Songs that don't end, but suddenly stop

Every Smiths song ends suddenly, in my house anyway, when some idiot puts them on

I think what I was hoping to suss out in this thread was "the first occurrence of this happening on a well-known record" and I guess it's kinda apparent that The Beatles coined it, well done Beatles

Dinosaur Jr, Just Like Heaven

xp Kinda relates to Godard et al's editing a few years earlier.

Stereolab has a bunch of these, some of the ones that immediately come to mind:

Golden Ball
Transona Five (remastered version added an ending)
Space Moment

Nobody's mentioned Sex Pistols "No Fun"?

I never trust stories like "we ended it that way because we ran out of tape". That sounds like the songwriter imagining an effect he wants the ending to conjure.

― mig (guess that dreams always end), Wednesday, January 5, 2022 9:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

If you track down "Cheryl's coming home" off John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett's album, it really does sound like the tape ran out.

Talk Talk - “Ascension Day”

Wonder if any of the Beatles had heard Xenakis's "Bohor", from 1968, which cuts off on record as the roaring reaches a peak, just like "I Want You".

FWIW, the Red Crayola did that in '67 ("War Sucks").

Talk Talk - “Ascension Day”

Mentioned in the very first post of the thread.

Hole in the Sky, Sabbath

yeah there's some great editing between tracks on Sabotage

Woops missed that

The Hold Steady - Most People are DJs

The Fall, "Spectre Vs. Rector".

The Mincer - King Crimson (the tape ran out)

The fade of Paul Simon's "I Know What I Know" ends with the voices petering out and a bubbly little Fripp-esque guitar riff that doesn't quite resolve - I suspect it might be backwards or sped up, in any case it is pretty absurd

I love the end of that song ya

Me too. I confess I don't know whether that guitar part is Ray Phiri or Simon himself, or someone else. I don't have the liner notes handy and google is unhelpful.

There is some trickery going on. It doesn't really sound Simonish. Phiri could certainly PLAY that riff but it doesn't seem like something he would have suggested.

Belew? Not according to Wiki but maybe it was just something from an outtake that they put there for funsies.

gusgus "silence" from the latest album also ends abruptly (inspired by the portishead track perhaps?)

it's certainly an efficient trick to grab one's attention but the intentional jarringness of it makes you wonder

I think what I was hoping to suss out in this thread was "the first occurrence of this happening on a well-known record" and I guess it's kinda apparent that The Beatles coined it, well done Beatles

― flamboyant goon tie included

'a house is not a motel' is earlier?

i'm not real clear on this, but i believe on the earlier CD remaster it fades out, but on the original LP they "ran out of tape" and the original ending was restored on later CD versions

What was?

Per this thread , it fades out on the original pressings, but ends abruptly on early vinyl reissues. The earliest one mentioned here as having the abrupt ending is from 1971 (after the Beatles had done it).

Doug Smith: Johnny...thanks so much for the add. Your sunny disposition & musical might has been a real refreshing and influential force on me. I do have a question that I would hope you could answer about the track "A House is Not a Motel" - I had a Greek pressing of FOREVER CHANGES years ago when the record was out of print in Canada (approx 1984). The tune did NOT fade out as it seems to in subsequent reissues...but rather ended with what sounds like someone grabbing the 2" reel and stopping it with their hand...this is after the mesmerizing solo you just rip our spines out with at the end of the song and when the tape is stopped like that it really jolts the listener & kinda adds to the effect of the cataclysmic nature of the song & album...was this intentional? Was that the way it was supposed to be originally, and the powers to be, in their infinite wisdom (?) "fixed" it going forward? I hope I am not being irritating for asking. Cheers!

Johnny Echols: Hey Doug, thanks for the kind words. "A House is Not a Motel" was originally supposed to end abruptly with no warning. Which was meant to signify the fleeting nature of life, one moment you're here, the next you're gone. But the folks at Elektra decided that might cause problems with the radio stations, so they decided to fade the ending.

So, put THAT into your pipe n smoke it - SEEK THIS VERSION OUT!!!! So awesome!

i wonder if this ending is found on any pressings of 'Forever Changes' that predate 'Abbey Road'?

I mean, in this case they actually emulated the sound of tape running out, so it may not qualify anyhow.

Squeeze - F-Hole

I think Parable of Arable is a nice clean edit on the beat and doesn't count. It's not a sharp cut into silence, but the Mothers' Uncle Bernie's Farm -> Son Of Suzy Creamcheese is a better pre-Abbey Road example, where the tape slash is pretty random as one song is edited into another. Before that you'd have to look to George Martin's edits for the Goon Squad or musique concrete but these are not genres I'm familiar enough with to produce an example from memory.

> The fade of Paul Simon's "I Know What I Know" ends with the voices petering out and a bubbly little Fripp-esque guitar riff that doesn't quite resolve

This is definitely just the bass guitarist showing off, it's the same timbre as the bass riffs throughout the song just higher on the neck, and yes, the edit comes halfway through the last note you hear

The Wrens - Everyone Choose Sides

"Shoo Be Doo" by The Cars

"It's No Game Part one" by David Bowie

This Forever Changes information is very strange:
So while recording/mixing the record, Lee et al wanted to have a full stop, but Elektra or the producer said no (despite allowing the weird backwards/forwards tape edits at the end of "Good Humor Man"). Then, in a later reissue in the 70s, they remastered it to include the stop? Was Lee even involved with Elektra at that point?

i wonder if this ending is found on any pressings of 'Forever Changes' that predate 'Abbey Road'?

