't know how to end the song.

Both are second-to-last and so are intended to prepare the mood for the finale - and as such they function as well as they do partly because there are fadeouts to bring the levels gradually down before a storm. Both were also in part based on the similar function displayed by Yes with "A Venture" on The Yes Album - which is also faded out.

These aren't "classical" pieces of music; they're refined pop/rock songs, and those were regularly faded out at the end as more or less a tradition. Many of them, anyway.

[arabicadabra]

Dun Ringill by Jethro Tull is screaming for a - no wait, forget I said anything....