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American Pie Part 1?

MarcB

MarcB

Walk of Fame Participant
When I went for my walk this morning I was listening to our Classic Hits station KOOL 96.1 on my Walkman. At 9:19 they began playing "American Pie" by Don McLean. Four mins later the Voice-Tracked DJ back sold the song and then the next song began. I thought that it was strange 4 mins were missing from the song. When I got back home I went on Wikipedia and found out there is a version of American Pie that is 4 mins and 11 seconds long called "American Pie Part 1". I have never heard the 4 Min and 11 second version on the radio before. Every station I've heard it on plays the full 8 min and 33 second version including stations such as the now-defunct 102.9 The Big D and I-Heart's Variety Hits Station 105.9 The River.

KOOL 96.1 is W241CG and simulcasts WNTY 990 in Southington. They run the same music and voice tracked jocks on WACM KOOL 1270 in Springfield and KOOL 104.3 W282CB/WSKP 1180 in Westerly. They are owned by the independent Red Wolf Broadcasting.
 
MarcB said:
When I went for my walk this morning I was listening to our Classic Hits station KOOL 96.1 on my Walkman. At 9:19 they began playing "American Pie" by Don McLean. Four mins later the Voice-Tracked DJ back sold the song and then the next song began. I thought that it was strange 4 mins were missing from the song. When I got back home I went on Wikipedia and found out there is a version of American Pie that is 4 mins and 11 seconds long called "American Pie Part 1". I have never heard the 4 Min and 11 second version on the radio before. Every station I've heard it on plays the full 8 min and 33 second version including stations such as the now-defunct 102.9 The Big D and I-Heart's Variety Hits Station 105.9 The River.

KOOL 96.1 is W241CG and simulcasts WNTY 990 in Southington. They run the same music and voice tracked jocks on WACM KOOL 1270 in Springfield and KOOL 104.3 W282CB/WSKP 1180 in Westerly. They are owned by the independent Red Wolf Broadcasting.
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Many Top 40 stations played the short version when the song was current. Radio back then was still married to the sub-3:00 single and even 4:11 was really stretching it. There was also a short "House of the Rising Sun," with a couple of verses missing, and a fade at the end. Most oldies/classic hits stations now play the full versions of both, not sure why Kool has decided to play the short "Pie," since they do play the long "House."
 
I was living in Noo Yawk Sity way back then and remember that WABC was playing the long version. We always called it the "DJ's bathroom break" song.
 
firepoint525 said:
At a very small AM country station where I once worked, we had that 45. I would play the first side of it, then take a commercial break and play the other side.
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Hi Firepoint! Fortunately I have never heard any radio station (that i can remember) play just half of "American Pie". I would assume the majority of this would have occurred in the early-mid 70's when play times were really tight. Do you know when classic hits radio stations accepted the idea of playing the complete version? I've only heard the full version on stations, since the 1980's, so to me (and many others), this is the version that's well known among listeners, all 8 1/2 minutes of it.
 
oldies76 said:
Hi Firepoint! Fortunately I have never heard any radio station (that i can remember) play just half of "American Pie". I would assume the majority of this would have occurred in the early-mid 70's when play times were really tight. Do you know when classic hits radio stations accepted the idea of playing the complete version? I've only heard the full version on stations, since the 1980's, so to me (and many others), this is the version that's well known among listeners, all 8 1/2 minutes of it.
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Hey, oldies 76, how ya doin'? I was in grade school in the early '70s, so I don't really know what stations were playing while it was a hit. Last weekend, it turned up on American Top 40, the '70s, when they (Premiere networks) carried the 1972 countdown for that week. It had just been #1, and they played the four-minute version, but they started it with the first chorus, so everything up to that was omitted.

I believe that it is now generally considered to be in the same boat as other long songs, such as "Hey Jude," "Hotel California," and occasionally even "Light My Fire." But for me, "Pie" is now in the same category as "Hotel California" and even "Brown-Eyed Girl," as songs that I would just as soon never hear again. But if I were a programmer, I would probably play them all.

I remember that when Whitney Houston's version of "I Will Always Love You" was a hit, stations likewise clipped the first (a capella) verse of it, and began it with the first chorus. I believe that this was so that they could still play the song, yet try to limit listener fatigue to it.

