As much as I'm enjoying Charlie, they always play the short "radio edit" of a lot of songs, and for some reason its really irritating.
Edited versions Ive heard on Charlie are
"Rappers Delight" by The sugarhill Gang
"slow Ride" by Foghat
Theres lots of other ones, but those are the only ones I can think of currently. If you were starting a radio station of your choice and you had the choice to play the Radio Edit or the Full length album version of songs, what would you play?? Just curious.

Maybe a mix of both? Vary it up a little? Perhaps to surprise the more attentive listeners.

Radio edits is reasonable because radio stations can add more songs to the playlist or format their commercials or playlist better. I remember a few years old when I lived in the Portland area, Z100 fast-tracked their songs during their late-night shifts.

By the way, "Rappers Delight" is a great rap song but too long. I think it is about 12 minutes long!

Radio edits are reasonable! Sorry about my poor writing!

I'm sure that they have audience research showing that they would retain more listeners by playing the shorter radio edits (even if die-hard fans of the music are annoyed by this practice). The expected mechanism might be that if a listener feels somewhat neutral about a song, the annoyance factor over that song will be less if the shortened version is played instead of the song dragging on and on. At least, this was the reasoning why the original top-40 radio stations stuck to playing short songs and radio edits.

By the way, "Rappers Delight" is a great rap song but too long. I think it is about 12 minutes long!

SO THEN, Why do you NEVER hear an edited Version of "Stairway to Heaven"??? Granted its not as long, but it's still a long song!

On which station do you never hear an edited "Stairway to Heaven?" Charlie-like formats or AOR/Classic Rock?

Alfredo_t,
Question, Have you EVER heard an Edited version of "stairway to heaven" ON ANY station??? I have not! Editing a Led Zeppelin song is sacrilegious, yet nobody has a problem editing Classic Rap songs like "rappers delight". Im calling racism on this one. Oh and by the way the Full length version of "rappers delight" is 7:27 and Stairway to heaven is 9:49. Whats up with that??

Rapper's delight, in it's unedited form, is over 14 and a half minutes long.

The time for "Stairway To Heaven" Studio Version
and the one always played on radio is 7:55

I swear the radio short version of American Pie faded out on the A side, then Faded in on the B side and continued... anyone else remember that? anybody run the jingle and quickly turn it over and let it play out?

Also hat the Chicago short versions that play today....

Some stations would play short version in the daytime, but long version at night when there is less stuff going on. Light my fire, Crimson and Clover, etc.
Any radio station with someone skillful could make their own edited version of long records.
The Stairway to Heaven (Gilligans Island version) is only about 3 minutes.
As a listener, I hated stations that speeded up the records, in order to play more music. That was obvious gimmick that didn't work for me.

The reason for speeding up records was not to get in more music...it was to make the other stations sound draggy.

> Editing a Led Zeppelin song is sacrilegious, yet
> nobody has a problem editing Classic Rap songs
> like "rappers delight". Im calling racism on this
> one.

Hahaha! I see that your intent on this topic was humor.

I wonder how artists feel about this. Hearing your song on the radio and noticing a huge chunk of the song taken out. Id be pretty pissed. Especially when you have a 7 min song and the radio version is 3 mins. Every once in a while you hear a cool "radio edit" that is slightly different than the album version. Although as a kid that used to ALWAYS piss me off. You would hear a song off the radio, run out and buy the album and notice that the album version sounds a lot different than the radio edit. That is so wrong! Every time I hear the radio edit of Sweet Emotion By Aerosmith I want to scream "YOU BASTARDS" quit playing the stupid radio edit where the intro is taken off.

When Green Day released "boulevard of broken dreams'.
Kink and The Buzz played the Crappy Radio edit. The song is around 4 minutes long, why in the hell do you need a radio edit for a song that is not even long to start off with?? Kink also toned down the song, it sounds a lot wimpier than the album version. I guess the album version was too harcore for the precious little kink listeners.
what a load of crap!

Roger: "American Pie" did fade out on the "A" side and then continued on the flip side. The only thing I can add is, United Artists edited on about a 15 second music fade down to the "A" ending, to make it sound more natural as the end.

