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johnny gill "fairweather friend"

Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
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Topic: johnny gill "fairweather friend"

Posted By: edtop40
Subject: johnny gill "fairweather friend"
Date Posted: 26 August 2006 at 9:35am

pat

my cassingle issued as motown 2049 contains a non-described version which is the same as the full cd/lp version and it runs 4:35.....the db states all cds contain the "lp version", which in this case is the same as the cassingle version.....you might want to make the same notes as with the song "my, my, my" by johhny gill....

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edtop40

Replies:

Posted By: Todd Ireland
Date Posted: 29 August 2006 at 10:28pm

Is anyone aware of a shorter radio edit that might exist for "Fairweather Friend"?

Posted By: jimct
Date Posted: 30 August 2006 at 11:11am

Todd: We got 2 different Promo CD singles into the station for this:

(CD45-18379) 1-(listed time 4:35; actual time 4:34)

(CD45-1026)
1-Radio Remix (listed time 6:59; actual time 4:57)
2-12" Remix (7:52; 7:49)
3-Hard Core Mix (6:20; 6:22)
4-7" Remix (4:35; 4:33)
5-Extended Edit (5:59; 5:55)
6-Dub Remix (6:18; 6:11)

FYI, track 4 on the 6-track promo is NOT the same version as the one found on CD45-18379. One second in, for track 4, I hear a full-volume female vocal "UHHH", which does not appear on the CD45-18379 version. To answer your question, Todd, it does not appear so, despite the (2:02) timing mishap for the 6-track promo's opening cut.

Posted By: Todd Ireland
Date Posted: 30 August 2006 at 6:08pm

Cha-ching! Outstanding information as always, Jim! Judging by the track listing, the CD45-1026 promo CD appears to have been primarily catered for rhythmic/dance and urban radio stations. Did your station play any of the tracks on that disc, Jim?

Posted By: jimct
Date Posted: 31 August 2006 at 12:45am

No, Todd. We took one look at the long times, and had no use for it. If they had put the CORRECT time on Track 1, we would've given it a listen - I just noticed this (2:02) time difference today - obviously WAY too late to help Johnny with radio airplay!

Posted By: Todd Ireland
Date Posted: 01 September 2006 at 4:08pm

Yes, it appears the record label was very careless with its incorrect run time listing for Track 1 on your promo CD copy of "Fairweather Friend", Jim! Chances are that other radio stations around the country also declined to play the song due to the erroneously inflated time listing. It makes me wonder if this had a negative impact on national airplay signficant enough to contribute to the song's disappointing #28 peak on the Billboard Hot 100! Historically, record labels are much more likely to deliberately list a much shorter run time for a song to enourage radio station airplay.

Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 01 September 2006 at 10:26pm

Todd Ireland wrote:

It makes me wonder if this had a negative impact on national airplay signficant enough to contribute to the song's disappointing #28 peak on the Billboard Hot 100!

It's possible; however...

1) the record promoters were (or should have been) pushing the song, and

2) it did hit the top 40,

therefore, a good PD/MD would have at least put the CD in to listen to it. If they liked it enough to listen all the way through, they would've realized the time was wrong. Even if it had actually run over six minutes, any station with a reel-to-reel and cart machine could've made their own edit.

I don't think run times discourage a station from playing a record, especially if it's a bonafide hit. Look at "American Pie" as an example.

While you could argue that a long run time may discourage a PD from even giving it a listen in the first place, I would argue that a he/she could press the stop button at any moment while previewing it.

Posted By: jimct
Date Posted: 02 September 2006 at 9:18am

aaronk wrote:

It's possible; however...

1) the record promoters were (or should have been) pushing the song, and

2) it did hit the top 40,

therefore, a good PD/MD would have at least put the CD in to listen to it. If they liked it enough to listen all the way through, they would've realized the time was wrong. Even if it had actually run over six minutes, any station with a reel-to-reel and cart machine could've made their own edit.

While you could argue that a long run time may discourage a PD from even giving it a listen in the first place, I would argue that a he/she could press the stop button at any moment while previewing it.

