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crapfromthepast
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| Posted: 31 December 2012 at 4:23pm | IP Logged
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I'm genuinely surprised that there hasn't been a "Come On Eileen" thread before!
The versions on CD have a variety of intros, endings, and (unfortunately) mastering errors. I'll try and make sense of it all.
In 1983, if you bought the Mercury 45 in the US, you heard a fiddle intro at the beginning of the song. My 45 is still buried in the basement (a good six months after my move...), but it probably ran about 4:12, plus or minus a second or two.
If you worked at a radio station and got the promo 45, it ran about 3:27. The promo 45 eliminated the fiddle intro and had a few edits in it (which I'll detail in the next post below).
I never owned the vinyl LP, but I think the LP version was basically the 45 version, minus the fiddle intro. (I could be mistaken.)
All of the above have a fade-out, which is in roughly the same place for the 45 and LP versions.
When the parent LP, Too-Rye-Ay was released on CD, the song lacked the fiddle intro, and Mercury tacked on a short a cappella outro after the fade had completely faded to silence. The sung portion in this new outro was just a vocal version of what the fiddle played on the 45 intro. The track timed out at 4:31, according to Pat's book (I no longer own Too-Rye-Ay.)
On a much later rerelease of Too-Rye-Ay, it seems that the record company added the fiddle intro onto the song and kept the vocal outro, increasing the total time to about 4:42. (This is based on a file on my hard drive that was compiled by someone else; the song is slightly compressed in this version, and seems to run slower than previous versions.)
Unless I'm mistaken, the 4:31 and 4:42 versions didn't exist in 1983, and they don't turn up on most of the common compilations that feature the song.
So, it's safe to say that if the version has a fiddle intro, it's the 45 version, and if there's no fiddle intro, then it's the LP version.
For most compilations that feature the LP version, I found a mastering error that I can no longer un-hear. You might have noticed that on many discs, the opening
note sounds a little truncated - it sounds like it starts with a really weak bass drum hit and a note on the bass guitar. In doing lots of A/B comparisons, I discovered that this really is a mastering error. There are indeed some discs out there that have a very pronounced hit on the bass drum on that opening note. So the song wasn't recorded that way; we're just used to hearing it that way because of all the discs that have the mastering error.
I don't have a definite answer for where the clipped opening note originated. I suspect that there may be a slight indexing error on the original "atomic" pressing of Too-Rye-Ay, but I don't own that disc.
The first place the song appeared on CD was on PolyGram's Hits On CD (Mercury 818 273-2, released 1984, "Made in W. Germany by Polygram"). This disc is unnumbered, but would have been Vol. 1 of a 10-CD compilation series that extended through 1989. Here, the song runs 4:05, lacks the fiddle intro, and seems to be the LP version. The opening note sounds just fine on this disc.
The earliest disc I own that has the clipped opening note is a Canadian compilation called Rock With The '80s (PolyTel, 1990). The version here is a digital clone of Hits On CD but with a level change, and one important difference: it's missing a portion of the bass drum on the opening note. I noticed that most of the other tracks on this disc are digital clones of earlier CDs, and don't have any opening-note-truncation issues. This leads me to think that Too-Rye-Ay is also a digital clone of Hits On CD, but with the opening note partially cut off, and that this disc is a digital clone of Too-Rye-Ay.
The next disc I have this on was a 2-CD UK set called Now Smash Hits Of The '80s (1987). In hindsight, the sound was just so-so on this disc, but at the time, it was an astounding collection of 1980-1987 UK hits. Very handy for my DJ work in the late '80s. Here, the song runs about 4:01, with no fiddle intro, and with the opening note intact. This is a different analog transfer than the other discs that feature the song, and I couldn't find any digital clones of this CD.
Two more foreign compilations that also have no fiddle intro and truncate the bass drum on the opening note: Polydor Australia's Hits Of 81 and 82 (1992) and Sony Germany's 2-CD Pop And Wave Vol. 2 (1992).
It took until 1994 for the song to appear on a US compilation! And when it rains, it pours - I have 7 compilations just from 1994 that all include "Come On Eileen".
Of these 7, just two lack the fiddle intro. One of them truncates the bass drum on the opening note: Razor & Tie's 2-CD Awesome '80s. Note that this collection is mastered by Steve Hoffman, and despite the high-profile name on the mastering credit, one can only do as well as the source material. Here, it seems to be sourced from the atomic Too-Rye-Ay or one of its digital descendants.
The other 1994 disc that features the LP version (no fiddle intro) is the 50-CD promo set The A List Disc 17. It's likely that this is sourced from a TM Century disc. This track has the bass drum intact on the opening note, and has no noise reduction (many A-List tracks do suffer from NR.)
