Almost every idea for a song or arrangement was committed to tape.
Throughout the two-hour session, sound engineer William Flageollet claimed to have witnessed "heavy petting" in the vocal booth while the sighs and whispers were committed to tape.
The singer Eddie Vedder led the crowd in what has to be one of the most elemental and self-affirming choruses ever committed to tape: "I'm still alive".
Colbert, recalling a bit about the awarding of the foreign-language Academy Award, calls it "possibly the most racist sketch ever committed to tape".
Its stand-out track The Cedar Room opened with what may be the most half-hearted harmonica solo ever committed to tape, a protracted musical sigh of defeat.
Traditional wisdom aligns coke rock with endless guitar solos and other muso dullness, but this simply does not apply to Volume 4. Instead, Sabbath committed to tape the sound of drug psychosis.
Psycho Killer was eventually toughened up and committed to tape for Talking Heads' 1977 debut album 77, with Bongiovi's efforts to slather the song with psychedelic strings wisely resisted.
The latter is a glorious kiss-off, finished with a long, loping guitar solo and one of the surliest spoken codas ever committed to tape ("We're gone," Haggard mutters during the fadeout).
The rollicking, despairing "Super 8" also gestures toward a lifetime of drinking, opening with perhaps the most reasonable request ever committed to tape: "Don't wanna die in a Super 8 Motel / Just because somebody's evening didn't go so well".
Simply put, this is one of the rawest, most devastating vocal performances committed to tape, by this band or any other: a seemingly straightforward torch song about the void left by an absent lover, Danko's high, keening delivery amplifies it to levels of hurt and desperation that are almost as uncomfortable for the listener to hear as they were for Danko.
Little Richard's Keep a Knockin', even at this distance, might still be the single most exciting couple of minutes ever committed to tape in the name of pop music – no wonder that when Led Zeppelin recorded a song called, simply, Rock and Roll, they just pilfered the drum introduction as the most obvious signifier of what they wanted to convey.
