Mark Richardson on Ummagumma and Romantic Warrior and the possibility that long-form musical composition may have been popular at a time of cultural scarcity and the consumer equivalent of sensory-deprivation - when people needed to get lost in and through music in a way they don't now:
"I think that some attraction to longer, more drawn-out albums in the 1970s [like half-a-million selling Return to Forever LP] had to do with the technology available at the time. There was no cable TV, there were no VCRs, to see movies you were at the mercy of the theater owners. To have these kind of weird sci-fi-ish experiences, you might consider just playing a trippy album at home and using your imagination.....
"Imagine it: 1969, Chicago, you are in high school, and you’re faking being sick to listen to Ummagumma. There is nothing on TV because you only get three channels and TV isn’t very good. But this Pink Floyd album truly feels like a portal into another world."
