alice cooper how you gonna see me now

My dj copy of this song states (3:45). Ed comes up with (3:47) for the running time of his commercial 45 but my dj copy runs (3:49) matrix number WCA-8018-S-LW1. Can anyone else time their commercial 45 and report back with your running time?

Interesting that of the two commercial 45s and one promo 45 of Alice Cooper's "How You Gonna See Me Now" reported here, each one has a slightly different run time!

Does anyone have Cooper's 1978 album From the Inside on vinyl LP who can pass along the song's run time on it? Judging by the album's CD release on Metal Blade/Warner Brothers 26445, the LP length of "How You Gonna See Me Now" looks to be a little bit longer than the 45 lengths.

Edited by Todd Ireland

Todd Ireland wrote: Interesting that of the two commercial 45s and one promo 45 of Alice Cooper's "How You Gonna See Me Now" reported here, each one has a slightly different run time!

What we're dealing with here is probably 45s that came from different pressing plants. If the difference is just in the length of the fade at the end of the song, it may be a situation where the record label (or someone else in the production chain) just wasn't too exacting in making sure each plant got the fade down exactly the same way. One isn't necessarily more "original" or more "correct" than the others.

Warner Bros. didn't have its own pressing facilities at this point, so any plant pressing this 45 would have been an outside contractor. My guess is that Pat's DJ copy with the "LW" in the matrix came from Capitol Records' Los Angeles plant ("LW" = "L.A. Warner"). A few telltale signs that this is a Capitol L.A. pressing would include a raised ridge around the inside edge of the label and a small symbol somewhere in the trail-off vinyl resembling an asterisk or a sunburst (this was the "mark" of the L.A. plant). Abagon's copy with the "SR" may have come from Specialty Records of Olyphant, PA, an independent plant that was later bought by Warner Music. Records pressed there often (but not always) have a logo stamped into the dead wax featuring a large "S" with an "R" and "C" inside the loops of the S.     

Edited by MCT1