"Bennie & The Jets" - Elton John
Printed From: Top 40 Music on CD
Category: Top 40 Music On Compact Disc
Forum Name: Chat Board
Forum Description: Chat away but please observe the chat board rules
URL: https://top40musiconcd.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=5470
Printed Date: 24 May 2025 at 3:48am
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.07 - https://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: "Bennie & The Jets" - Elton John
Posted By: sriv94
Subject: "Bennie & The Jets" - Elton John
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 8:34pm
|
Was just listening to SiriusXM's rebroadcast of the 3/30/74 AT40, and noticed when they got to "Bennie & The Jets" they (like a lot of radio stations) went past the first 10 seconds or so (the fake crowd ambiance and the false start first note) before starting the song.
This is more of a question about how radio was in those days. Obviously for pop stations that carted the song as a current, or for oldies stations now that use CDs/MP3s/hard drives, editing out that first sequence isn't that much of a trick. But for those stations who played it from vinyl, were copies serviced without that intro? And if not, if you wanted to excise the intro (as it seems most stations did), how would you cue the record forward without it having the "wow" effect when you started it come out over the air? If that makes any sense. . . :) ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Replies:
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 8:53pm
| They could possibly start the turntable with the volume down, while a jingle was playing, for example, then bring the volume back up rather quickly. |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 9:03pm
|
True, but then it seems you'd have to have impeccable timing to hit the song right on the downbeat.
And it'd be hard to talk the record up if you're doing your own engineering. /Wow. 750 posts. And they said it wouldn't last. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 9:05pm
| Many times we cued up 45's to a different point in the intro so it actually was pretty easy. Cue up to a point, then bring the turntable back a half a turn or so. |
Posted By: eriejwg
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 9:06pm
| Or, they could have carted the song up to a certain point and just play it from cart. :) |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 9:11pm
|
LOL. ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: Yah Shure
Date Posted: 03 April 2010 at 9:45pm
|
The "Bennie And The Jets" DJ and stock 45s were the same length.
Doing things on the fly was one of the things that made radio fun! When you played the same records day in and day out, you got to know *exactly* what spot you wanted to cue each one up to if you were skipping over a particular passage (the "tune-up" intro of "Whenever I Call You 'Friend'" immediately comes to mind, as does the memory of the record developing two separate cue burn spots, thus creating even more talk-over opportunities!) In my experience, the most user-friendly setup had the rotary turntable pots on the board wired in such a way that the turntables would start as soon as the pots were turned up out of the cue position. That arrangement made it easy to avoid any wowing, plus everything could be done with one flick of the wrist. Many slide pot or toggle switch setups required one hand to hit the turntable start button, while the other slid the pot up, and the left big toe... |
Posted By: Jody Thornton
Date Posted: 04 April 2010 at 10:24am
|
I performed this sort of cue in with Glenn Frey's "You Belong to the City". Our promo MCA 45 disc had the sax intro on it, but it never COMPLETELY goes silent before the synthesized percussion kicks in. But off of a jingle, you could fade in the pot quickly enough to make it sound good.
I tried slip cueing it once, and made the stylus jump (I'll admit I had too much beer in me before my overnight shift in 1991 - I am not proud of that and I am over a year sober now). But anyway, I slip cued it, and my finger hit the arm lift. The on-air results were embarrassing to say the least. ------------- Cheers, Jody Thornton (Richmond Hill, Ontario) |
Posted By: bwolfe
Date Posted: 04 April 2010 at 1:44pm
|
Our 12 inch of Glenn Frey had a no sax intro on one side and the full length on the other.
Being that I worked overnights (remember when radio was live overnights?) I played the long version. I must admit I'm getting good at voice tracking airshifts. I recall a station cueing past the intro to "Waiting For A Star To Fall" to the first downbeat skipping over the synth intro. One more was when Prince had "Batdance" was cued that baby around 47 seconds in because we were afraid listeners would think he was saying "Get the F--- out, instead of "funk" out. If you listen closely its hard to tell the difference. By the way its probably one of his least played "number one" songs. ------------- the way it was heard on the radio |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 04 April 2010 at 4:49pm
As did every promo 45 of that song I've ever seen.
