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crapfromthepast
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Oh, there's no messing with the intros at rock radio! That was strictly a top 40 thing.
Back then, top 40 jocks would love the intro to Aerosmith's "Love In An Elevator" because of the "Yeah!" before the verse's lyrics kicked in. That intro was Aerosmith's gift to the top 40 world.
But rock radio stations wouldn't touch the intro, for the same reason that you can't talk up the ramp to "Stairway To Heaven." (Honestly, I would love to hear what that sounded like, Gene, if you have a tape of it!)
Different styles of radio, to be sure.
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aaronk
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Gene, great analogy!
Ron, I agree with you on those Rio mixes. I also
prefer the non-hit promo 45 version of "Rio" (edit of
UK 12" mix) vs. the commercial 45 version. Again, the
vocals are too loud on the stock 45 mix, and it sounds
slow. I also don't care for the way the drums are
mixed on the commercial 45 version.
Personally, I don't give any weight to the mixes on
the 45s as being the reason those songs originally
tanked and then later (with the new mixes) became
hits. I think it was 100% based on the fact that they
were an unknown band when the singles first came out,
and, for whatever reasons, radio ignored the singles.
Once MTV started playing the heck out of the videos,
radio finally jumped on board, but by that time the
mixes had already been swapped and new pressings of
the 45s released.
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NightAire
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What Aaron said. Many songs wouldn't move the needle, then another song from the band would hit, and the very same previous single would come back and maybe chart higher than the hit that was originally made the singer / group famous.
People are funny: "I don't know this group / singer, so I don't like it. OK, now I know this group / singer, now I like it." :-D
Ron, I'll have to look and see if I still have that aircheck. I thought it was done tastefully, and we were a Rock 40, and the cart in the control room DID list the intro as :48 seconds... :-)
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crapfromthepast
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Oh dear.
Some background for you non-radio people:
Most radio stations started using CDs in the 1990-92 time frame (plus or minus a few years). At the top 40 where I was in 1990, the CD players were notoriously unreliable. It was a problem. At a different station in 1993, they used Denon CD players to play the promo CD singles on-air. Each disc was permanently housed in a box that looked a jewel box, and you'd insert the whole box into the CD player. Those players worked great.
Anyway, before CDs, just about all the music was on "carts" (short for "cartridges"). They looked and operated like 8-track tapes - an endless loop of tape that would cue itself up when it was done. You could get carts as long as around 8 minutes, but there were lots of different lengths available for individual songs. The stations also had shorter carts for commericals, promos, station IDs, sweeper/bumpers, etc.
For music, the production person would play a record once and record it to cart. The production person would then write or type a notation on the cart like this:
08/12 3:25/F
That means that something interesting happens at the 8-second mark, and the song vocals kick in at 12 seconds. So we could use the timer on the board as a guide to know when to stop talking ("hit the post").
The 3:25 number was the time at which we dump the song, like when the fade starts. It's not the full time of the song, just the time that will appear on the clock when it's time to move on to the next song/ID/ etc.
The "F" means that the song has a fade ending. "C" means that it's a cold ending. I suppose that there was also a "cold fade" ending, like when the band hits a bit last note of the song and that note fades, but I don't remember what the notation for that was. (Not many songs did that in the early '90s when I worked in top 40.)
I would label "Stairway To Heaven" as:
:13/26/53 7:57/C
(I just listened to the song; that's not memorized.)
The 0:26 point in the song isn't all that significant, and I might just use :13/53 instead.
That's how the cart would have been labeled in Gene's old station.
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NightAire
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What Ron said. :-D
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eriejwg
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Allow me to continue to derail the original topic.
A local Top 40 radio station I worked at from 1983-1988
had Yamaha CD players around 1986 or so. The first in
studio players were from Yamaha. There were issues of
skipping and some discs over time not being able to be
read properly. Eventually, these were replaced by the
Technics SL-P1200 top load players. Still some issues but
the pitch controls were cool though they were never used.
Edited by eriejwg on 12 June 2020 at 7:58pm
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AdvprosD
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Wasn't there a thriller type video made around the same
time as "Hungry Like The Wolf?" I seem to weakly
remember a script that had a female slasher who stalked
her victims while singing or, maybe it was playing in
the background while she um, slashed?
I think it may have had an effect on the song's airplay
run. I seem to remember folks being turned off by the
song and the images of the slasher flick.
Maybe I'm just mis-remembering?
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Hykker
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crapfromthepast wrote:
At the top 40 where I was in
1990, the CD players were notoriously unreliable. It
was a problem. At a different station in 1993, they
used Denon CD players to play the promo CD singles on-
air. Each disc was permanently housed in a box that
looked a jewel box, and you'd insert the whole box
into the CD player. Those players worked great.
