Time & Perspective Quote by Ken Hensley

Hensley is slipping a whole cultural history into a practical studio gripe: every format has an aesthetic, and it quietly trains artists to think in its shape. Vinyl wasn’t just “retro”; it was a set of hard borders - minutes per side, sequencing that had to breathe, the physical reality that forced choices. When he says “songs were left off for a number of reasons,” the euphemism does a lot of work. Some tracks didn’t fit, sure, but some didn’t earn their place. Scarcity functioned as an editor.

The CD, in his telling, looks like liberation: “much more music can be included.” That’s the obvious win, and for musicians who lived through the era of label gatekeeping and expensive studio time, it feels like a democratizing shift. The subtext, though, is ambivalent. More capacity doesn’t automatically mean a better album; it can mean weaker curation, longer runtimes that sag, bonus-track bloat sold as generosity. The format change redefines what “finished” means. On vinyl, the medium forced a verdict. On CD, the temptation is to turn decisions into options.

Context matters: Hensley came up when albums were the main unit of rock meaning - not just a playlist, but a narrative object with pacing, peaks, and side breaks. His quote is a reminder that technology doesn’t merely deliver music; it edits it, prices it, and ultimately changes what listeners expect. The trade is freedom for discipline, abundance for shape.