Songs Butchered by Oldies Stations...

[gremashlo]

I've been noticing over the last year or two that local 'oldies' radio stations are playing edited or just plain butchered versions of classic songs---songs that such crimes are painfully obvious...

"Beginnings", Chicago--the new edit goes back to the first chorus over and over, instead of the long "...only the beginning..." trail off which makes the freaking song.

"On Broadway", George Benson--the new version takes out the extended instrumental ending--rather bluntly. It just fades out quickly.

"Suspicious Minds", Elvis Presley--because DJ's are too stupid to understand the majesty of the false ending, in the 21st century it is apparently easier to mess with the modulation and take out the false ending. High treason.

"The Joker", Steve Miller Band--same atrocity as "Suspicious Minds", as the new DJ's can't handle the fade out (as well as the final "Whoo-whoo" guitar notes) What to do? Same as before--deface the song, and take away one of the best endings to a rock song ever.

[jpkansas]

"Crimson and Clover" by Tommy James & The Shondells. One of our stations plays the full version, but 90% edit the crap out of it.

[beatles4ever]

"Light My Fire" by The Doors

"Lyin' Eyes" by the Eagles

This is a real pet peeve of mine. Maybe they do it because people have shorter attention spans or maybe they need more time for commercials....I don't know. But those of us who grew up with this music and bought the albums want the whole song. That's what we expect.

[H2IZCOOL]

I'll say for some of these songs that you guys mentioned, back in the day there were "45" edits or entirely different versions on the 45 than the LP. "Light My Fire" was a totally different take. Not only was 95% of the 3+ minute instrumental bridge omitted, but even the vocals sounded different. In the LP version Jim Morrison is singing a little bit slower and -what's the right word? - more focused, I think.

Lyin' Eyes I'm pretty sure was a straight edit. -- Edit? It was radical surgery!. They left out the entire second verse (both stanzas) that starts "on the other side of town a boy is waiting" and the middle stanza of the third verse ("she wonders how it ever got this crazy"). Those lyrics are the only ones that make the girl seem human and not just a golddigger.

Crimson and Clover. I think the 45 is a different (but similar) take where they leave out the entire guitar riffs with singers going da-da-da-da-da-da in the middle.

Suspicious Minds used to have a 45 version that the played all the time at first. It wasn't that bad - until you heard the LP version which was as Grem describes it with the false ending and long fadeout. I think the description of the "new edit" makes it sound like a different edit - maybe just a pure edit of the LP version.

Beginnings - That sounds pretty much like the old 45 edit.

The Joker and On Broadway -- not sure; I'll have to listen to my copies.

Let me add one here - the one that is my pet peeve:

The 45 edit of Vanilla Fudge's "You Keep Me Hangin' On." is less than half the length of the full version, and cuts out parts of verses so that what is left doesn't even fit together properly. The "And there ain't nothing I can do about it" line stands alone so that you don't even know what "it" is!

[alandhopewell]

"The Mike Harvey Show" will play "Walk On the Wild Side", but they always drop one of the "and the colored girls sing...." If they were thinkin'PC, it'd make sense to drop the line completely, but why just one?

[daniel]

Well, a lot of the problem with the Oldies format is that a lot of the people feeding the computers at stations today simply don't know what the "right" version is! And with the degree of automation at most stations today, some of these songs might never get listened to by anyone at the station apart from the person that recorded it into the automation.

Some of the people at the programming services send crap versions as well. We bought a CD library at the Oldies station I worked at that had a few RE-RECORDINGS on it! I can't remember what they all were, but Duane Eddy's "Because They're Young" is one I remember. It sounded like it was recorded on a Mr. Microphone! And this wasn't some K-Tel compilation -- this was a BROADCAST library sold "For Radio Use Only"!! (Our PD was an old-school radio guy so he knew his stuff and those versions never made it to air)

I don't know if that particular company is still around, most stations today that buy a library get it from TM Century. They do have people on staff there that are knowledgeable enough to toss out the re-recordings, but they still do their own "in-house" editing on some longer songs they can't find record label supplied edits of.

The mention of "Crimson And Clover" made me remember how we handled that one. The 45 edit was dayparted to AM drive and middays, the LP version was dayparted to run the rest of the day and weekends.