Hippie Radio here in Nashville plays the long version of "Pie," but yet they occasionally play just part 1 of it during drive times. Maybe that, too, is the result of a compromise. Seems like they do that with other songs as well.
 
firepoint525 said:
Hey, oldies 76, how ya doin'?
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Doing great Firepoint. Returned to RD after taking about six months off. Glad to see that Hippie Radio is doing well. In fact, I'm listening right now and they are playing "Dirty Work" by Steely Dan?? WOW!! I love that song! I'm going to have to listen much more often to this small town station! Small town radio and it's miracles with music!

Yeah, if I programmed radio (and I think you and I are more than capable of doing so in a smaller setting), I'd have to play those songs too, but with more selection in between, of course.

I'm glad you have a nice radio station you can listen too. Wish we had the same in Colorado, but our local station (KWRP 690) has "phasing" issues on some songs and frankly, sounds terrible if you know what should instruments should be heard, but aren't. The other stations are in Denver and are to far to pick up locally. So in my free time, I just blast them in my own home and out to my car and it's great! Like radio should be....right??
 
Hey Oldies 76, I recently heard "Dirty Work" again not long after you posted the above message. Have to admit, I was NOT familiar with the song prior to Hippie playing it, and to me, it doesn't sound like a typical Steely Dan song. I wouldn't have known what it was, save for seeing the listing on the car radio while it was playing. (I listen in the car at lunch, so no danger of driving while checking the listing.)

Hippie recently celebrated five years on the air! Their tower is probably not more than a mile (by air) from me. Last year, a competitor station (93.3 classic hits) signed on, but so far, these two seem to coexist with each other quite nicely. Of course, 93.3 is a translator for an AM station, and their signal is not that great.
 
MarcB said:
When I went for my walk this morning I was listening to our Classic Hits station KOOL 96.1 on my Walkman. At 9:19 they began playing "American Pie" by Don McLean. Four mins later the Voice-Tracked DJ back sold the song and then the next song began. I thought that it was strange 4 mins were missing from the song. When I got back home I went on Wikipedia and found out there is a version of American Pie that is 4 mins and 11 seconds long called "American Pie Part 1". I have never heard the 4 Min and 11 second version on the radio before. Every station I've heard it on plays the full 8 min and 33 second version including stations such as the now-defunct 102.9 The Big D and I-Heart's Variety Hits Station 105.9 The River.
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When it was released as a single, it was split in two, with the first 4:11 on Side 1 and the rest on Side 2. It was common for Top 40 stations -- especially not-yet-Ancient Modulation stations -- to just play Side 1.
 
There was a radio edit that was played first, I think it was about six minutes. Maybe some stations edited together side A and side B from the single, Once the album version came out, most stations played that.

I don't remember any top 40 stations playing just side 1, although I'm sure some did. I remember full-service MOR/AC stations playing side 1.
 
The commercial 45rpm had Part 1 on the A side and Part 2 on the B side. Many various artists compilations feature Part 1 that runs 4:06.

There was also a DJ only mono edit that starts out with a cold vocal... "Bye, bye Miss American Pie..." that included a portion that was from an alternate take of the song and guitar in the fade out that is non-existent on the LP version.
I have a dub of this version that runs 4:22.
 
semoochie said:
Country station?
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Wow, nothing like waiting nearly NINE MONTHS to take issue with something that I posted, so I'm sure you won't mind that I waited another month to respond.

Geeze, I am glad that you were not in charge of programming at that station, or it would have been even worse! As it was, the GM there would not let us play ANYTHING published, or even co-published, by ASCAP. Long story short, the station owed them money. So we had to fall back on a LOT of crossover stuff. (Seems like the most logical choice would have been to take the station entirely over to southern gospel, as nearly all of the 45s that we were getting in the mail almost daily were all published by BMI.)

But it gets worse. I worked there during the first Persian Gulf war (1990-1991), and we did not even have the use of a network for news! (I am guessing that the station owed THEM money, too!) So we got our news from watching a TV tuned in to CNN. (We also got our weather off the local weather access channel.) They bitched at me for saying that "CNN is reporting..." whatever it was. This station was truly awful, so needless to say, I did not stay there for long. Six months was enough! I got my experience and moved on.

Two years later, I was passing through the area, and noticed that they were STILL playing the same 45s that they had been playing back when I was working there, which also told me that they STILL did not even have a CD player yet! A couple more years after that, they signed off for two years, and then returned under new owners. (The previous GM (the one whom I had worked for) had died (probably smoked himself to death!) and his widow had had a "fire sale" and sold the station.)
 
firepoint525 said:
Wow, nothing like waiting nearly NINE MONTHS to take issue with something that I posted, so I'm sure you won't mind that I waited another month to respond.

