There are certain songs I hear, generally on oldies or classic rock stations, that frequently are played with the occasional verse seamlessly omitted from the song.
Just the other day, for instance, a local station was playing CSN&Y’s “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” and towards the end they skipped over the final verse, the one that begins with “lacy lilting lady.” If you weren’t familiar with the song, you wouldn’t have known anything was missing.
I’ve heard them leave parts ouf of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” and Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” several times apiece, and I’m sure I’ve heard it with other songs, but I’d be hard-pressed to say which ones.
Anyhow, my question isn’t why they do it, or whether they should do it; it’s how they do it.
Two possible means have occured to me:
The record companies release reduced versions of songs to radio stations.
The CD players at radio stations can be programmed to skip from Point A to Point B on a recording, and with current audio technology, it’s not that hard to pinpoint the right Point A and Point B to jump between, to make it sound like nothing’s been left out at all. Once discovered, the time coordinates of various possible jumps in various songs would be written down, collected, and used as necessary by radio personnel.
So my question is, is it #1, #2, or some third alternative that hasn’t come to mind?
#1. Record companies have released truncated versions - sometimes multiple truncated versions - of just about every song that goes over three minutes since the dawn of time.
“Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” without that verse (and it’s shortened elsewhere as well) has been around since the single was released in 1969.
#2 is an option as well. You’d be amazed what you could do in the old days with recording tape and a splicer. Today it’s got to be no trouble at all.
That not only answers the question, but it makes a great deal of sense that they’d do that.
I’m surprised that I only started noticing it just these past several years. It might have been that during what I think of as my 15-year walkabout, lasting from the early 80s to the late 90s, I was listening mostly to an eclectic mix of small-town independent stations and college radio stations, which probably didn’t have as much pressure to shave 30 seconds off a song to squeeze in another commercial.
It’s the song I’ve heard shortened most frequently, and in various ways. I find it kinda surprising that they’d cut off the last verse, rather than the penultimate verse; you’d think the absence of the last verse would be more noticed.
I’d be amazed if I could do it, but it doesn’t surprise me what other people could do in that way, especially with reel-to-reel tape. Back in college, I knew some guys who were real wizards with that stuff.
I hear you on that - with a couple hundred dollars’ worth of software (if that), I’m sure I could do that sort of splicing on my laptop.
I don’t work in commerical radio, but I do work in a fairly popular indie AM one.
Basically, I sincerely doubt that anyone but the largest stations would choose to actually truncate tracks except for fading them in and out later or earlier over instrumentals, intros, or long fades. Basically, if you don’t do it at exactly the right spot, you have to have someone go in and digitally “blend” it together so that it doesn’t pop. Certainly not a munumental undertaking, but still a huge pain in the ass. Furthermore, you have to take this new song version, put it onto a CD, .wav, however you chose to go about playing it and keeping all of these versions straight. If record companies already release shortened songs, then those are going to get used.
Back in the days of vinyl (the 70s), I remember there being “single” versions (sold on 45rpm single discs) and “album” versions of songs. The main difference being the length of the song. The one that I distinctly remember was “Who are You” by The Who, because the 45 (the single) did not contain the “who the fuck are you?” line that I looked forward to hearing.
I’ll just add that there have been times when I’ve come at this sort of thing the other way… familiar with only the ‘short version’ of a song from radio play and music videos, buy the album, and wow – there’s an extra verse in that cut!! The rankin family’s ‘forty days and nights’ is an example that springs entirely to mind… the extra verse starting with “Oh, I remember when…”
Of course, in that example, the full cut is a little over five minutes, so I’m not too surprised that radio and even the video stations would have wanted something a little trimmer.
With psychedelic rock’s love of long guitar solos (see Little Wing), it shouldn’t be too surprising that recording studios would’ve found it in their own commercial interests to release short songs for the radio.
I edit music fairly regularly to use in public service announcements. I use Adobe Audition, which isn’t hard to use once you get used to it. (It’s also $300 for the full version.) Editing music is a fairly precise process, and it’s not for the faint of heart.
