Neil Diamond-"On The Way To The Sky"

We had success with this track at our station in 1982. I remember distinctly that we had to play the song on-air off of a Columbia styrene promo 45 (always our LAST choice), not the LP, because the 45 and LP mixes were NOT the same. Pat, if you compare and contrast the two versions, I am certain you will reach the same conclusion.

This brings up an interesting point. Do the Joel Whitburn books ever NOT go by the time printed on the label? I can't imagine that they'd have a random procedure where they'd sometimes go by the print time and other times correct the print time when in error.

Jim, that's very interesting about the single mix of "On the Way to the Sky". How does it differ from the album mix?

Todd Ireland wrote: I think the Joel Whitburn books go by the time printed on the label unless it comes to his attention that the printed time is incorrect. Paul Haney, who works for Whitburn's Record Research corporation, mentioned something here a while back that he has been making run time corrections in Whitburn's database based on information reported right here on Pat's website!

What's confusing about that is sometimes Whitburn has gone by the time on the promo single (which, considering that I've been told his books go by commercial availability, I didn't think he had) and sometimes he doesn't. For example, it's been reported here that he lists the promo time for Madonna's "True Blue" and Aerosmith's "Dude (Looks Like a Lady"), but not for Edie Brickell's "What I Am". Does that mean he has promos for some of them, but not all of them?

Plus there are the cases of erroneous times which nobody can pinpoint (such as Def Leppard's "Hysteria").

To be fair, I certainly can't imagine even having so many singles in my collection :( , so when dealing with so much info I realize mistakes will occasionally be made.

Todd Ireland wrote: I think the Joel Whitburn books go by the time printed on the label unless it comes to his attention that the printed time is incorrect. Paul Haney, who works for Whitburn's Record Research corporation, mentioned something here a while back that he has been making run time corrections in Whitburn's database based on information reported right here on Pat's website!

Todd hit it on right on the head. When all the records were initially entered in the original computer there were thousands to be entered, so they just went with what was on the label. Ever since I've been here (1992) we have timed the new Hot 100 entries each week with a stopwatch as we know the printed times cannot always be trusted. We've also gone back and re-timed several of the older songs that we suspect had incorrect printed times. Many years ago some guy (can't remember his name) sent us a list of a few hundred titles that he said were incorrect, we spot checked several and he seemed to be right every time. HOWEVER, we didn't have the time to check every single one and I'm sure that's where some of the promo times were mistakenly entered. I assure you that we always wanted to reflect the correct commercial times. As you guys here can attest to, this can seem like a never-ending task!

BTW, a new edition of the Pop Annual will be out this fall and numerous corrections to the actual times have been made since the last edition.

I only have a dj copy of "On The Way To The sky" 45 and it is quite different from the LP version. The box set does not have at least the promo 45 version of this hit. Interestingly enough with 6 cd's in the box set they overlooked the big hit "He Ain't Heavy He's My Brother" and the as usual messed up the Bang releases.