OK, so we all know that FM is one of the greatest songs ever composed . Also in addition to that fact though, technically there's 5 versions of the song that's in(or were in)circulation. Four of these versions are official, and one is not. The original version is the one with Walter Becker's full guitar ending(and without Pete Christlieb's second sax solo). The other version is the 7 inch single, with a shortened guitar edit fade out. The third version is the short instrumental version(b side), with only Pete Christlieb's sax solos(compared to the original version, the song start's around 20 seconds before Pete's first solo, and ends with his second). And the fourth version is the same as the first(vocals version), BUT with both of Pete Christlieb's Sax solos edited in(the original solo, and the second solo taken from the instrumental version), and again, without Becker's guitar ending. And lastly. There was a unofficial edited version of the song that AM radio DJ's(or one DJ made, and was circulated amongst other AM radio DJ's) played. This(making this post) is the first time i heard of that trivia(got it from Wikipedia, but it looks accurate), but it appears that AM radio DJ's didn't like the "FM" aspect of the song, so some DJ took the A in Aja, and edited it into FM. So FM became AM. And again, apparently that version was pretty popular among AM radio DJ's... Anyways, a little confusing... What it boils down to is there's the FM version that has a sax solo as a ending. And there's the original version that has a guitar ending. And, my question to y'all is which version do you prefer? Me personally, I've always(up until recently) vastly preferred the sax ending to the guitar ending. That guitar outro has a nice flow to it, but that sax solo, man, it smokes. It livens up FM quite a bit. Now, if there's a longer guitar version where Walter keep on going where the original version ends, then I'd have to rethink this. In that fade out he start's to open up. I am starting to love the guitar version more, though.


Regardless of all of this, FM is a great song. And one of my favorites.



Original version
https://www.youtube.com/w...doCQn_Tjac

7 inch edit

https://www.youtube.com/w...XeKN2-5gJM

Instrumental version

https://www.youtube.com/w...kRF7yMOsNk


The vocal, Sax version

https://www.youtube.com/w...aYxh-mb0-M

The unofficial, AM version

https://www.youtube.com/w...39Dl8KJDlw

So many songs are too long.

u didnt mention the 6:12 ext version

jfenster said:

u didnt mention the 6:12 ext version

Do you mean the fan made version(s) that splices both the guitar and sax outros? If not, then i didn't know there was a extended version. If so, then i figured that since the fan made versions are somewhat new, i wouldn't include them. The main reason i included that unofficial AM radio version is because it seems to have been somewhat regularly played on AM radio. Also, even though the AM radio version is the exact same as the FM version(minus the F, of course), it would be interesting to know how that all came about. Like the competition between FM radio and AM radio. And the various popular AM and FM stations across the country at the time.

For me:

The vocal, Sax version

https://www.youtube.com/w...aYxh-mb0-M