The remaining five 1994 discs all feature the 45 version, which has the fiddle intro.
There are two 1994 discs that have different analog transfers of the 45 version with the fiddle intro, and both sound excellent: Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 8 (mastered by Bill Inglot, Andrew Sandoval and Ken Perry) and EMI's Living In Oblivion Vol. 4 (mastered by Larry Walsh). The Rhino disc has a fade that runs about 1 second longer than the EMI disc, and runs about 0.06% slower than the EMI disc - you won't be able to hear either of those details, but that's enough to show that they're different analog transfers of what appears to be the same two-track mixdown tape. This is as good as the song is going to sound on CD.
Of the other 1994 CDs where the song appears, Cema's Richard Blade's Flashback Favorites Vol. 4 uses the same analog transfer as Living In Oblivion, Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 3 1983 seems to use the same analog transfer as Just Can't Get Enough , and Priority's Rock Of The '80s Vol. 15 adds a small amount of compression. All of the above five sound pretty good - you won't be disappointed with any of them.
There are two later Rhino discs that use the same analog transfer as Just Can't Get Enough, but are too loud and clip quite a bit: Millennium New Wave Party (1999) and the 7-CD set Like Omigod (2002).
There is a Time-Life 2-CD set that is digitally exactly 1.5 dB quieter than Just Can't Get Enough - Modern Rock Vol. 1 1982-1983 (1999).
There is a 3-CD set from the in-house label from one of the mail-order record clubs, Realm's Greatest Hits Of The '80s Vol. 3 (2002), which features the fiddle intro but is too loud and clips severely. Avoid this one.
There are a few others that all feature the LP version, which lacks the fiddle intro: EMI UK's Now The Millennium Series 1982 (1999; has bass drum intact on opening note and runs a few seconds longer than the others), Universal's Pure '80s (1999; missing part of bass drum on opening note and runs a few seconds shorter than the others - avoid), and an Icelandic 2-CD set called Pottţétt 80's 2 (2001; truncated opening note).
Recommendations: For the 45 version, try Rhino's Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 8 (1994). For the LP version, avoid just about everything out there except the hard-to-find Vol. 1 of Hits On CD (1984), because they truncate the opening note. FWIW, the version on Hits On CD runs about 0.3% faster than the Rhino version, which is pretty insignificant.
You can actually create your own LP version as an edit from the Rhino version: There's about 50 frames of silence between the end of the fiddle and the drum hit on the first note - put an edit there, and you'll have a nice-sounding LP version without the opening note mastering error that's plagued so many other discs.
Edited by crapfromthepast on 02 January 2013 at 8:48am
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crapfromthepast
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| Posted: 31 December 2012 at 5:21pm | IP Logged
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Here's how to recreate the promo 45 version, based on a file I have from Aaron.
Start with the full 45 version from Just Can't Get Enough Vol. 8:
Remove the fiddle intro from 0:00 to 0:07.3.
Keep the 4 beats from 0:07.3 to 0:09.6.
Remove the 16 beats from 0:09.6 to 0:18.8.
Keep the 24 beats from 0:18.8 to 0:32.5.
Remove the 16 beats from 0:32.5 to 0:41.5.
Keep the 204 beats from 0:41.5 to 2:34.6.
Remove the 16 beats from 2:34.6 to 2:43.0.
Keep 2:43.0 to 4:01.
Put a fade from 3:51 to 4:01 (that's roughly the last 19 beats of this portion).
Your mixdown will run about 3:27 with edits at 0:02.3, 0:16.0, and 2:09.1, with a roughly 19-beat fade from 3:17 to 3:27.
Edited by crapfromthepast on 02 January 2013 at 8:48am
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TomDiehl1
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| Posted: 31 December 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged
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My promo 45 is buried somewhere in my storage locker but I do recall it having the edit on one side only and the full single version on the flip side.
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bwolfe
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| Posted: 01 January 2013 at 9:17am | IP Logged
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The 12 inch version had no edits. Plus it ran at 45 speed.
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the way it was heard on the radio
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abagon
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| Posted: 01 January 2013 at 10:53am | IP Logged
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The version on the vinyl LP "Too-Rye-Ay" (Mercury SRM-1-4069) runs (4:06), the listed time "4:07" on the record label. When the commercial 45 vinyl (Mercury 76189 actual run time 4:11, the listed time 4:12) was removed the fiddle intro portion, the recreated LP version without fiddle intro from the 45 is :02 shorter than the original LP. However, both are the same version and the same speed.
--abagon
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Top 40 Music on Compact Disc : Chat Board
Topic: Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
