Music (Or to be specific, songs that last for a long time)

I was listening to Deep Purple Made In Japan, possibly the best Deep Purple album ever produced by the band, and I couldn't help but notice that there were seven tracks, and the whole CD lasted for one hour and sixteen minutes. This may sound old fashioned, but how is that possible, I mean SEVEN tracks, seven! For an hour and sixteen minutes! For goodness sake, one of them is nearly twenty minutes long. If Deep Purple had done a live cover of Rush's 2112, we would all have been done for. That songs is twenty something minutes long as it is, but Deep Purple managed to make a four minute long song of theirs normally last for nearly twice that long, so the whole night would have been taken up by the one song, if they had covered 2112. I am writing this because I was talking about it at school with my good friend David, and we both are very interested in music, particuarly the rock side, usually when we talk about music, it is talking about older artists, such as Deep Purple, Black Sabbath and the likes. We got to talking about Made In Japan, and came to the conclusion that it is probably the single greatest album ever produced by Deep Purple, and then David said that if you combined Made In Japan and Made In Europe, both by Deep Purple, you would have the best possible album ever created by a single group of rock artists, or at least, those particular rock artists. Talking of great rock artists, Meat Loaf has a problem with producing songs that are fairly long, such as Bat Out Of Hell, nine minutes long, I Would Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That), twelve minutes long, and most recently from the Bat Out Of Hell trilogy, The Monster Is Loose, seven minutes long. But seeing as the Bat Out Of Hell tilogy has been descibed as "the greatest rock and roll adventure ever." So he can get away with it. I was also wondering how is it that Rush can produce a twenty something minute long song, and still make their album less than forty minutes long, and it is still an amazing album, with amazing songs, whilst other artists struggle to do the same, even if they produce shorter songs? And sometimes, I think that some songs go on for too long. I mean, we know that you are very good at what you do, but we would prefer it if you could give us shorter, more varied examples of what you do, rather than one really long song, that is fairly similar throughout, and that way, we don't get bored and change the song, because I personally find that if a song goes on for too long, and seems to repeat itself, I have to skip it, because I am bored by it. Of course, I appreciate that they are very good musicians, and that they can do these things, but seriously, break it up a little. Like in The Mule, on Made In Japan, nearly the whole song is taken up by a drum solo, which is very, very impressive, I admit, but after seven minutes of drum solo, and it not even being quite in time, is a little tedious, due to the fact that drums just don't have the range of sound that guitars do. I have nothing against drums, in fact one of my good friends plays the drums, pretty well I might add, so I do appreciate them, but still, not the same as a good guitar solo. Like the one in Gary Moore's Parisienne Walkways (live), but then there is a problem with that as well, and that is that he holds a note for thirty seconds, and it sounds good, but it does prove for a slight twinge in the head. Which is why I say, to all you rock stars, or generally musicains who like to play long solos, turn it down a bit, we like the solos, but if they get too long, we get bored, and often will not listen to you for a while. And to the rock stars, and musicains who like to play very long songs, please, just a smaller sample would be nice, we know you can do it, so please, give us little tasters of what you do, and we will keep coming back for more. Thank you for listening.