Someone's looking at you mixes

Mark L · Loudmouth

Someone's looking at you mixes

ArrGee · Back To Boomtown

Mark L wrote:
Why were Diamond Smiles/Rat Trap/Million Years exactly the same whether on album or single, yet most other songs were tweaked, even if only slightly?

In Rat Trap, the lyric about "pus and grime..." was changed to "blood and tears pour down the drains and the sewers" and the mark No Grime Here Paddy was on the single

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Trap

Mark L · Loudmouth

I understood re Rat Trap it was just a straight lyric swap for TOTP consumption with no effect on song length - with other songs it's more a case of additional verses (Elephant's Graveyard), resung verses (Mondays), more obvious tweaks etc such as the SLAY example and some minor tweaks such as some Like Clockwork lyric being slightly shorter midway through. Such tweaks seemed to have shortened Rat tracks by much less than a minute in most cases.

The replacement of one line being rerecorded, like You're Beautiful by James Blunt which replaces "f**king high" with "flying high" in the second verse is comparable to Rat Trap, but whereas some groups had to shorten a 6 or 7 minute album song down to 3 or 4 for radio play, the Rats never really had this dilemma.

noelindublin · Loudmouth

I love the very end of the album version of Banana Republic when Geldof plaintively sings 'Many rivers to cross/but I can't seem to find my way home' (From old Jimmy Cliff song). Sums up exactly how he felt about Ireland at the time. This, of course, was not on the single version.

Must have been hard for the prog rock crowd having singles that lasted 27 mins reduced to 4 mins for afternoon radio. I must say I get a bit impatient when songs go on for longer than five minutes. Another pet hate is wasting the first two mins on some useless synth dirge before a song gets properly going- the long intro that could be done away with and you wonder why they can't just get on with the song.

Two of my favourite 'long songs' are O Superman by Laurie Anderson and Bohemian Rhapsody. both massive hits despite being over six mins long, and the latter didn't even have a chorus!