One of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to recorded music...the fade out.  It's a cop out. It's lazy and I don't like it.  Being in the biz of playing covers for a living, it's quite frustrating when you're learning a song and it fades out.  Be it a solo affair, or for the trio or band, the quandry is the same...how do we end this thing?  Some songs are obviously recorded with that purpose.  Just keep playing and we'll fade it out. Listening to Deep Purple's Machine Head 1997 remixes proves that very fact.  Roger Glover did his own remix of the whole album to accompany the new remaster for the 25th Anniversary 2CD edition.  He left everything in there...no fade outs, no nice clean starts...it's freakin' great!  Most songs just fall apart after a while, which is still better than listening to the song fade out, in my opinion.