Curiously, did that song make any more sense if you saw whatever Batman movie it was inspired by? To my ears it was Prince's answer to "Revolution #9". The station I was working at in '89 transitioned to Hot AC about mid-way thru that song's chart run...that one got dropped immediately! (and no one on the airstaff minded one bit). Speaking of "Bennie & The Jets" I remember hearing a version on WVBF in Boston that had a cold ending. Anyone know where that came from? |
bwolfe wrote:Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 04 April 2010 at 10:27pm
I always wondered if most stations made their own edits to remove the "get the funk up!" line. Even though the song doesn't make much sense, I've always loved this record. I especially like the tempo change and the James Brown-inspired funkiness. It was pretty revolutionary for its time. How many pop singles prior to that 1) had such risque lyrics (that were probably misinterpreted as the "f" bomb), and 2) used movie drops as the basis of the lyrics? Without question, it was another genius Prince record. I can't think of another artist who could've used this formula and made it a number one pop song. |
Posted By: RichM921
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 7:52am
|
Honestly I had no idea he was saying "get the funk up" until you guys mentioned it and I went back to listen to it just now. It always just sounded like some made-up nonsense phrase to me.
Really I couldn't stand the song when it was out and thought it was the worst #1 song of all time. Although we now have a new champion in that catagory with Ke$ha's "Tik Tok" |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 10:22am
Ha! It's certainly not my favorite song, but I've heard far worse #1 records. |
Posted By: bwolfe
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 1:24pm
|
When finding edits of top 40 hits became the norm I gave up on collecting. Today's music is so disposable. Our CHR still gets the Promo Only discs. Its so sad to see how many songs need edits or are marked with an "ear" to let you know about content problems. The urban discs are worse. There's just no class with today's music. One wonders why country is so big. How many current country tunes need the F bombs dropped out???
------------- the way it was heard on the radio |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 4:16pm
I'm sure our parents said the same thing about "our" music.
Other than the fact that some of today's top 40 songs have censored "f" bombs, I don't think the content of music has gotten much worse over the past 20 years. Looking back 10 years, you had songs like "The Real Slim Shady" by Eminem and "What It's Like" by Everlast. Go back to the early '90s and you had "I Touch Myself" by the Divinyls and "Justify My Love" by Madonna. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 5:02pm
|
I agree with Aaron. While I'm a bit out of the demo for today's hit music, I still like a lot of new music (granted, I don't keep up with it like I once did). No I don't care for a lot of the hip-hop/urban stuff, but I wasn't too fond of 60s soul/R&B either.
As far as F-bombs go, they go back a lot further than the 90s..."Who Are You" is an example, and who can forget the Fish Cheer. That having been said, I do think today's music is more "disposable", not so much because of the quality of the music as the fact that there's no "mass appeal" anymore. From Gen X on back, radio was pretty much the only game in town for discovering music and it was more of a cultural bond than it is today. Before mp3 players and web streaming came along, it was a real PITA to make custom music mixes, now anyone can do it and not need to sit thru a song you don't know or like to hear a favorite. That and the fact that music distribution today is almost solely via downloads...you don't have a physical medium anymore, it's just a file on a computer. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 05 April 2010 at 8:54pm
|
Well put, Hykker. I'm also not a big fan of the current hip-hop, although I love the urban music from the late '80s and early '90s (including some songs and albums that are laced with "f" words).
