My favorite longer songs

After about four minutes of listening to a song, I'm ready for another song. There are a few exceptions though, and anytime a longer song wins my affections it is a pretty impressive feat and deserves citation. So without further ado here are my favorite songs over six minutes and thirty seconds:

Hotel California Eagles 6:31 When the Eagles do anything for a long period of time there is cocaine joke somewhere.

Filmore Jive Pavement 6:38 Lead singer Steve Malkmus' "I'm Keith Hernandez moment:" He spends 6:38 babbling and free form guitar riffing and it comes out pretty perfect.

Tom Traubert's Blues Tom Waits 6:39 This is how I like to imagine all Tom Waits' songs sound like, and haven't done much to test this theory. At about a minute in, when he wails "no one speaks English and every thing's broken," you feel his boozy pain.

How Soon Is Now Smiths 6:42 In one of the more sonically justifiable cases of mishearing a lyric, until very recently I thought the first line in this song was "I am the sun and the air," not "son and the heir."

Blinded By The Light Manfred Mann 7:05 The shorter Springsteen original has its own charms but, as they like to say these days, Manfred Mann owned it.

Idiot Wind Bob Dylan 7:48 Assuming she still knows how to breath, Ms. Idiot Wind should be proud to have elicited the most caustic, eloquent extended insult in musical history.

L.A. Woman The Doors 7:49 The Doors had a bunch of great long songs, but none begins as perfectly as this one.

Kashmir Led Zeppelin 8:28 The gold standard of classic rock long songs, it earns its distinction.

American Pie Don McLean 8:34 You know every word. Don't deny it.

Goin Against Your Mind Built to Spill 8:42 I think I've mentioned this song before, but it just builds and builds -- like a long song should.

Life's Been Good Joe Walsh 8:56 There is always a place for a sense of humor in music.

Move On Up Curtis Mayfield 8:56 An under-appreciated artist. His music is just starting to get back into circulation.

Coma Guns N' Roses 10:13 An inconsistent effort, but the last three minutes more than makes up for the bloated studio bombast in the middle.

Marquee Moon Television 10:40 Nobody else sounds like Television. And that's why I'm willing to tolerate the oppressive length of their signature epic.

Brownsville Girl Bob Dylan 11:04 Dylan gets recognized twice because this is more of a short story than a song.

Pigs (Three Different Ones) Pink Floyd 11:22 Of the three great massively long songs on Animals, this one is the peppiest. And pep is good when songs start running longer than meals.

Sister Ray The Velvet Underground 17:27 I don't even like this song, but my Itunes claims I've listened to it ten times. Probably the longest song in the canon of modern, popular music.