Geeze, I am glad that you were not in charge of programming at that station, or it would have been even worse! As it was, the GM there would not let us play ANYTHING published, or even co-published, by ASCAP. Long story short, the station owed them money. So we had to fall back on a LOT of crossover stuff. (Seems like the most logical choice would have been to take the station entirely over to southern gospel, as nearly all of the 45s that we were getting in the mail almost daily were all published by BMI.)

But it gets worse. I worked there during the first Persian Gulf war (1990-1991), and we did not even have the use of a network for news! (I am guessing that the station owed THEM money, too!) So we got our news from watching a TV tuned in to CNN. (We also got our weather off the local weather access channel.) They bitched at me for saying that "CNN is reporting..." whatever it was. This station was truly awful, so needless to say, I did not stay there for long. Six months was enough! I got my experience and moved on.

Two years later, I was passing through the area, and noticed that they were STILL playing the same 45s that they had been playing back when I was working there, which also told me that they STILL did not even have a CD player yet! A couple more years after that, they signed off for two years, and then returned under new owners. (The previous GM (the one whom I had worked for) had died (probably smoked himself to death!) and his widow had had a "fire sale" and sold the station.)
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I didn't remember whether or not I had looked at the thread, didn't recognize it when I read it and didn't notice that your post was so far back. I was just surprised that a Country station would play that particular song. Your experience sounds like the kind of thing we were warned about in college.
 
semoochie said:
I didn't remember whether or not I had looked at the thread, didn't recognize it when I read it and didn't notice that your post was so far back. I was just surprised that a Country station would play that particular song. Your experience sounds like the kind of thing we were warned about in college.
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I was actually surprised that the PD told me that "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" was okay to play over that station. (I considered it southern rock, not country.) But he said okay, and he actually played it a few times himself. There were a few others like that, but none come to mind right now.
 
firepoint525 said:
I was actually surprised that the PD told me that "Keep Your Hands To Yourself" was okay to play over that station. (I considered it southern rock, not country.) But he said okay, and he actually played it a few times himself. There were a few others like that, but none come to mind right now.
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When I worked at a Country station, "Sharing the Night Together" was a current. There were a few more like that but "American Pie isn't even close to being Country! Now, if they had a song about the Patsy Cline plane crash...
 
semoochie said:
When I worked at a Country station, "Sharing the Night Together" was a current. There were a few more like that but "American Pie isn't even close to being Country! Now, if they had a song about the Patsy Cline plane crash...
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I seem to recall that my former station (above) would even allow me to play CCR's version of "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," provided that I faded it after about four minutes (we only had the album). Seems that they didn't like the extended guitar solo towards the end.

There has never been a song about Patsy Cline's plane crash? Wow! I visited the crash site last fall, and if it wasn't creepy enough, it was raining the day that we were there! (My first station was only about a county or so away from the crash site!)
 
MarcB said:
When I went for my walk this morning I was listening to our Classic Hits station KOOL 96.1 on my Walkman. At 9:19 they began playing "American Pie" by Don McLean. Four mins later the Voice-Tracked DJ back sold the song and then the next song began. I thought that it was strange 4 mins were missing from the song. When I got back home I went on Wikipedia and found out there is a version of American Pie that is 4 mins and 11 seconds long called "American Pie Part 1". I have never heard the 4 Min and 11 second version on the radio before. Every station I've heard it on plays the full 8 min and 33 second version including stations such as the now-defunct 102.9 The Big D and I-Heart's Variety Hits Station 105.9 The River.

KOOL 96.1 is W241CG and simulcasts WNTY 990 in Southington. They run the same music and voice tracked jocks on WACM KOOL 1270 in Springfield and KOOL 104.3 W282CB/WSKP 1180 in Westerly. They are owned by the independent Red Wolf Broadcasting.
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Can't stand that they don't play the full version. The large majority of listeners to any classic hits and/or oldies station are going to be educated enough about the music to know how long the song is and would be surprised/disappointed when they cut it short. Michael Maze even introduced it by saying "One of the greatest stories ever told," which it is, and then we don't even get to hear the whole story. There are stations like The River which play far more commercials than KR, and yet KR which plays more limited commercials is the one that cuts it short. Doesn't make sense. I remember even going back to the earliest days of The River around 2003-04, they have always played the full version.
 
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