Daryl Hall-"Dreamtime"

jimct wrote: We even actually received ONE PROMO cassette into the station! Any guesses? Actually, a few months LATER, in March of 1987, (the now, apparently cutting-edge) A&M records again, sent us a 45 AND cassette sealed "Radio-Take Your Pick" 2-pack for Bryan Adams "Heat Of The Night." What was A&M thinking? Cassettes for radio?? Oh, yeah, casettes make "carting up" music a snap!@#%&! I still have that sealed copy. Wonder what it would fetch on eBay???

I couldn't help but chuckle at your post, Jim, because I actually did work for a small market radio station in the late '90s where we actually did cue up and play cassette singles from the early '90s on the air! Let me tell ya, those things were a pain to work with!

Edited by Todd Ireland

Brian W. wrote: Those are some fascinating posts, 80smusicfreak! So... don't keep us waiting. What WERE the few cassette singles that were released in the late '60s?

I'd also like more info on those late '60s cassette singles. Also, what were some of the pre-"Heat of The Night" '80s titles? Can we acutually pinpoint the very first ever commercial cassette single?

elcoleccionista wrote: An extra long post from an 80's music freak... I LOVED IT FROM START TO END!

Thanks, lol. Thought I might've gotten a bit long-winded
there, but after seeing all the responses it got, maybe
not... :-)

This gets more entertaining by the hour, thank you Pat and all members for this great forum : )

Let me say that I've certainly learned a lot from my
(nearly) two years here as well. Like jimct, I admit I
definitely don't have the ear to dissect the single
version of a song down to the presence or absence of a
single "whoosh" sound, heard only in one channel, and
most likely noticeable only w/ headphones at that (as you
guys recently did on another thread w/ Janet Jackson's
"Nasty"), but I do like knowing which version of a song
I'm getting on a CD before I buy it, which is a great
part of what Pat's book and database provides.
Personally, I've always had a preference for maxi-singles
and/or LP versions (since they're usually - but yes, I
realize not always - longer), but this site has
definitely opened my eyes as to just how often single
versions of songs were unique mixes, and not just early
fades or chopped-up edits of the LP versions (as I
previously thought). You folks here have definitely done
a fantastic job of exposing these different single mixes
as well as discovering some different commercial
pressings of the same 45, and frankly, w/ the
collectibility of vinyl, I'm surprised at how much of
this has proven to be "uncharted territory", so to speak.
So to that end, I say keep up the great work, everyone,
and I also thank Pat for this forum!
:-)

Brian W. wrote: Those are some fascinating posts, 80smusicfreak! So... don't keep us waiting. What WERE the few cassette singles that were released in the late '60s?

Well, please bear in mind that this is definitely
uncharted territory! In fact, to this day, I've found NO
lists, catalogs, old magazine articles, or any other form
of written documentation stating what titles were issued
on cassette single that far back - even "Schwann" didn't
start listing ALBUM-length cassettes and 8-tracks in
their catalogs until '71 (and even then, they always
contained numerous omissions in the two tape formats!).
So basically, that means I can only go by what I and a
small circle of fellow cassette collectors have stumbled
across while out on our record-store travels over the
last 15-20 years, and more recently, on eBay (although I
don't regularly search for them there). The cassette was
introduced in the U.S. in late '66/early '67, so it's
also worth keeping in mind that they made up only about
5% of the album market in those early years (trailing
both vinyl LPs and 8-tracks, not to mention competition
from other less-popular formats, including 4-tracks and
reel-to-reels - ah, the CHOICES back then!). Translation:
Cassettes of that vintage are rare enough in album-length
form, so you can imagine how rare that would make any
cassette singles!

At any rate, the oldest cassette single I've ever seen
was for "Soul Finger" by the Bar-Kays, from the Summer of
'67. And unfortunately, by the time I found it around
1990, it had at some point in time become separated from
its original case and/or inserts - in other words, it was
just the tape itself. Shortly thereafter, I traded it to
a fellow cassette collector who was also a die-hard
Bar-Kays fan. I still occasionally keep in touch w/ him,
though, and I believe he still has it...

There were also many cassette-only EPs released back in
the late '60s (w/ no vinyl equivalent, although from the
ones I've seen, the material on those EPs was available
on full-length vinyl LPs), and they seem to have been a
bit more common, relatively speaking...

Well, that's it for tonight - I'll try to respond to the
rest of the posts in this thread in the coming
days...

elcoleccionista wrote: 80smusicfreak wrote: ...Cooper does state that 1986 was the first year that promo CD singles were issued here in the U.S... I always hated how very late the cd single format was introduced in the USA in both its promo and commercial forms.

The explanation for that is really quite simple: As I
noted earlier, by 1986, the cassette was king here in the
U.S., and while the tape format had been #1 in album
sales for over three years at that point, it had seen
only some half-hearted attempts at
supplementing/replacing vinyl in singles form. For
whatever reason, during the early to mid '80s, there was
a fairly strong mentality among the old folks in suits at
the majors (as well as, ahem, radio dj's) that the buying
public couldn't or wouldn't accept singles in any other
form but vinyl (including CD - not just cassette). So as
the gap between album-length cassettes and vinyl LPs
continued to widen by '86, since CD sales were still just
a minor blip, the natural progression was to get behind
the cassette as a singles successor...

And as I said before, the cassette single more than
succeeded that first year out (1987), even outselling
vinyl 45s - something that most of the suits hadn't
expected. (And part of that may have also had something
to do w/ giving consumers more for their money: Almost
all cassette singles came w/ picture sleeves/boxes -
unlike their vinyl 45 rpm counterparts - as well as
repeating the A- and B-sides on both sides, again, unlike
vinyl 45s.) If anything, it just proved that the
universal support of the cassette single came along way
too late - by some five to six years, in fact!

Point being, now that another format besides vinyl had
proven successful in singles form, and w/ album-length CD
sales still rising, the labels were much quicker to get
behind the silver discs in both promo and commercial
form, starting in 1988. But w/ cassettes garnering over
80% of the singles market by the end of '89, the number
of releases on commercial CD single and maxi-single would
remain just a trickle until the early '90s. (Fact: Even
album-length CDs didn't pass cassettes here in the U.S.
until 1992!) Of course, also hindering their mass
introduction in CD form was the retail price: "Okay, we
now know that the buying public will accept singles in a
non-vinyl format, but are they also willing to pay extra
at the cash register if we put them on these shiny new
indestructible 5" discs that will last them a lifetime,
not to mention they'll cost us more to manufacture???"

Mainly because it resulted in having no choice other than a 7" single for many of my dearest 80's remix edits : D

Or if you're talking post-"Heat of the Night",
cassette... ;-)

1) Now, which was the very first promo cd single by any artist Warner put out? If memory serves well I remember a promo CD for Fleetwood Mac's "Big Love", so could 1987 be Warner's inaugural year? Proud promo CD recipients from the heyday, step forward please! : D

"Big Love" is indeed listed in Cooper's book as well, and
as jimct's interesting collection proves, yes, 1987 was
apparently when WEA jumped
onboard...