? About Two Other 45/LP Differences

Revisiting the "Dreamboat Annie" 45 question:

MMathews wrote: They took the acoustic guitar intro from "Crazy On You" and made it the intro for Dreamboat Annie, except on the 45, it has several notes on the very beginning that do not appear on the album. The end/fade also runs about 10 seconds longer than the LP version. As for the reason they did this highly unusual thing, who knows?

My guess is that it added substance to a track that would have come up a little too short on its own as a single. Keep in mind that top-40 radio didn't get the acoustic guitar intro on the various promo 45 versions of "Crazy On You," so borrowing it for the reworked "Dreamboat Annie" Mushroom 7023 single made sense. It also gave the boss jocks a little extra time to do a PSA, a couple of dedications, the forecast and those, um, other things that made them so boss.

The longer redo also made the track more appealling to AOR. Mushroom issued a 12-inch 33 1/3 promo single of "Dreamboat Annie," with a photo from the LP cover of the Wilsons on the label. The 2:59 version in stereo was backed with a 2:10 slightly extended mono mix of the album version. The disc came in a poly-lined paper inner sleeve stuffed into a die-cut, customized jacket.

How silly did it look to have a 2:10 cut occuping an entire 12-inch side? There was a LOT of unplowed field left on this farm. It took 21 seconds for the stylus to trace the path of the lead-out groove from the end of the cut to the "ka-chunk" of the inner groove.

(I originally posted the scans below of the stock 45 and the 12-inch promo over on xmfan.com when the 45 version came up for discussion during the course of XM's "IT" marathon last November.)



Edited by Yah Shure

Hykker wrote: OK, I'll bite. What's an "IT" marathon?

XM's IT is an annual playback of every top 40 hit, from the 1930s to the present. Each of their decades channels plays their hits in chronological order. The '40s channel plays 1930-49, then hands IT off to the '50s channel. Each successive decades channel follow suit for their portion. IT runs 24/7 for a little over a month. Getting enough sleep becomes a real problem.

The last IT was upgraded and expanded to include most top 50 hits during the '60s and '70s portions. The '30s-'70s portion producers also made a big effort to include correct 45 versions, although there were a few bad apples that slipped through (they have the Nuggets boxed set, yet continue to air an inferior re-recording of "A Question Of Temperature.") The '30s through '70s portion was extremely well done; the '80s and beyond much less so.

The 94-page xmfan 2007 IT discussion (including label scans from yours truly) is here:

http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=85737&sid=6aa0daf30dab3 8ebb0d820146b6c5cd0