Poorly Edited (Produced) Single

[Mach 109]

I hope that this question is OK on this forum:

Back in the late Seventies, I remember a single coming out in the UK which my memory tells me was a "carribbean"-style single. It was often heard for a period while it was presumably in the charts. I cannot remember anything else about it. I'd like to get hold of it because it demonstrates its errors really well.

Even to a schoolboy like myself the poor edit was obvious; what was possibly the equivalent of a "middle eight" had been inserted in the otherwise OK song and it had a change of mix and such obvious azimuth error on the master tape so that the poor mono Capital Radio listener at that time like me noticed the drop in high frequencies significantly.

I have trawled YouTube and Google for such a hit but without success. Does this ring a bell with anyone? Does anyone know what this song might have been?

[Wonks]

Typically Tropical with ‘Barbados’?

https://youtu.be/ruFQSwRMpXY

[Mach 109]

No - that's the one that keeps coming up again and again. But that does not have the erroneous middle section which I remember. It's a long shot and I know that my question is asking a lot; I just hoped that with the readership aware of such things I would not have been the only one out there who thought what I did about the song almost 50 years ago now.

[Wonks]

I was there, but nothing springs to mind. Are you sure it's late 70s and not maybe early 80s?

[James Perrett]

I've been trying to remember because I used to listen to Capital on FM in the late 70s often in mono because we were a long way from the transmitter. I've listened to a couple of possibilities but none of them have dodgy edits as you describe.

[Wonks]

It might have been a phase/comb filtering issue when that section was collapsed to mono. Listening in stereo it might not be that apparent. Or it could well have been a 'radio-friendly' single edit/mix, that didn't occur on the corresponding album track, and it's normally the album track you'll hear today.

[tea for two]

Very briefly searched utube for rare 70s Caribbean, Dub, Reggae, Steel Band. There's hundreds if not thousands.

I know it's not this song but Pass the Dutchie is such a triffic song.
I never knew what that meant lol until google.

[Wonks]

That was ‘82. I thought of it as well. There’s a slightly funny wide stereo vocal section in it, but the video soundtrack doesn’t lose treble, at least not in stereo. But then a lot of videos use a slightly different mix to the single and album versions.

[Mike Stranks]

Needles and haystacks... possibly...

I have my own 'Hall of Shame' collection of recordings - both popular and classical where either an edit (or more than one) is blatantly obvious, an overdub doesn't quite work or a noise-off in the studio has found its way into the published recording. I even have a lo-budget label compilation album example of L & R not having the same polarity on one track... eugh!

No... I'm not going to name names!

[Mach 109]

It's more of a needle in a haystack than I think that it should be; I have combed charts from the period and absolutely nothing comes to mind. It would seem to have been popular from the number of times it was played and I am convinced that it was the late Seventies from the context of how I remember listening. I'm still hopeful of find out - one day...

[James Perrett]

Capital's playlists from that time often strayed from the main charts. Do you have a record of Capital's charts or the daily Hitline top 10?

[Mach 109]

No, I have no such access.