Pink Floyd Off The Wall – Special Radio Construction
Pink Floyd – Off The Wall: Special Radio Reconstruction is a rare 1979 US eight track, radio-friendly white-label promo sampler LP for The Wall album that was distributed mainly to radio stations in 1979 and the early 80’s. The album featured extended versions of several tracks, along with clean intros and outros. Rather than blended track-to-track, the album was banded with gaps between the tracks for precise cues and easier programming. A shorter overall running time allowed the vinyl to to be mastered with deeper-cut grooves for better sound quality.
Among the cool stuff contained in this sampler’s eight tracks were a longer version of “Run Like Hell” with a clean opening and cold fade without crowd noises, a version of “Young Lust” with a clean outro that’s missing the phone call dialog on top of it, and a version of “Goodbye Blue Sky” featuring a clean intro with no sound effects.
One of the FM stations I worked at in Los Angeles back in the day had a copy of this beauty. Currently, it is one of the better Pink Floyd vinyl rarities out there. It’s always been extremely rare. Expect to spend at least $200 USD (usually much more) when you find one.
What was different about this disc from any other? Here’s the track-by-track rundown:
Another Brick In The Wall Part 2 — The “hit.” Nothing special here. This version lacks the 9-second extended instrumental intro of the single version. It has the same ending as the single version — a fade out towards the end of David Gilmour’s guitar solo.
Goodbye Blue Sky — The acoustic guitar intro is clean for about the first 9 seconds and lacks the bird tweeting and other pastoral sound effects at the beginning of the track. On the album/CD version, sound effects of birds and bomber fleets could be heard until the synths kicked in. The outro here is a wash. On this LP, the song fades out completely at the same spot in the music where we would have heard the first notes of “Empty Spaces” on the CD.
Young Lust — The track starts with the same the pickup beat and goes straight into the vocal as the album/CD release. It clocks in at 3m 25s on this release. Basically, it has the same running time as the original LP version but the pick-up note at the beginning lacks the tiny bit of crossover sound from “Empty Spaces”. The outro is clean, lacking the dialog of phone call back home on top of the music. It also lacks the Roger Waters scream during the guitar solo that appears only in the rare 7″ single version.
One Of My Turns — A clean version of the track with nothing obscuring the beginning or the the end. The opening synth was unobscured and had a faster attack that faded in quicker. The first 6 seconds of the track was clean and lacked the dial tone sound effects of the album version. At the end of the track, the echo and reverb of Roger Waters’ vocal “Why are you running away…?” sustained for about 3 seconds longer than the album version.
Hey You — No different than the album version. Roger Waters’ echoing vocal of “…we fall, we fall, we fall….” fades out just before the opening sound effects would have started on the album version of “Nobody Home”.
Nobody Home — Essentially the album version with a clean outro. The final note sustains for about 8 seconds or so as on the album, but it is missing the sound effects from the beginning of “Vera”.
Comfortably Numb — No different than the album version but the grooves were cut a little deeper giving the track a better sound here.
Run Like Hell — This extended studio version of “Run Like Hell” has a clean opening and cold fade without crowd noises. This version has a longer intro, restoring an additional 4 bars which completed the full 8-bar intro. It also has a longer outro with the full guitar refrain repeating twice (instead of once) for the full 16 bars. All in all, this version restored about 19 seconds that were cut from the track. This track is one of the gems on this EP. For more about what was cut from the album version, click here.
Pink Floyd Off The Wall – Special Radio Construction LP Track Listing
All songs written and composed by Roger Waters, except where noted.
Side 1
# | Title | Writer(s) | Lead vocals | Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | “Another Brick in the Wall (Part II)” | Gilmour, Waters | 3:19 | |
2 | “Goodbye Blue Sky” | Gilmour | 2:24 | |
3 | “Young Lust” | Waters, Gilmour | Gilmour | 3:27 |
4 | “One of My Turns” | Waters | 3:41 | |
Total Time: | 12:49 |
Side 2
# | Title | Writer(s) | Lead vocals | Time |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | “Hey You” | Gilmour, Waters | 4:38 | |
2 | “Nobody Home” | Waters | 3:32 | |
3 | “Comfortably Numb” | Gilmour, Waters | Waters, Gilmour | 6:20 |
4 | “Run Like Hell” | Gilmour, Waters | Waters | 4:43 |
Total Time: | 19:13 |
Last update: 30 December, 2020
‘Nobody Home’ from the ‘Off The Wall’ promo sampler is not identical to the album version. The intro is taken directy from the album, but the outro is clean – the piano continues to ring to silence after the last word (‘roots’), the crossfade to the intro of Vera is not there.
Hi, Paul. Yep, you’re right. Thanks for catching that. I’ve updated this article and the “Nobody Home” article to reflect the clean outro.
ya I have one of these but record player been down since I’ve owned lp, anyone know about the album the wall vinyl is cream color possibly (white), and I have 2 dark side moon white vinyl any info thx