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Those CD carts were definitely an improvement over
just using the discs "naked", but they did cause some
concentric scratches in the discs that could cause
readability errors later on.
The station I worked at for most of the 90s went
directly from playing music from carts to a music-on-
harddrive (in our case, Scott Studios) system,
bypassing playing CDs directly. ISTR it being
installed in 1994.
crapfromthepast wrote:
The "F" means that the song has
a fade ending. "C" means that it's a cold ending. I
suppose that there was also a "cold fade" ending, like
when the band hits a bit last note of the song and
that note fades, but I don't remember what the
notation for that was. |
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The stations I've worked at always used "cool" for a
sustained cold ending, I've seen "natural" used as
well.
aaronk wrote:
I think it was 100% based on the fact
that they
were an unknown band when the singles first came out,
and, for whatever reasons, radio ignored the singles.
Once MTV started playing the heck out of the videos,
radio finally jumped on board, but by that time the
mixes had already been swapped and new pressings of
the 45s released. |
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How much influence did MTV have in '82/83? Cable
wasn't as widespread back then, and not all systems
carried MTV (or if they did, it was part of a
"premium" package). ISTR that MTV was the coolest
channel that not very many people could watch.
I'd say at least as much of it was a sea change in the
public's that taste occurred in the last half of 1982
and into 1983, along with the explosive comeback of
Top 40, which had languished in the first couple years
of the decade, much like what happened in late 1963.
Edited by Hykker on 13 June 2020 at 5:46am
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aaronk
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Hykker, I think you’re also correct about changing tastes and the return
of top 40. MTV did, however, reach quite a few households by ‘83. I
found this info: “Originally available to only 2.5 million subscribers, MTV
cost Warner a modest $30 million to launch. By 1983 it was the highest-
rated cable channel to date, reaching 13 million households, and by
1984 it was in the black.”
In any case, it don’t think it was the original mixes of those Duran
Duran songs that caused them to flop.
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PopArchivist
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aaronk wrote:
In any case, it don’t think it was the original mixes of those Duran
Duran songs that caused them to flop. |
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It was a case of not getting airplay on MTV at the time in mid-1982. Keep in mind even when the video did get played it was heavily edited. The band was even touring in the US during July and August to promote Rio to no success.
I also think Capitol promoting the band later vs Harvest and more distribution and promotion by Capitol helped compared to the mid-1982 release.
PS: I didn't think revisiting this thread would lead to such in depth DJ discussions. Thanks everyone for educating us on what life was like before the digital CD age!
PS 2: Personally Planet Earth and Girls On Film are great songs but the video for Girl on Film was way to explicit to make it here in the US.
Edited by PopArchivist on 13 June 2020 at 6:53am
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PopArchivist
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AdvprosD wrote:
Wasn't there a thriller type video made around the same
time as "Hungry Like The Wolf?" I seem to weakly
remember a script that had a female slasher who stalked
her victims while singing or, maybe it was playing in
the background while she um, slashed?
I think it may have had an effect on the song's airplay
run. I seem to remember folks being turned off by the
song and the images of the slasher flick.
Maybe I'm just mis-remembering? |
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Welcome to the board!
Don't recall a video like that. Sounds interesting though!
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thecdguy
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AdvprosD wrote:
Wasn't there a thriller type video made around the same
time as "Hungry Like The Wolf?" I seem to weakly
remember a script that had a female slasher who stalked
her victims while singing or, maybe it was playing in
the background while she um, slashed?
I think it may have had an effect on the song's airplay
run. I seem to remember folks being turned off by the
song and the images of the slasher flick.
Maybe I'm just mis-remembering? |
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Are you thinking of the Farrah Fawcett movie, "Small Sacrifices", which was based on a true story of a woman accused of killing her children? In the movie, the song is played at her trial. It was said to be her motivation for the murders. The movie came out in 1989, several years after the song was a hit, so it may not be what you're thinking of.
And welcome to the board!
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AdvprosD
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You may be right Dan... I haven't got all the grey
matter I once had.
Also, Thank you PopArchivist! I appreciate the cheery
welcome! Dave from Saint louis.
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VWestlife
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I'm too young to remember which version(s) of "Hungry Like the Wolf" were played on the radio when it was a current hit, but I have access to the music libraries of New York City radio stations WCBS-FM and WPLJ from the mid-2000s, and I can confirm that at least as of that time, WCBS-FM played the original UK album version, faded out a few seconds early to 3:35, while WPLJ played the original "non-hit" U.S. single version, again cut a little short to 3:21.
