“Who huddle!” on the Simpsons made me wet my pants…

Jeeze. What a bunch of Meldrews. if you had heard the Single version first, you’d find the “Coca” jarring (like I do). I’d hardly say the song was ruined though, especially since the point of the story had nothing to do with name brand soda.

At one point, thanks to George Carlin’s “7 Words” bit, DJs could PLAY the tracks uncensored as it was “part of the artistic content” and therefore not subject to censoring, but the DJs themselves could NOT say those words. Actually, as a DJ, I could say anything I wanted, BUT if we received enough complaints to the FCC, the station could loose it’s license. So, technically, we can say anything we want, but in reality we can’t.

Another interesting release in the ’70s was the one crossover hit for bluesman Johnny ‘Guitar’ Watson, a song known as ‘A Real Mother For Ya’. The record company made Watson slur the chorus line so that it came out as ”cos it’s a real motherfwhyyyuh, makes ya wanna run for cover…’ No prizes for guessing what the original lyric was – or what Watson actually sang in live performances

And then there were those two Stones songs of the era: Starfucker and Bitch. It amused me hugely that radio stations often played both songs uncensored but weren’t allowed to *announce* them uncensored – so what usually happened was that Starfucker was announced as ‘Star, Star’ and Bitch was announced as ‘…and here’s the latest by the Rolling Stones…’ Go figure

take, for example, an obscure song called “gimme gimme good lovin’” by a bubblegum songwriting duo who on this particular record called themselves Crazy Elephant. two different versions float around of this tune — the mono version and the stereo version.

the difference between them makes it seem like two different tunes altogether.

the stereo version is inferior. the guitars are way low in the mix, cheesy organ is way up front, vocals sound kinda funny, etc. it was like it was mixed by someone who really didn’t understand how to deal with stereo.

the mono version, however … was awesome. the guitars were rockin’ and right up front, the vocals could be easily heard, the drums were right there … this mix was probably designed primarily for am radio and is actually the better of the two due to the fact that the mix is spot-on with regard to, well, everything.

there are literally hundreds of examples of this phenomenon too. beatles records are the primary one people always cite and go back to.

–dee!

It was Three Dog Night that introduced me to the term “album version” of songs. In their case, the album versions were much weaker and a let down. I was able to get all of the single versions of their songs (after like almost 20 years) on a nice double CD set they released a while back. Now that’s what CDs are for!

Yes, yes… I like Three Dog Night. Come on…

Yep, all is back to normal now with Lorraine back to being a Brunette!

I’m a Brunette fan myself… love them dark hard ladies… Which makes my wife happy as she’s a Brunette (well, not counting the ever growing gray hairs).

We bass players need our lovin’ too you know…

And the single version changed “coca” to “cherry”. Yeah, couldn’t use brand names in songs like that. Editing songs for air play on the radio ruined a ton of songs.