One of my favorite on-air radio moments was when I was a jock in San Francisco.
At the time, “Yesterday Once More” by the Carpenters was a hit. That particular song began almost cold, on the vocal.
As I cued up the record for the 300th time, a quarter-turn to the left, a quarter-turn to the right, the much slower manual speed drastically altered the sound of the Carpenters. In fact, I mused, it kind of sounded like the Righteous Brothers.
Uh-oh. I felt an idea coming on. The kind of idea that makes management nervous but strikes me as funny.
“In just a couple of moments,” I said, leading into a commercial break, “I’ll be playing the world premiere of the brand-new Righteous Brothers record.”
Coming out of commercial, I explained I’d managed to get an advance copy of their newest single, and surprisingly they had recorded the same song that already was a hit for the Carpenters.
“Here, I’ll play it for you. And then you can call in and let me know whose version you prefer.”
And I played the Carpenters’ 45 at 33 1/3 rpm.
I thought maybe people would get a chuckle out of the obvious stunt.
They didn’t chuckle.
As soon as the song ended, they called in to vote for the one they thought was better.
No one realized I was joking.
The highlight was the caller who said, “You know, at first I thought you were just playing the Carpenters at a slower speed. But when they got to the harmonies, I realized it really was the Righteous Brothers. Nobody can touch their harmonies.”
You be the judge…
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And that wasn’t the first speed issue for the Righteous Brothers. Here’s a quote from the Wikipedia entry for the Brother’s hit “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”:
“Upon being played the finished record over the phone, co-writer Barry Mann reacted to Medley’s deep baritone by telling Spector, “Phil, you have it on the wrong speed!” ”
Ha.
Play Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire” at 45 rpm and it sounds EXACTLY like Dolly Parton. Try it! Too funny…
“Imaginary Lover” by Atlanta Rhythm Section at 45 instead of 33 sounds like Stevie Nicks–so much so that I believe Casey Kasem played a snippet of it on AT40 once.
LOL! I sure do miss those turntables….(made me also miss Gary Burbank!)
@Pete Ferrand: That’s undoubtedly part of what gave me the idea. I had known that when “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” was released, a number of radio stations initially refused to play it because they thought it was recorded at the wrong speed.
That was just great!
You should hear the same done to Dolly Parton’s JOLENE.
Hahaha great story:)
Ok. I smiled. Alot.
Great, great story! Love it!
OMG, that is HILARIOUS…!! miss the ol’ days…
A little like the Alabama station stunt about aliens choosing the new format.
In 1968 I was on the air with Radio Antilles in Montserrat. (200KW covering the entire West Indies!) Occasionally we played Hawaiian steel band LPs at 45RPM to make them sound like West Indian Calypso music.
I got my start cuing up records at 88.1 fm WQRP in Dayton Ohio. miss the sound they made when doing so. Great old days.
I started in 1984…when I was 16. Loved the turntables. Miss the turntables. The only fun turntable thing I did was play Rock You Like A Hurricane backwards. To find the back-masking. The closest I came to finding any was a point that (if you scrunch your ears up real good) sounds like they’re saying, ‘Fishing Antics.’ Yeah … not much of a payoff. That was long before I would discover that you can practice a bit before you air the bit.
That’s great! A top 40 station I worked for played everything about 2 rpm faster than normal. This gave the music a certain extra punch, I suppose, but I’ll never forget the first time I heard this song on our air. Sounded like The Chipmunks!
Unfortunately, it DIDN’T help what seemed (TOO) “slow” classical music … I learned a lot about staying true to the format in that first radio job….
Oops… forgot to say
1) Playing the Carpenters at 33 1/3 and calling it Righteous Brothers …. Brilliantly funny!
2) Setting a 33 & 1/3 LP at 45 didn’t help sssssllllllloooooooooooooooow classical music sound better (to anyone else….it was my FIRST radio gig, freshman year in college, and nearly 11:45pm on a Sunday night…who’s listening, I wondered… FOUND OUT!!!)
I’m almost 100% certain that I was the last person still playing records in Kansas City. Around the mid to late 90’s I was working at Classic Rocker KCFX “101 The Fox,” and one of my responsibilities was Producer of the Sunday night “Kansas City Blues Show,” hosted by Lindsay Shannon. Although we were playing everything on CD at the time, we did have a couple working turntables in the studio, and Lindsay would always bring in some of his music on vinyl. Alas, those good ol’ turntables eventually went away and Lindsay was told to only bring tunes he had on CD.
Reminds me of the day I accidentally played Barbara Mandrell’s “If Lovin’ You Is Wrong (I Don’t Want To Be Right)” at 33. It sounded so much like Barry White that I back-announced it that way. (Of course, when she/he was singing the part about loving a married man it got a little creepy.)