Bloodrock-"D.O.A."

crapfromthepast wrote: Why do I feel like I spent the last two hours untangling and documenting a 45 edit that no one will ever want to replicate? Except maybe on Halloween.

Believe it or not, Ron, "D.O.A" was a major top-40 hit here in the Twin Cities. It went to #1 on both KDWB and the more conservatively-programmed Storz station, WDGY in March of '71. Because the record got so much local airplay, it leads me to share this story:

One of my long-time friends who I met in 7th grade, started dating one of my college fraternity brothers, about a month before I accepted a dinner invitation at the frat house through a guy who lived down the hall in the dorm the previous year. M&M ended up marrying two years later, but before then, someone asked them which song would be the one they considered to be "our song."

They thought about it awhile and the only candidate they could think of that they'd heard at the time they'd first started dating was "D.O.A." Done!

As M&M's 25th wedding anniversary approached, I came up with an idea and headed to the Cheapo Records store in the neighborhood and bought a used stock copy of the D.O.A. 45 and took it to a trophy shop nearby. I asked the proprietor if he could make a plaque resembling a gold record award for a single, with an engraved brass rectangle underneath the 45. He said he could, and here's what I had him inscribe on it:

"OUR SONG"
On the day we met
M&M
April 16th (or whatever it was), 1971

M&M howled when I presented it to them at their anniversary party, and it quickly went up on their living room wall, where - according to them - it became a great conversation piece with first-time guests!

crapfromthepast wrote: And I cannot fathom how this song could be a #1 CHR hit in a major market

Not only the Twin Cities, but also hit #1 at stations in
Phoenix, Kansas City, San Diego, Salt Lake City and
Dallas.

I like to think of it as a logical extension of the death
songs of the 1960s, such as "Teen Angel" and "Last Kiss."

Although I agree with Ron's audio description of the Lost Hits Of The '70s version having excellent fidelity, in looking at the file in spectrogram it appears there's an awful lot of hiss.

Do we think this is the lowest generation available for the LP version? While it's crisp and clear, the song gets SO quiet... take the low audio level plus audio processing to pull up the volume and it just makes me wonder if there is a copy with a lower noise floor (other than one with noise reduction applied).