The Animals' "Sky Pilot" was split into two parts on separate sides, the B side fading in where the A side faded out. All told, it ran about 9 minutes. It was the first stereo 45 I ever owned, and I believe it is one of the first ever produced.
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An Editorial on Radio Finally Gets Shorter Songs
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
The Animals' "Sky Pilot" was split into two parts on separate sides, the B side fading in where the A side faded out. All told, it ran about 9 minutes. It was the first stereo 45 I ever owned, and I believe it is one of the first ever produced.
Actually the album version is about 7:27, so they could have put it all on one side. Side A is 2:55, which may have helped Top 40 airplay.
I stand corrected. Thank you. So why was the song split on the 45? Did the recording being stereo have anything to do with it or was it simply a matter of the label (MGM) pitching the song to radio as a single? There was a radio edit of "American Pie," but most stations played the full 7-minute-plus version, and I'm not sure if the shortened version was available to the public on 45 or not.
That's my theory. Although if that was the reason, it only peaked around #14.
It was an anti-war song with more than a hint of cynicism about Christianity. Maybe the subject matter kept airplay down in some parts of the country. WRKO in Boston played the hell out of it, as you might imagine, and the long version popped up on progressive/freeform WBCN, which rarely played anything the Top 40 stations would even think of playing. But I think we all know how the average young radio listener in the Boston area -- including 14-year-old me -- leaned politically and socially during those times, so it wasn't like those stations were inviting record-burning protests by playing it.
A "Sky Pilot" during the time of this record's release was a military priest/preacher/minister/rabbi who provided religious services to soldiers in the field. I imagine there were plenty of soldiers who appreciated their efforts but the prevailing attitude I saw was not so kind. In addition to the Sky Pilots, who were seen as having no real purpose except to quell the grunt soldier's unrest, there was great hostility towards the junior officers who were too gung-ho to know what they were doing, to their senior officers who were interested primarily in enemy body counts as a measure of the war's success, towards America's politicians who entangled us in this military quagmire and refused to acknowledge the uselessness and toward those proud patriotic citizens of the USA who defended and supported the idiots who sent 60,000 Americans to their deaths and a great many more to a lifetime of pain and heartbreak.
I don't ever remember hearing this piece of junk on AFRTS and I think any DJ playing it would have been fragged for his stupidity.
I don't ever remember hearing this piece of junk on AFRTS and I think any DJ playing it would have been fragged for his stupidity.
There was a radio edit of "American Pie," but most stations played the full 7-minute-plus version, and I'm not sure if the shortened version was available to the public on 45 or not.[/QUOTE]
I have the 7" 45 rpm record and "American Pie" is indeed split in a "Part one" on the A-side, and "Part two" on the B-side manner. I worked at a station in the mid 1980s who used reel-to-reel tapes of music supplied to them. "American Pie" skipped the "Long, long time ago..." introductory beginning, and began with, "So bye bye Miss American Pie. Took my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry... etc …". I think it faded out before the actual ending.
I have the 7" 45 rpm record and "American Pie" is indeed split in a "Part one" on the A-side, and "Part two" on the B-side manner. I worked at a station in the mid 1980s who used reel-to-reel tapes of music supplied to them. "American Pie" skipped the "Long, long time ago..." introductory beginning, and began with, "So bye bye Miss American Pie. Took my chevy to the levy, but the levy was dry... etc …". I think it faded out before the actual ending.
It faded out after the 'Helter skelter, in a summer swelter" verse, omitting the final uptempo verse and chorus and the slow verse and chorus that ends the song. The lone remaining oldies station in this area, WNTY/W241CG, plays this version, to my continual aggravation. I don't think I ever heard anything but the complete version played when the song was current or, certainly, on Hartford's former oldies station, WDRC-FM.
A DJs best friend with that tune.Cant remember if Casey Kasem back played to full version or only side A of the 45.....
I think the AT40 with this tune on the charts already aired in reruns.
WMNI played "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel but I don't recall it going and going and going like the Energizer Bunny,
I've never heard any sort of radio edit of "The Boxer," no dropping a verse, no fading out before the acoustic guitar bit that ends the song. I don't think the fade of "The Boxer" was nearly as long as that of "Hey Jude," which I do remember some stations fading out of early.
That 7:21 seems like hours, not minutes. How'd they get that on such a small single?
Sorry, Big A - I was trying to be funny. I will have to work on my material.
It's funny, I have always tried to take judgmental decisions based upon song bias out of the final playlist. This one on a classic hits/oldies format should have been included, but it just had to goooooo.....sometimes you just have to throw the cake out with the rainwater. And landtuna thinks today's music is bad? We "had" our Cher of Dogs back in the Day-oh.
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Remember when 1 MB was a lot of memory? Then it was 1 GB, 1TB, and now even more.
Same thing was happening in the 60s with vinyl. They were trying to cram more time on records. The vinyl was getting better. Playback equipment was getting better. The big explosion in high fidelity. Recording studios were getting better too. Recording tape was getting better. It was also getting thinner, so you could cram more recording time on a reel of audio tape. And the beat goes on.
And there's this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OE8IyK3dkA Anything shorter? 
I've never heard "Isn't She Lovely" by Stevie Wonder starting with baby noises. They went on long enough to be mentioned.
The single version didn't have the baby noises, and it was about half the length of the album version.
BTW that baby is his daughter Aisha, who is now 44 years old.
Both "The Boxer" and "Hey Jude" were way too long and too repetitious. "Hey Jude" got obnoxious. The producers should have left the repeating riffs out of "The Boxer" as well. I thought the acoustic guitar segment was the best part of the song. I could have listened to that alone for hours.
Spin the record at 33 1/3. It won't fit on a 45.
"Throw the cake out in the rain."
I am far from the only one. Log on to Youtube sometime and look at the comments on classic or modern songs and compare them. Classics will usually be described by a lament. Modern songs will be described with profanity. Neither case is 100% true of course but as a general rule......
When I first began programming (in assembler language) in 1969 (IBM 360-30) it had a whopping 16KB of memory in the foreground. We had to write our online apps so it would either fit inside that space or use a technique called overlays so we could execute the entire program. Windows still uses overlays (it is called the Page File today).
That's Fred Carter Jr. father of country singer Deana Carter. Fred played acoustic guitar on a lot of hit songs. I think that was an unusual guitar he was playing as well. That particular one was recorded in Columbia's new Studio A in Nashville, with Fred and hall of famer Charlie McCoy. Charlie also played on Dylan's Nashville Skyline, recorded in that same studio. You may not hear it but there was steel guitar in it. Producer Roy Halee brought those basic tracks to New York where the strings were added at the end.
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