Pick A Different Song

I've written before at how annoyed I get when good movies are ruined by basic cable. Because they obviously can't swear or show certain levels of violence, some films have to be so heavily edited and it ends up wrecking the experience. But at least those edits I can understand. The ones that annoy me even more are the edits for time. There is nothing more frustrating than waiting for a great scene you know is coming up in a couple minutes, only to sit there with a dumbfounded look on your face as you slowly realise someone cut it out for time. I've always felt that if you are going to be that rigid about making something fit into your tight schedule, why not pick a different movie? Worse than than, on more than one occasion I've found the clip which has been edited out is actually an important one. Seriously, if you find yourself having to cut out a scene that is integral to the plot, there are dozens of shorter films out there to choose from. But while driving around this afternoon I was reminded of edits done for the sake of time which annoy me even more than the ones to movies: song edits.

In the midst of running some errands, the song "American Pie" came onto the radio. If you've ever worked in radio, then you know this is what's known as a 'bathroom' song. Basically, these are any tune long enough that the DJ could comfortably take a bathroom break without risking the station hitting dead air. At over 8 minutes long, "American Pie" is one of the better 'bathroom' songs out there. And I know better than most just how long this song is. In college we were given the writing assignment to break down a song line-by-line. Seeing as how the paper had to be at least 5 pages, I picked Don McLean's classic because I wanted to make sure I had enough content to work with. As my paper stretched past page 25, I knew I had made a serious error in judgement. The point is, I'm well aware that the song is very long. Still, I found it very jarring when the station I was listening to played a version that skipped two full verses.

Editing a movie is one thing, but editing a song is another beast entirely. First off, what is your damn hurry? I worked in radio for years and to say the time constraints were 'loose' would be an understatement. As long as everything got played eventually the day was considered a success. Allow me to share with you every conversation I ever had as a board op with a producer when it came to sticking to the schedule:

"Updates should be done every 30 minutes."
"Well, that last segment went long, so the update was closer to 35 minutes."
"Yeah, whatever. As long as you did it."

Like I said, not exactly sitting there with a stopwatch as though this was some exact science. Secondly, even when you are editing something as lengthy as "American Pie", the missing sections become really noticeable. It isn't like a movie where cutting 6 minutes out of 2 hours barely registers. Cutting 2 minutes out of an 8 minute song would be the same as cutting each "Lord Of The Rings" movie down to an hour. People notice that kind of heavy-hand.

But, the main reason I hate songs edited for time is that the edits themselves usually suck. There is an Aerosmith song which also served as the theme for the film "Armageddon". For years radio station have been been playing the edit version of this song, which takes out one of Steven Tyler's longer versions of the refrain. And for years the sloppy and choppy nature of this edit has pissed me off. A good edit is one you don't even know is there and even if you've never heard the song before you can tell something was taken out. Adding to how much I hate this edit when it is on the radio is the fact that it doesn't even save that much time. It trims maybe 20 seconds from original track. When you weight how much the bad edit wrecks the song against that time, I'll never understand why every station goes with the edited cut.

Look, I know radio is a dying industry and that 20 seconds could be another ad you could sell to some local company. But what good is that ad space going to do you when no one is listening to your station because they hate that you're butchering the songs they love? So, radio stations, do us all a favor and leave our music alone. The majority of people would rather hear music as it was intended to be heard, not edited for time. Now, we can either get that from you or our iPods. It's your call.