I agree that there are many disposable artists and songs today, but don't you think that's true with any era? I mean, there are a ton of pop songs (chart records) from the last 50 years that are long forgotten by most people. How often to you hear the 1960 #1 record "Mr. Custer" by Larry Verne? Or how often do you hear oldies radio playing "Before The Last Teardrop Falls," by Freddy Fender, a #1 in 1975? I think every era has its fair share of disposable music, just like we have Ke$ha today; however, I do think that there will be some lasting music that has come out in recent years. Artists like Daughtry, Taylor Swift, and the Black Eyed Peas, for example, are selling millions of records and aren't just one-hit or one-album wonders. |
Posted By: Santi Paradoa
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 11:54am
------------- Santi Paradoa Miami, Florida |
Posted By: torcan
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 2:13pm
|
About today's music...I have to agree that most of it is disposable and uninteresting. For me, it hasn't been the same since 1992. The week that "Jump" by Kris Kross hit No. 1 it's been downhill ever since.
Most of the music I collect and listen to is from the '76-91 time period. Every year I make charts of my favorite songs of the year. During the '80s it was easy to get 100 songs or more. The past few years I have trouble coming up with a year-end top 20. The quality really drops off after that. I'm just not interested in the rap which continues to dominate. Remember the days where "disco sucks" was a common expression? Give me disco any day over most of today's rap. Many of the songs which aren't rap for the most part don't have a good melody, or "hook" - in other words, they're not memorable. Sure, there's still "old school" sounding stuff, like Kelly Clarkson, many of the Black Eyed Peas tunes, and more recently Lady Antebellum; but stuff like Kanye West and Lady Gaga, I usually turn off when it comes on. Having most of these songs not be available on physical singles adds to it. There was nothing like buying a new 45 of the latest hit! There have been more one-hit wonders since the early '90s than any other time frame. Have you also noticed that most hit songs of the '90s and '00s hardly ever get played on the radio in oldies (or recurrent) rotation? I'm much more likely to hear "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey or "My Life" by Billy Joel than I am "Hero" by Mariah Carey (a favorite) or "Shine" by Collective Soul. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 3:05pm
I hear lots of '90s music on the radio, especially on the Hot AC formats. True, you don't hear "Jump" by Kris Kross, but I still hear "To Be With You" by Mr. Big, "Right Here, Right Now" by Jesus Jones, and several Matchbox Twenty songs, just to name a few. One other thing to consider is that CHR today just doesn't play many "gold" category songs at all. When they do, it's even more unlikely that they are going to play songs that are 10 or 15+ years old. |
Posted By: Hykker
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 4:07pm
Wasn't that the #1 song for the year?
I'm seeing Classic Rock move more into the 90s, and away from all but a handful of 60s tunes. "Shine" is in regular rotation on our Classic rocker. As far as Mariah goes, I don't think her songs have aged well (which can be said for a lot of 90s music). Maybe mainstream or soft AC might still play her.
But when DID CHR play songs that old? While 1995 may seem like yesterday to many of us, to a 25 year old it's an eternity ago. Even back in the 60s & 70s, it was pretty rare to play anything more than 5-6 years old, for that matter in the 80s "hot hits" era many CHRs didn't play any gold at all! |
Posted By: sriv94
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 6:24pm
WLS-AM in Chicago was one of the last bastions of a CHR station that played a lot of gold. For about three years (1981-1984), WLS ran kind of a split format that catered more to adults during the day and to teens at night. And the gold played was dayparted accordingly (while daytime hours would feature gold of the pop, A/C and classic rock varieties, nighttime hours any gold would be almost exclusively classic rock). So naturally as a teen in those years, I preferred WLS' daytime format better. :) ------------- Doug --------------- All of the good signatures have been taken. |
Posted By: aaronk
Date Posted: 06 April 2010 at 9:17pm
I completely agree.
Wikipedia has a list of one-hit wonders by decade, and it seems to be about the same size for every decade since the '60s. I don't think there have been any more (give or take a few) one-hit wonders in any particular decade. This is definitely an interesting discussion... |
Posted By: KentT
Date Posted: 10 April 2010 at 6:25am
|
Another thing to consider was many 1990's radio mixes are difficult to come by for present programmers. Unless they have their old promo CD singles or DJ service discs available. ------------- I turn up the good and turn down the bad! |