Speeding up may not work with music these days, but isn't it working on tak stations? Anybody know more about the practice of speeding up those weekend 'best of' shows to jam in another 60 or 90 seconds of commercial time per hour?

The Stairway to Heaven (Gilligans Island version)

Who has a copy of that.... I only heard it once on Dr. Demento. I keep telling my son about it, but cant find it. I would love to have him hear it.........

anyone care to email me an MP3?
kingofextras@hotmail.com

roger if we are still there saturday call us the time machine show will play it i also have kennedy girls a take off of neil youngs cinnamon girl 1979 i have two copys on 45 of each yes im a real record pig!!!

I wonder how artists feel about this.
I would guess that any radio edit that came from the label is an artist sanctioned edit. Few stations actually create their own radio edit of a song.

> I wonder how artists feel about this.

For one perspective, you could look at the lyrics to the song "The Entertainer" by Billy Joel. I would also recommend taking a look at the book _Behind_The_Glass_ by Howard Massey, which explains the creative process of professional recording artists and their producers.

I think that the price to pay for being a professional artist on a major label is having to navigate the corporate and marketing bureaucracy that come with being on that record label. The vast majority of big-name artists don't have the luxury of deciding exactly how their records are going to sound, and I think that they understand this, even if they are not completely happy about it.

The first hurdle in getting a song into a recording is getting it by the producer. Usually, this means that the musicians come up with various elements of the song (rhythm, melody, etc.) and the producer then helps them with arranging and oversees the recording and mixing. In most cases, marketing guys then come into the picture as they explore how the song could be successfully turned into a release for mainstream radio airplay. The record company's marketing/promotions people also control the release of songs for radio airplay; in the era of albums, this is necessary to produce a string of hits instead of having the various songs from an album competing against each other on the charts.

If musicians and bands want complete artistic control over their work, then they can go to independent labels and playing bars. If they go this route, then they will probably have to hold day jobs to make ends meet, and only college and volunteer-run community radio stations will play their music.

There's a heavily peak-clipped .mp3 going around; I spent a while de-clipping my copy.

But whoa, checking Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Roger_and_the_Goosebumps I discovered Little Roger and the Goosebumps actually have a clean .mp3 on-line: http://www.littleroger.com/Stairway090705.mp3

So I guess while the record can't be sold (all unsold copies were destroyed) after threat of legal action by Led Zep's attorneys, apparently the audio's not "illegal" as I long thought it was. (I see that Dr. Demento played it for years.) So I guess the band's buying the GI theme to assert copyright over it was a myth.

Picture of the record and RealAudio version: http://www.gilligansisle.com/stairway.html

With a video of show's intro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTCYLbFxTpI

"and only college and volunteer-run community radio stations will play their music."

For now. This year, downloaded tunes will be incorporated into the UK Top 40 on par with those tunes sold on physical media. I'm watching this with great interest as it suggests we may well be ready for viable distribution that does not depend on the major labels.

Social networking online, coupled with aggressive self promotion by the artist, or an agent they hire, could make some solid dollars given the much higher margins avaliable for non-physical distribution methods.

Why do you think the majors are so controlling over downloads in general? Piracy is a factor, but really only minor in comparison to potential competetors that do not have the overhead and latency burdens the majors have...

This thread reminded me of the extra short versions of:
Inna-gadda-da-vida
&
Light My Fire

I remember, (as a very young lad!), KJR and KING Seattle playing the short version of American Pie. (I believe around 3:30, complete with that awkward fade!). Time has taught us that this particular song only works in its original 8+ minute version. Will no doubt be remembered as one of the top classics of the 20th century!

That recording of "Stairway/Gilligan" on the Little Roger website is not the original recording, it's a remake.

When "Layla" came out, stations in the Portland area played the full version from a promo 45. When I bought my commercial copy, half the ending was missing. Atco would issue the full version on a single a year later, probably after many complaints.

OK, Craig, or anyone, what is the first example of a "radio edit" short version? Is it Light my Fire? or something previous to that?