This post gives some details on how to do it. (Thanks, fishbicycle!) I’ve used this method, and it’s pretty good. It’s a little complicated when you first do it, but it gets easier.
That said, it’s not uncommon for there to be multiple versions. Some of the singles we get at the radio station have two or three versions: The full version, whatever that might be; a “radio” version that’s shorter and/or edited for language; and sometimes a dance remix, depending on the genre. For example, I have here a copy of the Prince song “1999” that was re-issued. There are three versions: The “full” version that had an intro and outro; the “radio” version that had neither of these (it starts with the keyboard); and an “updated” version that was remixed for, well, 1999.
Since labels provide edited songs for radio use, most stations don’t bother to edit unless there are language issues that are specific to that station or market.
One of my titles is Editor. I use Audition, too. I’ve done some edits that have been released on compilations, for example, a stereo version of the single edit of Steely Dan’s “Do It Again” - the single was mono. I cut out all the parts from the LP version that were cut out of the 45, and it sounds identical, and runs the same length as the 45, except it’s stereo. I’ve fixed playing mistakes in records by using another identical section from later in the song. If you hear a version of “Cocaine” by JJ Cale that doesn’t have an horrendous trainwreck in the last chorus by the bassist, that’s my work. If you hear “Let It All Hang Out” by The Hombres, in which there are no mistakes by the band, that’s my work, too. If you hear “She’s About A Mover” by The Sir Douglas Quintet that has an equal number of measures of intro (the record starts after they’d begun to play, missing some music), me again.
I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to try to do these edits with a razor blade and sticky tape! Thank Og for precision editing software like Audition! It’s an exacting science, but “difficult” is not a word I’d use to describe it. It’s also quite satisfying to not be able to tell where I did an edit. If I can’t find it, I did it right.
That sort of thing, I remember well from my teenage years. The Doors’ “Light My Fire” comes to mind - the AM radio, 45 RPM version basically skipped directly from the opening to near the ending of the instrumental section in the middle.
I had in mind the much more selective excisings I’ve been hearing in recent years (35 years ago, no one would have bothered to put out an alternative version of a 7:22 song just to shave 30-40 seconds off of it, especially in vinyl rather than CD), but it’s interesting to see those more primitive edited versions as part of what got us to the ones I had in mind.
Not that this is relevant to the OP, but record labels have also been releasing “customized” versions of popular songs for years. For instance, radio station Z-93 in Atlanta was once a Top 40 station, and played the Nena song “99 Red Balloons” back when it was popular; after a couple of weeks of airplay, they suddenly started running a version that said “93 red balloons go by…” instead of “99”.
Also, the Huey Lewis song “The Heart of Rock and Roll” ends with Lewis reading\singing off a list of American cities; there were several versions of that song, so that each halfway decently-sized market would hear their city’s name in the song (Atlanta was in the radio version but not the album or video version). Not that I was a Huey Lewis fan. Seriously.
I don’t know if the labels still do this though. I haven’t listened to radio in years, and the labels are probably busy suing people and crashing PCs (Google: “Sony Music CD rootkit”) to deal with “special” versions of songs.
Dunno about the trickier stuff, but tape edits weren’t all that tough back in the Neanderthal era.
I once worked at a small market radio station that had an eclectic (translation: horrible) playlist* that included selected current pop and country hits. We wanted to get the song “Baker Street” on the air (it was better than 99% of the stuff on the main song rotation) but it had an instrumental break with semi-screaming guitar that we didn’t think would fly in our market. So I spliced it out and you would never have noticed if you were not familiar with the song.
*as in softer Beatles tunes, Dean Martin standards and Johnny Cash, all stirred in together. I still have nightmares.
In the old days, individual tracks were transferred to continuous loop tape cartridges for airplay. For different length versions, you’d just have two separate carts clearly labelled. More commonly, a radio station would choose to keep only one version in its rotation anyway, so there wouldn’t be any confusion.
There used to be (an maybe still) customized versions of songs for each individual radio station. The one I remember is the song Fire (written by The Boss but the version performed by a female.) Right after the “turned on the radio” lyric they would insert the call letters or name of the particular station.
