MarioMania wrote:
Some have the same song on both sides.
Tommgb wrote:
Mono on one side and stereo on the other.
95% of those are promos/audition copies either mono/stereo up until the late 70s or stereo/stereo after that. The only ones I can think of that make up the other 5% are the English/Spanish, Song/Instrumental and Song/Dub Mix etc type offerings.
MarioMania wrote:
Or just a Track that was supposed to be on the Album.
Sometimes that's on purpose. In the early days before box sets and retrospectives, there was always songs that were recorded but didn't make the final album cut for one reason or another AND producers and artists felt that it wasn't good enough to even serve as a B-side either - back when people cared about something else besides MONEY.
But they put them out anyway because maybe they were short a track due to part of a session they intended to use having an engineering problem or getting erased by accident or some such and they weren't going to re-do it til later if at all.
Since both sides of a 45 receive equal royalties - artists may put out an extra track so they can get paid for it. Carly Simon's
Sleight of Hand on the back of
Give Me All Night is one good example.
Other times B-sides can even be from a completely different project. Carly's
Turn of the Tide 1988 convention event theme is a good example of that. It got put on the back of the Working Girl 45 (
Let the River Run) even though the track had been donated to close out the
Free to be a Family album by Marlo Thomas and Friends.
Other times they'd put a track on a B-side due to either having missed being ready for album mastering bec of e.g. an oversub session having to be rescheduled or to having additional production elements being misplaced.
The Carpenters'
Ave Maria is a perfect example. Arranger and producer Frank Knight had written both choral as well as orchestral parts for the tune as well as several others, but in the rush to complete the album in time for holiday release, the choral tape for this particular number - with the vocal and orchestral tracks flown over to it for reference - had been misplaced prior to final mixdown - leaving them with just the original production.
The track was included in it's original state as a B-side to
The Christmas Song (
Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire) as well as on the original 1978 Christmas Portrait album, however for the 1984 holiday season, eighteen months after Karen's untimely death, the choral tape was rediscovered in a vault, remixed and added back in.
By 1978 when the original sessions for the song had been produced, timecode sync technology on tape rather than full-coat magnetic film - allowing for more than 24 tracks to be used during final mixdown - had only been used on record up to that point by producers and arrangers such as Quincy Jones and Stevie Wonder who needed to incorporate large ensembles that wouldn't all fit into the studio at the same time for anything approaching affordability.
So they spent their money on technology and had groups come in a section at a time, put on the headphones and lay down their parts. Other event 45s like
We Are the World and
Hands Across America are good examples.
By the early 80's as digital was getting ready to come in, it became more and more commonplace to sync two or even three 24-track 2-inch together in order to realize truly kaleidoscopic music production.
Yes I was up late last night watching old artist retrospective specials that included a fairly decent amount of trivia to be able to know that right off the cuff. Hey, I'm too blind to get into equally useless movie, videogame or comic book trivia so - (shrug) (LOL).
oldradioparts wrote:
double hits....
Since I'm getting back into vinyl jukebox repair - and putting records in - I'm actually trying to find out if there's any such discography that lists double-sided hits in a category by itself.
It would be nice if the discography would separate ``accidental'' double hits like the aforementioned Beach Boys from the ones created on purpose (Money Honey/Saturday Night - Bay City Rollers, Go Your Own Way/Dreams - Fleetwood Mac, Rhinestone Cowboy/Southern Nights - Glenn Campbell etc).
Some have whole series to them (Warner Broas Back to Back Hits, Capitol Double Shot etc) while others are just one-offs.
A discography for Colored Vinyl 45s - which look cool in a jukebox and help to sell it for a higher price - would be nice too - one section for promo (same song on both sides not counting instrumental or alternate mixes) one section for regular releases with a B-side and one section for 2-sided hits - whether accidental or on purpose.
As it stands for jukebox restocking, I have been having to put odd records with the A side out and even records with the B side out so I can even out the stylus wear from both sides.
The trouble with that is you can't download pre-populated title strips with the B side on top - so for half the titles I'm forever having to type everything in one at a time. I feel like a guitarist or pianist that's been on the road for 20 years playing every night.
If there was enough double-sided hit records then not only wouldn't it matter what side was up - you'd get twice the number of hits in the jukebox.
One solution is of course the various `For Jukebox Use Only' single sets that SOME of the various labels put out SOME of the time for SOME artists - or the reissue labels that put different related artists on each side - but at $5 a single from the reissue labels and collector prices for the sets direct from the labels - some of which are also colored vinyl (Beatles) doesn't make that a very viable option.
You'd have to charge people who bought the jukebox $7.50 a disc to make any money - multiply that by 80 or 100 discs and guys are spending over $500 just on records on top of whatever the jukebox sold for.
So if anybody has any ideas I'd like to hear `em.