Man that's hard! This one comes to mind. Kisn-FM PD Bob Harlow wanted the 45 hit version of "Santa Claus Is Watching You" by Ray Stevens (1962) to be on Kisn. Only the long version was available at the time on CD. In 1962 you didn't hear long versions of songs on the radio so this would have been the most memorable version. I brought in my 45 but it just wasn't clean enough for FM. Finally Time-Life issued the 45 version but in terrable re-channeled echo stereo. I rerecorded it into mono and burned it onto a CD for air play. If you listen closely, you hear where the cuts are made.

Stairway to Heaven was never actually released as a single. It was always an LP cut and that is why nobody ever played an edit of it. unless they edited it themselves.

at the time American Pie was released it was thought that there were sonic problems with putting 7+ minutes of music on a 7" 45rpm record.

A lot of compression had to be used to get that many grooves on a 45. compression was not so popular then.

Reason being that dynamic range (among other things) translates to wider grooves on a record.

Macarthur Park which was a really long song on a 45 did have a lot of compression and not much bass (another factor in wide grooves)

i think i have a reel to reel copy of little roger and the goosebumps dubbed off the 45 back in the day... will have to look through the old boxes o stuff.

"Stairway To Heaven" was only issued as a 45 to radio stations.

Atlantic PR 175 is worth $100.00 Near Mint. (1972)

Atlantic PR 175 (Picture Sleeve) is worth $250.00 Near Mint. (1972)

Atlantic PR 269 (reissue) is worth $50.00 Near Mint. (1973)

Thanks for mentioning that, Randy; I rushed to post before listening closely. (And I guess my self-declipped version remains a "keeper.")

The first "radio edit" I recall was KEX's clumsy excision of the word "crap" ("...I learned in high school") from "Kodachrome," ca 1974.

Speaking of clipping and editing, I wish the artists would complain about overprocessing. I think part of the reason I seldom listen to radio anymore is that it hurts my ears.

This isn't entirely the stations' fault; processing for CD production today is at least half of it. I made the same mistake myself while learning to use CoolEdit to convert a musician friend's old tapes to CD; I redid them three times after realizing my first efforts were too aggressively "normalized" and fatiguing to listen to. But I presume the studio/plant guys are pros.

"Few stations actually create their own radio edit of a song."

Actually, Hero, most edits on 45's originated at radio stations. Some big station would cut down the album version; the record promo reps would hear it, and assume they'd get more adds if the single was issued in radio-friendly form.

It wasn't always a length issue. I did an edit on Linda Ronstadt's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" in the late 70s to remove some of the harder guitar riffs, at the instruction of my PD. (Country station.) The record company never pressed it, but they distributed reel dubs to other country stations.

By the way, that awful edit on "Kodachrome" to remove the word "crap" originated with a company called Peters Productions, for use in its syndicated AC format on reel-to-reel. Inexplicably, the service later added "Chuck E's in Love" and left in the lyric, "Christ, I think he's even combed his hair." Maybe they couldn't understand what Ricky Lee Jones was saying!

I have personally done nearly 50 radio edits for Z100 over the past 20-some years.

Three of them were released nationally.

Just curios Matt, which 3 were they?

Ok now here is a spin to this topic.
Any radio edits that You liked better than the album version????Granted most radio edits are just shorter versions, but every once in a while the radio edit will be different than the album version.(which I never understood the idea behind this) Joe Blow hears his favorite song on the radio, runs out and buys the album and the song sounds completely different than the radio edit. Its quite irritating.

Yes, "Chicago" purists may disagree, but "Beginnings" by Chicago was way too long (back in the day of the long drum solos)...this song is a great rock/pop hit at about 4:25, not 7:00. Of course, the original album listeners were most likely in a much different mindset/place than the average radio listener! (Another thread altogether!)

Crimson & Clover might have been better in the short version, because the long version was actually the edit. The extended jamming in the middle is actually out of tune with the beginning and end, which always grated on me when I heard it.

Big Bad John had radio edit version, but that was not to make it shorter.
I seem to recall discussion of edited version of El Paso.

"And When I Die" really feels like something is missing when they pull out all the cool bridges.

Justin -

I did two intro edits for CHR to 'soften' the guitar intros. These did not become big CHR hits.

Lit - My Own Worst Enemy
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away

I also put some movie dialogue into a Bruce Springsteen song which became: "Secret Garden; The Jerry MaGuire Mix"

I even got blasted by name on air by Howard Stern for that one. One of my finer moments.

