chilliwack - my girl (gone, gone, gone)

eriejwg wrote: It was never a hit in the U.S. (maybe in Canada) but a good song from Chilliwack in 1977 was "Fly At Night" on the Mushroom label. Only the LP version, running almost 5 minutes, has shown up on CD. There was a stereo short version and a mono short version that had a listed time of 3:20. Somewhere, in a move or two, I misplaced my copy of the short version.

John, it was the "Fly By Night" DJ 45 that had the short mono/stereo coupling. The U.S. stock 45 (4:50 listed) was the same as the LP track.

Mushroom did make an effort to push the single; we got a bunch of nifty airplane mobiles from the label at the distributorship I was working for at the time, which also tied into the parent Dreams, Dreams, Dreams LP (I gave one of the mobiles to a friend's kid brother, who would grow up to become a corporate pilot. Dreams, indeed!)

I can think of two factors that might've held the single back: 1) as a small indie label, Mushroom was putting most of its limited promotion budget behind Heart at the time, and 2) "Fly At Night" might've sounded a little too much like a Neil Young record to some programmers. Maybe if they'd titled it "A Horse With No Plane"... ;)

The promo 45 edit really tightened up the song, IMO. It peaked at #16 on the CHUM Chart in Toronto.

Reviving this thread after three years.

45 version (about 3:56)

Chilliwack's Canadian label at the time, Solid Gold Records, released a nice Greatest Hits, with copyright dates of 1983 and 1988. The packaging looks cheap from the outside, but the track selection gives a nice representation of their very long career in Canada, and the sound quality is quite nice. The same analog transfer is used on:

• Renaissance's Heard It On The Radio Vol. 1 (1998)
• Varese's Lost 45s Of The '70s And '80s Vol. 1 (1998)
• Varese's Totally Oldies Vol. 5 Then '80s (2003) - digitally identical to Lost 45s

All of the above sound quite nice, with nice EQ and no hint of noise reduction. The two Varese discs are just a teeny bit loud, and clip a bit in the last minute of the song. If given a choice, hunt down the Chilliwack Greatest Hits, which should be a tiny fraction of the cost of any of the others.

I also have the 45 version on a Canadian 2-CD compilation on Cirpa Records called Best Of Canadian Rock (1991). It sounds horrendous here, with extremely low sound levels and no discernible high end. Avoid.

LP version (about 4:16)

Solid Gold Records rereleased Chilliwack's Greatest Hits in 2002, with a new mastering, and two added videos on the CD. The 2002 mastering features the LP version of "My Girl." Sound is also quite nice, with a very bright EQ and no obvious artifacts from noise reduction. I didn't check if the other tracks were all LP versions as well.

Edited by crapfromthepast