Okay, here's one I heard on the radio this afternoon and it was like a breath of fresh air and was the cause of an almost subconcious but very notable volume increase. It's an uncomplicated rock song with a ballad undertone for the first half and an epic 2-guitar solo at the end (if there would be such a thing as a 2 guitar solo).
I've been nominating mostly music so far that I have a really strong connection to but I never saw this band live and although it's a track I've always enjoyed I only ended up with this single in my vinyl collection by accident when I bought a box of a few hundred 7" singles from a friend of mine who worked at a local radio station. All the 7" singles were radio promo releases.
The way it used to work was that bands with a big distribution company behind them used to press a run of a couple of thousand promo copies of an about to be released single or album. The track was often the bare bones of the finished product before final editing, it's what would be known in the movie industry as a 'workprint' and these singles were distributed as freebies to well known DJ's and big radio stations as a way of generating interest and familiarity for a song, a way of encouraging them to give it air time. They often came in paper sleeves with no artwork and some were even labelled by hand or with a manual ink-stamp with the artist and track name and a big 'Not For Sale' warning on them. These promo copies rarely made it onto the open market and they were rarely, if ever actually played on the radio.
The interest I had in these promo releases was that I percieved that the somewhat raw promo track was something closer to the way the actual artist wanted the song to sound before the marketing department and editors did their hatchet job on it to make it what they considered more appealing from a sales point of view. Obviously I never had proof that this was the case, it was just a romantic notion but I did spend many happy hours playing the official release and the promo release of the same songs back to back and carefully analyzing the differences. The promo release I have of this particular track had only a single guitar solo in the latter half which isn't as gripping as the dual guitars in the final retail release, the promo was also only about 5 minutes long and the final retail single was considerably longer.
Here's the '76 Knebworth live version on a rare sunny day in the UK. It's 14 minutes long so if you want to fast forward to the part where the goosebumps start then go to around the 6 minute mark.
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Free bird
If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now
'Cause there's too many places
I've got to see
But, if I stayed here with you, girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird, you can not change
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
And the bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows, I cant change
Bye, bye, baby it's been a sweet love
Yeah, yeah
Though this feeling I can't change
But please don't take it so badly
'Cause the Lord knows
I'm to blame
But, if I stayed here with you girl
Things just couldn't be the same
'Cause I'm as free as a bird now
And this bird, you'll can not change
Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh
And this bird you cannot change
And this bird you cannot change
Lord knows, I can't change
Lord help me, I can't change
Lord I can't change
Won't you fly high, free bird, yeah?
Reply With Quote
Originally Posted by Vanash Naick
Did you like this article? Share it with your favourite social network.