Starship - "Sara"
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Topic: Starship - "Sara"
Posted By: crapfromthepast
Subject: Starship - "Sara"
Date Posted: 27 August 2011 at 4:55pm
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Played my blue-vinyl 45 for the occasion. (RCA was having fun with these at the time, along with Mr. Mister's purple 45 for "Kyrie".) It runs 4:17, and runs at 100.2 BPM throughout.
The first appearance on CD of the 45 edit that I know of was on Time-Life's 2-CD Rock Dreams (1993), where it runs 4:16 and also runs at 100.2 BPM throughout. JCI's 18 Rock Classics (1994) uses the same analog transfer, and sounds extremely close to Rock Dreams. Unfortunately, the left and right channels are reversed on both of them, compared to the 45. For Rhino's Billboard Top Hits 1986 (1994), Bill Inglot got a new analog transfer, and it had a bit of tape drift on it. Not enough to really stand out (like early versions of "Le Freak"), but enough for me to measure. It begins at 99.7 BPM and ends at 99.5 BPM. The song runs 4:20, with most of the length difference coming from a later fade point than the others. There are digital clones of Billboard on Time-Life's Sounds Of The Eighties Vol. 4 1986 (1994), Time-Life's 2-CD Body Talk Vol. 12 By Candlelight (1997), and Time-Life's 1-CD Body Talk Hearts Together (1998). Another CD that uses the same analog transfer is JCI's Only Love 1985-1989 (1996), which shortens the fade by a few seconds in order to cram 20 songs on the disc. None of these discs sound awful, and I think for my own library I may just manually reverse the L/R channels on Rock Dreams. (Now that I know there's a tiny amount of tape drag on the Billboard disc, I can't unhear it, even if I can't hear it.) And a question for the vinyl experts: I'm still a little hung up on the difference between vinyl and styrene. Correct me if any of the following sentences are incorrect: I think the blue 45 is vinyl, since it has an irregular, sorta-jagged circumferential edge, and it looks like the label was molded onto the record. I think my black-colored 45 for the same song is styrene, since it has a very well-defined circumferential edge, and it looks like the labels was glued on after the record was pressed. I've heard that styrene pressings tend to wear out faster, and can get pretty well chewed up by the wrong shape of stylus. Is all that more-or-less correct? |
Replies:
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 27 August 2011 at 10:07pm
That's pretty much it, Ron. There were exceptions: Columbia's Terre Haute plant pressed vinyl DJ 45s for a few years beginning in the mid-'70s which had glued-on labels. The quality wasn't up to the company's Santa Maria vinyl 45s, which had what you referred to as "molded" labels. However, the Indiana vinyl did hold up better to back-cueing than the styrene jobs. Styrene = Cue Burn King. But you never knew what you were going to get. I have numerous Terre Haute-pressed Columbia and Epic promo 45s of the same title from that period on both styrene and vinyl. |
crapfromthepast wrote:Posted By: kaqueno
Date Posted: 14 February 2026 at 8:31am
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Revisiting this 2011 post, originally started by Ron. I wanted to ask if anyone has the 45 version without the tape drag issue Ron mentioned, or where it can be extracted from (compilation CD, etc.). Apparently, there's an LP version (4:53), a 45 version (4:20), another at 4.16, and a shorter LP version that lasts 4.20 (Magic Moment CD) that fades out. This last one might need to be corrected in the database, as it's not the single version. Can anyone shed more light on this?
------------- Marcelo - Argentina https://www.mixcloud.com/marcelo-guzman4/ - https://www.discogs.com/user/kaqueno/collection |
Posted By: LunarLaugh
Date Posted: 14 February 2026 at 9:33am
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The 45 edit could probably be created from the full LP version. But 99.7 to 99.5 bpm is not that signifigant or noticable of a drift. The Rhino Billboard disc is absolutely fine as-is. I would venture to guess that the two older discs Ron mentioned, ROCK DREAMS and 18 ROCK CLASSICS, do not have the tape drift. ------------- https://thelunarlaugh.bandcamp.com/ - Listen to The Lunar Laugh! |