That usually end up being chopped to hell when played on the radio. I hate that.
Some of my favorite songs are ones that a very long instrumental, well, portion to it, that takes up almost the entire song. The local radio stations usually cut that portion short, except on very rare occassions.
Songs I’m thinking of:
“Crimson and Clover”-Tommy James
“Light My Fire”-the Doors (which I’m listening to right now)
“Ain’t No Mountain”-the Supremes
And of course, probably the most notorious one-“Inna-Godda-Da-Vida”, Iron Butterfly. (The entire song is something like seventeen minutes!)
A bit of trivia about that one–the “edited” single version is actually how the song was originally recorded. The instrumental section was spliced in later. If you listen carefully you’ll notice that the pitch changes slightly during the instrumental section–the band wasn’t in tune with the earlier recording.
More often than not, Steve Miller’s Jet Airliner is played sans the guitar-only intro. It’s basically a run-through of a verse and the chorus with no vocals, showing off those clever, clever chord changes he uses. Whenever the song comes on the local “Classic Rock” station, I think, “OK, this time they’ll play it!” But they never do.
Pure Prairie League’s “Amie” has a long-ish intro that I’ve never heard on the radio. I don’t think it’s all instrumental, though: I seem to recall it including a pre-peat of the “falling in and out of love” part.
I’d never heard it, period, until 1999 when I lost a bet regarding whether that song has an intro.
Of course, they never cut that one down anymore… the DJs just talk over the end. I’d rather they never play it at all, as is the case with the live version of Whipping Post.
Thought of a couple more – these were all the rage in the late '60s. And in these cases (as with Whole Lotta Love) the songs did not suffer by being cut down for AM radio: Chambers Brothers, Time Has Come Today, Credence Clearwater Revival: Susie Q, I Heard it Through the Grapevine.
It’s not just the slimey PDs on commerical radio that use the truncation tool – Record companies do the same thing on compilation / best of releases.
There’s gotta be 100s, but the first few egregious examples that come to mind:[ul][li]RCA’s editing of Harry Nilsson’s “Jump into the Fire” [/li][li]Atlantic’s heavy pruning of ELP’s "Fanfare for the Common Man [/li][li]RCA’s cut-n-paste of Sweet’s “Love Is Like Oxygen”[/li][*]RCA’s continuing pattern of chopping up Lou Reed’s live version of “Sweet Jane”[/ul]
It has nothing to do with the radio, but Modest Mouse’s early work had, dare I say, most of the songs drift off into bizarre and enchanting musical numbers. A lot seemed to be some sort of dance-rock and disco numbers, done with any tool available to your average garage band hero (I suppose).
Oh, man! I was listening to some seventies station on I-tunes, and they chopped the whole middle out of “Won’t Get Fooled Again!” It was so ridiculous. They didn’t even trim the middle. They just cut it out. There was the whole beginning, then “SCREAMmeet the new boss same as the old bossEND” Totally bizarre.
Have you ever been walking down a flight of steps, and you think you have another step to go down, but BOOM there’s the floor? That’s what it felt like.
One of my favorites with a long instrumental in the middle is “Blue Sky” by the Allman Bros. I’ve never heard a truncated version of it, and I hope I never do.
Higher Love. Virtually every radio station I’ve heard it on cuts out two instrumental stanzas.
I vaguely remember hearing a vastly cut-down rendition of In A Gadda Da Vida played over an arcade speaker system. Having listened to all 17 minutes of it much later, I have to say I find this ludicrous. The whole point is that it’s a lot of work, dammit! If you want something quick 'n easy…well, play something quick 'n easy, don’t “tailor” In A Gadda Da Vida to your tastes!
And to think that Miss American Pie once got played to death completely unmolested…
Exactly - there’s no point in “pretending” to play the song; if they shorten it, I don’t even care that it’s In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. There’s a damn good reason it had a reputation for being the tune DJs would play when they had to go to the bathroom.
Interestingly, I never knew it had this introduction, but heard the full version on the radio for the first time earlier this winter; I was flabbergasted.
Worse, IMHO, than cutting the long instrumentals from songs is when very short bits are cut from a song, doing next to nothing to the run time but still jolting me out of my enjoyment every time. Horrible examples are:
Under Pressure, by Queen. At the very song when we hear the lines:
Caring about ourselves
this is our last chance
this is our last dance
this is ourselves
under pressure
Though every time I hear the song on the radio the “this is our last dance” is cut. It’s about three seconds max, and they cut it. Gah!
Let’s Go Crazy by Prince. You know the spoken preacher-esque bit at the beginning? It’d be one thing if they cut it all together, but If I remember correctly, the radio edit I’ve heard goes something like:
*Dearly beloved, we are gathered together to get through this thing called life.
Electric word life, it means forever and that’s a mighty long time, <SNIP>
So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills…* Gah!
The House of the Rising Sun, as done by the Animals. You know the organ solo in the middle? Well I’ve heard the song played with a few bars cut out of the solo. Again, I don’t think they saved more than 10 or 15 seconds, and it left the solo sounding decidedly confusing and unmusical. Gah!