I liked the long version of ''Beginnings''on the album. Tight! As a side note IMHO the first 3 albums were the best. After Terry katz shot himself the sound was more pop oriented. Seems I recall a longer version of Crystal Blue Persuasion, by Tommy James having a longer ending fade out.Hated the vocals but liked the rhythm. I like horns in groups. White Bird by It;s a Beautiful Day cut out some of the violin bridge.

I remember when KUPL first started playing Garth Brooks - She's every woman, they had a KUPL stinger right in the middle of the song... infact everytime i hear that song i still hear the damn stinger....

now thats a radio edit!

Tommy Boye

I'm just kidding about preferring it, but it was fun to listen to the radio edit of the B-Side of Ruby Tuesday on KJR Seattle. It was literally "Let's Spend the Beep Together". They used the famous KJR Attention Tone to remove every occurence of the word "Night" in the Stones song when it first came out. Vancouver (Canada) stations wouldn't touch the song. I'm not sure what KOL did when it was current.

Rebel Rebel by David Bowie had a better mix I thought on the 45. Another one that comes to mind right now is "Another night" by the Hollies. The lp version was very limp - the single was a much better mix with additional instruments. I know there's lots more. One of these days I'll uncover my old 45's and find more examples. I gotta get them digitized.

I don't know if it's really a radio edit or just 2 different versions, but the version of Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood by Eric Burden and The Animals that is heard on the radio is way different than the version on his album Sun Secrets. It's almost two different songs!

I only heard the Sun Secrets version on the radio once or twice back in the late '70's on KSHE in St. Louis. I have it both on vinyl and CD. The CD is ripped to my PC and I can send anyone that would like to hear it the file.

IMHO there is no comparison, the Sun Secrets version is much better.

Hey Matt Jones:
Do you remember back in the early 90's when Z100 used to have World Premeirs of certain songs??? I always remember the song
"keep the Faith" By Bon jovi which was supposed to be played first on Z100 in portland. In the middle of the song you guys threw in a liner (during the guitar solo) that said something like "your hearing the new Bon Jovi song first on Z100". Or something like that.
im wondering if that was because you were worried Q105 would record the song off Z100 and start playing it? Hope you remember what im talking about.

I remember it well.

We got an advance copy on reel to reel. The CDs hadn't been issued yet. The tape was awful quality. Lots of hiss, and practically no highs. So we weren't worried about another station taping and replaying the song so much...we were just messing with them. Good times.

The verbage was: "Attention all other radio stations. It's illegal to record Z100 for rebroadcast. Thank you." That liner was inserted into the guitar solo as you recalled.

The 'world premier' liner played just as the song was starting.

Matt:

Where does Z100 get all of those special versions of songs with the extra long intros for talk-overs?

Thats awesome! Thanks for the info Matt.

even the most butchered radio edit song is better than those two idiots blabbering in the morning slot.......................

Yup Buckhead Show is Awful, I agree!

I'd much rather hear music than ANY talk show.

When I'm in one of my vehicles that don’t have Sirius, KGON is my station of choice except when those 2 idiots are on in the morning.

There is a very small limit to the amount of sophomoric sexual based humor that I can stand.

Thank goodness there is more than 1 station!

I find it mildly interesting that some stations will play album versions of some songs and single or radio edits of others. K-hits has the radio edit version of "Lyin' Eyes" by The Eagles but has, for example, the album version of "Light My Fire" by The Doors (which incidentally is longer than the album version of Lyin' Eyes.)

I think the decision between commercial single edits, radio edits, and album versions should be made on a song-by-song basis. I can see more justification for playing the long version of "Light My Fire" than "Lyin' Eyes." I personally prefer the single edits of both, but I can at least stay awake during "Light My Fire." "Lyin' Eyes" puts me to sleep almost as fast as "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald." Availability is an issue too. Not sure how widely available the single edit is of "Lyin' Eyes" but the single edit of "Light My Fire" isn't easy to find.

Even classsic Rock stations Scott?? Correct me If im wrong, but classic rock stations don't ever play "radio edits".

No, Beano, I was thinking of K-Hits...and oldies stations in general. Playing short versions on a classic rock station would be suicidal.