Do you want the long version or the short version?

In my younger days, when the radio was about the most important thing in my life, one of my greatest joys was hearing the "long version" of a song on AM radio. I'm not sure this concept is still one that has wide currency. Back then (1960's-80's), the single (45 rpm) version of a song, the one that got played on the radio, was often a shortened version of the complete song as it appeared on the album. The reason: the shorter the song, the better a chance it had of getting played on the radio.

My love affair with radio started in the summer of '69 when I was, well, still a kid, and the first time I was aware of this distinction was the song "Let Me" by Paul Revere & The Raiders. The single, which I owned, was 2:41, but the album version, which I could hear occasionally after dark on the radio, was almost four minutes. The difference, as often was in these cases, was in the ending: on the single, the coda was either simply faded early or, in the case of "Let Me," was actually re-edited so that it was, to my ears, substantially different. Of course, because the long version was so hard to catch (and if you did, it was late at night, like 10 p.m., or even, gasp, midnight!), it seemed a sign of hipness to say, casually to your friends, that you liked the long version.

The other early example of this I remember is "Spinning Wheel" by Blood Sweat & Tears. The 45 had a calliope snatch at the end, then ended cold. On the album, the music repeated after the calliope into a longer fadeout. Sometimes a middle verse was edited (I'm pretty sure that's the case with the single of Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water"). Sometimes the reverse happened: with Tommy James' "Crimson and Clover," the single was the original version, and for the album, a long, meandering "psychedelic" middle section was added. I even heard a long version of Bob Dylan's very short song "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" which a DJ produced by simply repeating one of the verses.

Of course, there were also the instances when songs were shortened due to content rather than length. Sometimes they were bleeped, as in Johnny Cash's "A Boy Named Sue," or awkwardly snipped, as when our local station cut the word "crap" out of the first line of Paul Simon's "Kodachrome." Over on the FM dial, I would get positively giddy when I would hear Grace Slick sing, "Up against the wall, motherf**ker!" uncensored, in the Jefferson Airplane's "We Can Be Together," or when I'd hear Mary Balin sing about the taste of the real world he got when he went down on her in "Miracles"--that song got trimmed for both length and content.

By the 80's, radio was more open to playing longer songs, though even today, you will still find shorter "radio edits" available on iTunes. The disco movement led to the phenomenon of incredibly long remixes intended for the dance floor which were issued as 12" singles; here's where my love for long versions first stumbled. I found these cool in the beginning, especially during my discobunny days, but soon realized that they were repetitious to the extreme, usually padded out to 8 or 9 minutes by long passages of thumping drums and bass. Now I find them tedious, some exceptions being "Savin' Myself" by Eria Fachin, New Order's "True Faith," and the glorious eight minutes of "Forbidden Love" by Madleen Kane (pictured below)

My obscure point: it's weird now that when I can choose the long or short version of a song, I typically go for the short version. I've pretty much gotten rid of all my Erasure remixes (too much chopping up and not enough hooks) and when I went through some of my 12" vinyl disco singles this weekend to see which ones I might want to rip to mp3, there weren't that many. Even "Turn the Beat Around" is preferable in the short version. And I've grown to dislike the extended "Crimson and Clover" with a passion. Still, give me the full LP versions of "Miracles" and "Layla" and "American Pie." Life's too short for bad remixes, and it's too short for bad editing jobs on long songs that are perfect.