Manilow Greatest Hits: different versions

crapfromthepast wrote: "This One's For You" has neither a key change nor a percussion breakdown. My Manilow Modulation Monitor missed this, mistakenly.

And for all the ballads that don't have a key change (i.e. This One's For You, Could It Be Magic, Tryin' To Get the Feeling...), by chorus 3 the song is so much bigger than it was in chorus 1 that it's kind of the equivalent of a key change :) Both accomplish the same thing. (And for the record I love key changes. Interesting story from Michael Masser, the writer of Theme From Mahogany, which changes key many times - he said he kept changing keys until it went back to the original key. The last chord is the same as the first, after all those key changes. I'd never thought about that, but I think that's rather cool.)

sriv94 wrote: As I recall, the "Even Now" vinyl LP mix has has six extra seconds of Lady Flash singing "Copacabana. . .Copacabana" at about (3:34) prior to the keyboard, strings and cowbell ending, and I think the mix is hotter throughout. Those six seconds are excised from the 45, but I didn't remember anything about the bass drum being or not being in the 45 on the "Her name was Lola. . ." lyric. I hope it's not the case that the correct short 45 isn't on any CD.

From the "Copacabana" thread, the short 45 does have the bass drum, the "Even Now" vinyl LP version does not.

One more track (I'll post them as they come up, but I'm not doing these in any particular order).

Ships

• Key change at 3:07
• 1984 Arista 8102 GH II sounds good, decent dynamic range, OK EQ, no NR
• 1989 Arista 8600 GH Vol. 3 probably uses same source tape as 1984 disc but a different analog transfer, decent dynamic range, slightly fuller EQ than 1984 disc (in a good way), no NR
• Ultimate is compressed with a smiley-face EQ
• Essential uses the same analog transfer as Ultimate and sounds very close to Ultimate.
• Complete Collection is a live version. Bleh.

Preference: 1989 Arista 8600 GH Vol. 3

Edited by crapfromthepast

William (staytuned), I hadn't noticed any mix difference on "Some Kind of Friend". Maybe Mark M or Aaron can determine if there are any. As of my posting this, I see you have posted 3x on the site, so I'm assuming you're a new member - Welcome!

Above William's post, all other posts are from 2014, and even though I started this thread, I forgot about all the details that went into the replies from Ron G and others. I re-read the whole thread tonight. Interesting stuff.

Besides the key-changed "Ships", other post-"Greatest Hits" (1979) singles (top 40, well top 50) of Barry's to contain key changes are:

When I Wanted You
I Don't Want to Walk Without You
I Made It Through the Rain
Lonely Together
The Old Songs
Let's Hang On
Memory (this had about 4, it feels!)

And ones that didn't include:

Somewhere Down the Road
Some Kind of Friend
Read 'Em and Weep

Including "Ships", that's 8 with key changes and 3 without ... keeping his high ratio of modulations continuing on well past the release of his 1st greatest hits album :)

Just an aside, but I've never spotted a copy of the
"Greatest Hits" CD in the wild that didn't have a CRC
(Columbia House) mark on the back cover. At one point in
time, all the copies I could find on Ebay were also marked
CRC, judging from pics.