Aaron, for the heck of it I just pulled out my old station playlists for Nov/Dec 1990. Despite it's Top 40 peak, we never did add "Fairweather Friend" at our station. Since we'd probably already come to a "final" decision on it, barring a "late chart resurgence", the remixes CD would've been of no real concern/interest to us. Although the early 90s were Motown's last real "hot streak" chart-wise, their 1990 promotion team was FAR from being among the most "relentless" of labels we dealt with, to us at least. Just because we had made a decision, right or wrong, to pass on that song and focus on many other worthy song candidates to possibly start playing, doesn't necessarily mean we weren't "a good PD/MD." If we'd added it, we probably would've noticed the (2:02) timing error. That big a timing mistake is HIGHLY unusual. While we would, on occasion, do our own "custom edits," it was probably done only about 5-6 times a year. We were pure Top 40, and while we played our fair share of urban/soul, we'd rarely if ever go to ALL the bother of (then) reel-to-reel custom edits, just for a slight song improvement. They were different times then. With all of today's user-friendly digital toys, I'm sure we'd have done MANY more, but remember, this was 1990. We only had one production studio - it was always VERY busy, recording commercials, etc. It was hard enough for me just to get in there to "cart" (an 8-track shaped thing most Top 40 radio recorded the songs onto, in lieu of playing the song off of a 45) up the music every Tuesday (Top 40 radio's official "add/update the current music" day, for as long as I can remember.) This might not be the "utopian, perfect world" answer, Aaron, but that was indeed our reality then.

Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 02 September 2006 at 9:33am

jimct wrote:

Just because we had made a decision, right or wrong, to pass on that song and focus on many other worthy song candidates to possibly start playing, doesn't necessarily mean we weren't "a good PD/MD."

I'm not saying that programmers who passed on the song were not good. I'm saying that a good PD/MD would have at least given it a listen and not just thrown the single in the trash without hearing it first.

jimct wrote:

Since we'd probably already come to a "final" decision on it, barring a "late chart resurgence", the remixes CD would've been of no real concern/interest to us.

Exactly my point. You had already heard the song and decided it was not worthy of adding.

The thing I was trying to say is that even if the run time had been correct, top 40 programmers and audiences just didn't like the song enough for it to become a huge hit.

Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 02 September 2006 at 10:55am

jimct wrote:

No, Todd. We took one look at the long times, and had no use for it. If they had put the CORRECT time on Track 1, we would've given it a listen - I just noticed this (2:02) time difference today - obviously WAY too late to help Johnny with radio airplay!

I'm sorry, Jim. When I made my post, I had not noticed that you typed this message above. I was not trying to say that you weren't good programmers. The point is that you had already heard the song (prior to receiving the remixes), and you had already determined that your station was not going to play it.

My argument is simply that long run times don't necessarily prevent a song from becoming a big radio hit. If it's a great song, radio will play the long version or shorten it themselves.

Posted By: thecdguy
Date Posted: 22 June 2021 at 5:32am

Has anyone ever compared the 7" Remix on the Promo CD Single to the Album Version? The reason I ask is because I was just looking at the front and back cover
of this Cassette Single on Discogs and while there is no specific version notation, it does say on the back cover "Original Version Appears On The Johnny
Gill Album, MOT-6283" which would lead you to think that the version on there is different than what appears on the album. I know Ed said in the first post
that the cassingle is the same as the full album version, but since the LP and 7" Remix versions seem to have the same running time, I was wondering if there
might be a possibility that the Remix is actually on the single, and that maybe the differences between it and the LP Version are so small that they wouldn't
be immediately noticeable. Again, I'm wondering this just because of how they worded it on the back of the cassingle.

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Dan In Philly

Posted By: PopArchivist
Date Posted: 22 June 2021 at 10:12am

Dan,

There were a lot of remixes of this song back in the day , so not sure if I can spot any differences.

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Favorite two expressions to live by on this board: "You can't download vinyl" and "Not everything is available on CD."

Posted By: AndrewChouffi
Date Posted: 22 June 2021 at 3:51pm

To Dan:

The late, great Jim Abbott mentioned there
was a difference earlier in the thread
(post 3).

Andy

Posted By: thecdguy
Date Posted: 23 June 2021 at 5:37am

Thanks Andrew. I somehow missed that when scrolling down previously.

Now it's just a matter of confirming if that version is on the Cassette Single. It would obviously be very easy to tell if it has that
"Uhhh" that Jim mentioned at 1 second into the song.

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Dan In Philly