I actually prefer the cut version of Marooned, I can't stand the drums on that track. Plus it would be more awkward going from Marooned to Great Gig after you'd heard the drums... just emphasizes the difference between their tempos and completely remove the flow, know what I mean?
Sure, Echoes isn't as good when cut down. But they didn't remove anything strictly
necessary, did they? The stuff on the cutting room floor is just repetition of and variations upon what stayed in.
I can stand the cutting of the last two parts of
SOYCD, since the end of Part 7 works better with the intro to Time. The removal of that guitar solo was annoying, but necessary. You should only put up to 79 minutes on a conventional CD in order to avoid offending a large number of CD players, and that's what they did on CD2. But they could have fit a
little more of Echoes on CD1.