In-house radio edits

I know that Aaron reproduced an edit of "99 Luftballons" and "99 Red Balloons", to mimic an edit originally done by American Top 40. But I can't think of many others.

I'm sure there were in-house edits of "Isn't She Lovely", but I haven't attempted to reproduce any of them.

I think we discussed "Erotic City" by Prince on the board, but I don't think we ever attempted the in-house edits that Z100/New York or WPLJ/New York used. Z100 used a snare thwack to replace the bad words; WPLJ cut out every full line of the song that included a bad word, making for a weird-sounding song structure.

We can't really reproduce the customized edits for "We Built This City" or "Hot In The City".

I started listening to the radio around 1979, and I don't remember any songs being trimmed for length after that period.

<I'm sure there were in-house edits of "Isn't She Lovely">

I did an edit on "Isn't She Lovely" - turns out that what was later used on the UK version of the "Song Review" CD was very close to what I did.

I've done edits of other long songs, though none of Elton John's, but Paul you didn't mention any other songs specifically. Were there specific ones you had in mind?

sriv94 wrote: I did for some of the WLS versions of Elton John's mid-1970s stuff. The one for "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" stands out--they took a large chunk of the song out from about the (4:15) mark to the "someone saved...someone saved...someone saved my life tonight" ending, then sped it up.

Doug, those are the some of the exact ones I had in mind. I'd love to hear those sometime!

Paul Haney wrote: sriv94 wrote: I did for some of the WLS versions of Elton John's mid-1970s stuff. The one for "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" stands out-- they took a large chunk of the song out from about the (4:15) mark to the "someone saved...someone saved...someone saved my life tonight" ending, then sped it up. Doug, those are the some of the exact ones I had in mind. I'd love to hear those sometime!

Me too.
The station I did weekends at in 1975 also played a house
edit of that, I kick myself for not making a dub of it.
Don't recall exactly what got cut out, but I do remember
our production director leaving IN the "it's 4:00 in the
morning, dammit", which other edits I've heard removed.

In 1969 WRKO in Boston did an interesting edit of
"Suite:Judy Blue Eyes". I can only guess that they got
wind that this would be the next single and wanted to scoop
the competiton, but 7:20 was way too long so they made a
custom edit of the album version which they continued to
play even after an official single was issued. They cut
out the whole "Tuesday morning, Sunday in the afternoon
part. I have a re-creation of it if anyone's interested
(referenced from an off-air recording of their edit).

I've done tons of custom edits for my own car CD listening and in-house music system listening. Some are imitations of custom edits I've heard over the years, or of promo edits I can't seem to find at all. Many times, I much prefer my own edits.

Songs include:

No Reply At All - Genesis (refrain before third verse removed)
Rapture - Blondie (an LP Edit similar to Stereo Rock)
Celebration - Kool and the Gang (an edit similar to Stereo Rock. Only once do they sing "Yahoo" on each chorus)
Don't Stand So Close to Me - Police (final four measures of instrumental break removed, and intro fades up just before light percussion begins)
Passion - Rod Stewart (an LP Edit similar to Stereo Rock, where the final eight measures of the piano intro are removed, and the second refrain is down to a single instance)
De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da - Police (intro and first chorus spliced in half)
(Just Like) Starting Over - John Lennon (an edit similar to Stereo Rock, whereby the sustained "Somehwere..." and the drums are overlapped, removing the silence)
Do You Really Want to Hurt Me - Culture Club (turns out that it's identical to the promo single removing the long instrumental section. However, I never ever knew this was actually issued as a promo record. I thought Stereo Rock just created the custom edit at the second last "Make me cry". Things you learn on this forum)
Turn it On Again - Genesis (imitation of an edit on a British compilation, whereby the intro starts after "1, 2, 3, 4..." and the instrumental section before the final repeat chorus is halved)
She's Out of My Life - Michael Jackson (remixed in a sustained note of strings lightly overtop of the first line of the second verse "She's out of my hands...". I always recalled hearing something else there back when the song was released in 1980, but never found a record that sounded as I remembered it.
Dirty Laundry - Don Henley (it appears that I must have heard a custom edit, because no one here can corroborate the existence of a promo that halves both of the guitar solos....hmmmmm. Oh well, that's what I ended up doing)

There must be dozen and dozens more, but that's a start...lol


Edited by Jody Thornton