OT: Suzi Quatro - Lipstick

Ron's dub from Jim of the 45 RPM 7" single helped me confirm it IS just an early fade of the LP version from 1980's "Rock Hard." The mix is identical and there are no edits.

The dub of the 45 does run .7% faster than the version the original "Rock Hard" CD released in 1990 in Germany... it has absolutely no compression and no clipping... Left channel is 2.19 db below peak and the right channel is 3.99 db below peak! It sounds a little thin to my ears too but I think the recording was supposed to be a bit bright so maybe not.

To recreate the 45 you just have to fade out the LP version to silence right after she sings "you know what you can do with your, lipstick." Deleting the beginning silence (which on my copy is OVER a second) and not speeding it up gives you a final copy between 3:42 and 3:43 in length.

There's an LP length on a 4 CD set called "The Girl From Detroit City" (heavily clipped; avoid!) that runs slightly faster than the original LP/CD release but still not quite as fast as the 7" dub I was sent. One thing I will say for this squashed version: it sounds warmer / richer and therefore closer to the 45 dub than the first release on CD... other than that I don't like it for being so heavily stomped on.

Weirdly, "Rock Hard" doesn't appear to have ever gotten a CD release in the United States, and "Lipstick" rarely shows up on her greatest hits collections. Wikipedia claims Cherry Red put it out on CD in 2012 but I must be looking over it in Discogs. It only went to #51 on the U.S. charts and one YouTube comment claims radio stations wouldn't play it because it sounded too much like "Gloria" by Them. It is similar, but I don't know why that would stop them from playing it...

Minor new-wave trivia history ....

In Sept. of 1980, "Rock Hard" was the very first WLIR "Screamer
Of The Week".

"Screamers" were each week, listeners would vote for their
favorite new song.