Re: Bob Bittner's Unlikely Ally In The Fight Against The"Cash Machine"

["Douglas J. Broda" <djbroda@mindspring.com>]

At 12:40 AM 1/21/00 -0500, Chuckigo@aol.com wrote:

>  and if you eliminate the dead-spaces in songs, would it be a violation of 
>the rights of the author of the music.  if they wanted a rest/pause at that 
>point, and wrote the music and had it performed as such, would that be a 
>potential for concern? 

Concern, yes. Rights, I dunno. I suspect that absent the licensing agency
saying no, the station can do it.

 i know that as one who was "ordered" to shorten songs 
>of length back in the early 80's when Adult Contemporary stations were 
>performing their own time-squeeze programs, i had philosophical concerns 
>about altering the artist's product. (a/c formula number 7:  nothing over 
>3:45.  if it's over, make it fit.  examples:  "My Way", from 4:34 to 3:15, 
>ended cold. /  "I Guess That's Why They Call It The Blues" from 4:40 to
3:18, 
>remixed and ended cold.  )  i still hate myself for the My Way edit, but not 
>one, repeat, NOT ONE listener ever picked up on it, and not one announcer
who 
>put the cart in the machine picked up on where the edit was.
>

Yeah, but that's all dependent on skill. Some song edits done at the
station level were atrocious. In fact, some done by very big companies were
bad... as bad as the Paramount edits of Star Trek episodes I griped on
earlier (where I know they had to edit, but the sloppiness of the editing
was amazing).

Off-topic brief rant: I get even more bugged when the record company
releases edited versions and then makes the original hard to find. Try
finding the original, full-length 45 version of "The Best Disco In Town,"
the one most stations played when it was current. It's only on one
off-brand CD that may be out of print, as far as I can tell... all the
compilations have a deeply cut version.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Douglas J. Broda
Broda and Burnett
Attorneys at Law
80 Ferry Street, Troy, NY 12180 USA
(518) 272-0580
djbroda@mindspring.com