Wang Chung - "Everybody Have Fun Tonight"

Interesting history with this song.

Dug out my commercial 45, Geffen 28562, 1986, "Edited from the Wang Chung album MOSAIC", printed 3:59 (no designation), actual 4:16, 128.8 BPM throughout.

The first instance of the 45 edit on CD was on Silver Eagle/Warner Special Products' 3-CD After Hours (1990). Unfortunately, this version has tape drag that slows it down at the end of the track. It starts off at 129.3 BPM and ends at 128.5 BPM. Not good.

There are a few others that use the same analog transfer as After Hours, including Razor & Tie's 2-CD Totally '80s (1993), Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 4 1986 (1994; digitally identical to Totally '80s after the 0:38 mark), and JCI's Only Dance 1985-1989 (1995). All suffer from the same tape drag.

Bill Inglot did a new edit for on Rhino's 7-CD Like Omigod box (2002), based on the mastering for Mosaic. However, he missed the second edit (detailed below) and instead faded early. It's not the true 45 edit.

If you have the TM Century library, the version on GoldDisc 936 is a homemade edit done on a differently-EQ'd digital clone of Mosaic. The version on The A List Disc 34 is based on the TM edit. These are both the true 45 edit. They're not all that common, though, so in order to get the 45 edit with no tape drag and no clipping, you likely have to make your own.

The LP version first appeared on Geffen's Mosaic (1986), where it runs 128.8 BPM throughout. It sounds just fine with nice dynamic range, although the levels are a bit low and there's about 4 dB of headroom.

Lots and lots of discs use the same analog transfer as Mosaic, including Priority's Rock Of The '80s Vol. 4 (1993, too loud and clips), MCA's Greatest Rock Hits Of The '80s (1996), Universal's Retro Lunchbox Squeeze The Cheeze (1997, differently EQ'd digital clone), Simitar's Number Ones Party Time (1998), Madacy's Rock On 1987 Everybody Have Fun Tonight (1998, digital clone with added compression), Rhino's Millennium New Wave Party (1999, too loud and clips), and Time-Life's 2-CD Modern Rock Vol. 9 Mid-'80s (2000; digitally exactly 3.5 dB quieter than Rock Of the 80's Vol. 4).

The next analog transfer of the song was the 1997 Greatest Hits disc. It sounds surprisingly good for a 1997 disc: it's not severely compressed/limited, it has a reasonable EQ with a little more low end than Mosaic, and I couldn't hear any evidence of noise reduction on the fade.

There are digital clones of the GH on Universal's Pure '80s (1999; compression added and fade truncated by a few seconds) and Realm's 3-CD Greatest Hits Of The '80s Vol. 3 (2002; different EQ).

I'm going to base my editing instructions on the 1997 Greatest Hits disc, which I think sounds a tiny bit better than Mosaic for this track.

To recreate the 45 edit:

Keep the 404 beats from 0:00 to 3:09.2. Edit on the true downbeat following the line "spread the word".
Remove the 48 beats from 3:09.2 to 3:31.6.
Keep the 88 beats from 3:31.6 to 4:12.6. Edit on the true downbeat following the line "everybody have fun".
Remove the 16 beats from 4:12.6 to 4:20.1.
Keep from 4:20.1 to 4:46.8 (end).

Your mixdown will run 4:17.0 including outro silence, or about 4:16 without outro silence, and will have edits at 3:09.2 and 3:50.2.

Edited by crapfromthepast

If anyone is interested in hearing this, please let me know. I have a
needle drop taken from an unplayed mint promo 12".

Indy500 wrote: How has the 12" version (12'' Inches Of Fun)(Jellybean Benitez Mix)avoided CD all these years?

I found it !!

Dance Classics Pop Edition Vol 7 RDM249. And it sounds superb.

4:14
45pm

The run time of this 45 is 4:14 and seems to match the 45
version from After Hours which also runs 4:14.

45 version

There seems to be only one analog transfer out there for the true 45 version. It first appeared on Silver Eagle Records/Warner Special Products' 3-CD After Hours (1990). It runs 4:15, has a decent EQ, nice dynamic range, and does not show any signs of added noise reduction (no loss of high end on the fade).

At the time, the major labels sent the source material to Warner Special Products on analog reel-to-reel tapes. There must have been something screwy with the playback deck used for After Hours, because quite a few tracks on After Hours show tape drag in the last minute or so of the song. So in addition to not using the lowest-generation source tapes (the analog copy sent to WSP being at least one generation removed from the two-track mixdown tape), After Hours has tape drag issues. As much as I love After Hours due to its being one of the very first '80s pop collections on CD, I recommend seeking out other sources for the tracks when possible.

The same analog transfer as After Hours (tape drag and all) is used on:

• Razor & Tie's 2-CD Totally '80s (1993) - tail of fade is about 1 beat shorter
• Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 4 1986 - tail of fade is about 2 beats shorter
• JCI's Only Dance 1985-1989 - tail of fade is about 6 beats shorter
• Time-Life's retail-only Sounds Of The Eighties '80s Hits - tail of fade is about 7 beats shorter

We're pretty much stuck with the tape drag, since there really isn't any better alternative out there.

There's a different analog transfer on the rare promo CD set Warner Chappell Song Catalog (CDWC-6) (1991), which runs about 16 beats shorter than After Hours, cuts off the first few opening notes, but has a little less tape drag than After Hours. Avoid for this track.

Edited by crapfromthepast