― The 25 Best Songs Ever Ranked In Order (Deflatormouse), Monday, 10 January 2022 23:09 (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Thanks for the clarif..

Yeah, I believe a version released in the UK 'restored' the "sudden stop", but it's more a sudden ending than an actual stop.

It got added to one of the deluxe editions, and i will say that for all those years I was irritated by the fiddly ending, but hearing the alternate made me appreciate the fiddly one more. Maybe just more familiar with it.

It's a sudden ending, it just cuts off, I always preferred it that way.

I can't find the version of "A House Is Not A Motel" that does the thing. There is an alternate mix version, but it fades out to 2/3rds volume and then cuts, it's not the same effect; also, it's an alternate mix. The alternate mix, too, there must've been reverb on the mastering chain, there's a tail on the cut. It is cool to read that Johnny Echols claims to have deliberately sought out that precise sound. On that Love thread though, people mention that "The Good Humor Man..." does something similar and I checked and yeah, it's interesting... I wonder if it is that track (and that track alone) that features the "sudden tape error" that people are speaking of. It's a pretty wild way to end a song!

I heard nothing like what I've described on Red Crayola's "Parable" but man it was so good to hear that album again. Yes to Sabbath's "Hole In The Sky" and Wrens's "Everyone Choose Sides" (which is such a good song I die every time I hear it). I love the Iommi instrumental on that Sabbath album too.

Stuff like "It's No Game" it's a different thing. Same with the Paul Simon. Zappa it's songs abruptly shifting into other songs it's different. This is a specific effect you know?

Perhaps I mischaracterized the ending of "War Sucks"... I'll listen again.

I wonder if it is that track (and that track alone) that features the "sudden tape error" that people are speaking of. It's a pretty wild way to end a song!

i've heard 3 different endings of 'a house is not a motel', i think.

-fadeout
-sudden tape error
-just stops, like the mastering engineer hit the mute button arbitrarily.

it's not an alternate mix that features the abrupt ending(s)

the effect at the end of good humor man is something else entirely, i would def call that an "ending".

it fades out to 2/3rds volume and then cuts,

don't think i've heard that one!
wonder if it's slightly different on ever edition?

Caetano Veloso - Irene stops at 0:45 and starts again at 1:00

yeah, but it's not an abrupt or arbitrary stop, it's some very musical studio chatter at the end of a verse...

jugband blues stops abruptly and resumes, though.

Sly Stone's "If You Want Me to Stay" does a bunch of things at the end. I think the song peters out/falls apart, the track fades, *and* it suddenly stops?

idk why I'm so interested in this. The emotional response is so specific. When you hear the performance peter out or the tape fuck up it's different. A deliberate cut-to-nothing has a totally unique feeling to it, it always shocks me. I must've heard "She's So Heavy" and been shocked by it as a kid, but then it was "Ascension Day" and it shocked me in my early 20s, and "Silence" (Portishead) in my late 20s. Does this happen in any other medium aside from the finale of The Sopranos?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nZ25mPwXWo
Simple Minds - Murder Story

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y87K9-fJbdQ
Elvis Costello - Night Rally

"Ascension Day" isn't quite a cut to nothing, though, it segues straight into "After the Flood"?

Does this happen in any other medium aside from the finale of The Sopranos?

The film of Marat/Sade cuts to black in the middle of a riot, no credits, end of movie.

Something like this happens at the end of Two Lane Blacktop.

Yes, as if the film is melting in the projector a la Persona!

The last track on Black Dice's Beaches and Canyons does this--"Big Drop", at least on the CD...the vinyl version I had went into a locked groove.

John Cale - Ghost Story

(xp) No.

Yes, that "House is not a Motel" is a modern remix, and it seems to me that the ending of the track is the end of the performance.

(xp) I think it is..

There was a combination of someone mixing up the song titles on web boards, but listening to it there it seems to be :
1) A longer 'fade', and
2) The sudden ending, i.e. it drops rather than fading out completely.

It isn't, my (vinyl) copy had the sudden ending and that definitely isn't it. For a start, the version you posted is a completely different mix and it lasts longer and, most importantly of all, there's no fade at all in the sudden ending version.

I had the notion in my head that at least some of the tracks on Twin Infinitives do this... but listening back, they don't, the band really "stops playing" and the "end" of each "song."

Twin Infinitives kinda has the same effect though because of the excruciatingly long silences between tracks

Was listening to Floating Points’ Elaenia yesterday and the album’s closing song ‘Peroration Six’ does this after a big crescendo.

Several tracks on NY & CH's Barn just stop, awkwardly, like somebody dropped somethin.

Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich, "The Sun Goes Down", September 1967. Again, the b-side to a Top 10 hit, so pretty well known. Kind of sounds like a mistake.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XEMGnXOZMs