I certainly never recall hearing the prominent "cries of passion" that are on the "Night Version" and the 4:03 U.S. "hit" 45, at least since the 1990s, either because all the mainstream pop/rock stations I was listening to didn't play those versions, or because they faded it out early or had the DJ talk over the ending to cover it up.
Maybe Alternative/Album Rock stations played the "Night Version" in its entirety, especially after hours when they were less stringent about profanity and adult content (hence the name "Night Version"!), but I wasn't listening to them.
And as for talking over long intros, back in the '70s and early '80s when WPLJ was a Rock station, they played Al Stewart's "Year of the Cat" with a spoken introduction recorded by Al himself explaining what the song was all about, perfectly timed to end just before the vocals began.
Edited by VWestlife on 11 November 2020 at 5:16pm
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Jackinbox
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I grew up hearing the 4:03 remix single version on the
radio (specifically WZPL Indianapolis). We certainly
didn't get the Night Version as I would have remembered an
into that long, and I definitely remember the "cries of
passion" at the end.
It was quite interesting to hear that again, as I'm pretty
sure I've only heard the 3:23 mix aired for at least the
last 20-30 years.
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Jody Thornton
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Jackinbox wrote:
I grew up hearing the 4:03 remix single version on the
radio (specifically WZPL Indianapolis). We certainly
didn't get the Night Version as I would have remembered an
into that long, and I definitely remember the "cries of
passion" at the end.
It was quite interesting to hear that again, as I'm pretty
sure I've only heard the 3:23 mix aired for at least the
last 20-30 years. |
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Yes to me, the 4:03 remix WAS the definitive hit version, plus it had the loud yell/groan at the end during the fade. I think ever since that "Hits" package came out in the late 90s, the 3:23 has been opted for.
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Hykker
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Jody Thornton wrote:
| Yes to me, the 4:03 remix WAS the definitive hit version, plus it had the loud yell/groan at the end during the fade. |
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We played the 4:03 version where I worked in 1983. This station was a bit unique in where everything was on cart (not even any turntables in the
control room!), and the board was wired in such a way that the tertiary tone on one cart would fire the next machine. Our music director liked tight
segues, and he put the tone on HLTW about 2/3 of the way thru that final scream to make that the segue point, I think he may have ridden gain on the
fade so it was still at full volume there. Sounded great on the air.
Don't think I've ever seen another station with that setup...it was great during stopsets, bathroom runs, tend to the FM automation, or any of the
other stuff DJs had to do during their shift. IIRC there were 5 cart machines and it cycled thru them sequentially. It was that way when I started
working there in early '74. The mini-mation (as we called it) could be disabled if you wanted to run the board manually. Most of us did a mix of the
two. The only thing it didn't do was to reset the timer, not sure why.
crapfromthepast wrote:
The 5:14 version has a 78-second intro, so that the first vocals kick in at 1:18. This is pure torture! Unless you plan on
reading the weather forecast or doing a traffic report, there's no conceivable way you can consistently get though 1:18 of banter to hit the post.
It's just awful. (As a 12-inch single, it's great! But there's a reason that not many top 40 stations played lots of 12-inch singles on the air.)
So I'd be really curious to hear how on-air folks handled the 5:14 version of the song back then. If I were programming back then, I would have
certainly used the 4:03 version, at least during the daytime hours. (The 5:14 version could work in overnights, when there was less chatter.) |
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Well, we didn't play the long version so I can't comment on that, but our station wasn't so high intensity that jocks felt they had to post every
single song. Say what you had/wanted to say and let the intro continue. Personally, I find Bill Lee's hit-every-single-post approach fatiguing at
best, and mildly annoying at worst. If it works for him, fine, but it's not 1972 anymore.
As far as posting a :78 intro, you could almost do a full newscast in that time, any decent Top 40 jock could do the the weather in :10.
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NightAire
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(More derailment)
I think the fastest weather I ever did was five seconds:
"45 overnight, 72 tomorrow, 55 now at Z104.5!"
(Rain chances would add a second... bleah.)
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PopArchivist
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Jody Thornton wrote:
I think ever since that "Hits" package came out in the late 90s, the 3:23 has been opted for.
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It's revisionist history I tell ya. The 4:03 and 5:14 are both a bit too racy or long for radio nowadays. Almost all various artist comps seem to have made it the defacto version.
PS I wonder if this song is the biggest one song specific thread on this board. It always seems to come back up at least once a year!
Edited by PopArchivist on 29 December 2021 at 7:31pm
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aaronk
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Nope, "How Will I Know" goes on for 5 pages. There may be other longer ones, but the Whitney thread was recently resurrected.
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: Duran Duran-"Hungry Like The Wolf"
