I've come to realize over the course of time that mentioning Boney M. in America doesn't mean a whole lot to people. I was originally introduced to them after receiving a CD of megamixes, one of which blended a dozen or so Boney M. tunes, all of which I'd just assumed were hits here at some point... not true, apparently. (They're mainly known here as "whatever band that was that did a disco version of 'Mary's Boy Child'.")
A handful of their biggest hits ("Rasputin", "Painter Man", "Rivers of Babylon") stemmed from the same LP - 1978's "Nightflight To Venus". For years, all I had of this album was a very poor MP3 copy that I found on Usenet at some point, apparently ripped from the CD. It wasn't until I read a review recently, however, that I found my copy to be incomplete - previous editions were quite different.
Browsing through Wikipedia's pages about Boney M.'s albums, I came to realize that they were apparently *very* anal retentive about their material, issuing several different versions of each album. "Nightflight To Venus" was no exception - the original pressing hailed from Germany, where the group had the most popularity; and this now extremely rare version offered the most material. Over the course of the following three pressings, several songs became shorter and shorter, for reasons I'm unaware of. The worst casualty was the album's opening 13-minute medley of "Nightflight To Venus" and "Rasputin", which was eventually chopped down to nearly half its original length by the time of the 4th pressing - unfortunately, the pressing that formed the basis of the CD.
While the hit "Rasputin" mainly lost a handful of small musical passages with no lyrical changes, the title track was shuffled and hacked several times into a mere collection of edits and brief chunks. Based heavily around Cozy Powell's hit "Dance with the Devil", "Nightflight To Venus" was a drum-heavy intro, with a robotic-voiced tour guide describing the listener's flight to Venus aboard the Starship Boney M. Throughout the course of the seven minute track, he pointed out Moon City ("a boomtown if ever there was"), and detailed the process of making Venus inhabitable to humans. Great concept... though unfortunately, Boney M. seemed to disagree, as much of his dialogue was removed by the final pressing.
Thankfully, there exists a torrent (link below) that compiles variations from the four pressings of the album into a handy 2-CD set. I took the time recently to compare the four different edits of the title track, detailed below... so if you have one of the later pressings or the commercial CD, you may be surprised at how much you're missing... (Note that the changes are not merely lyrical, as the musical mix varied from pressing to pressing as well.)
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White text denotes lyrics standard to all pressings.
Pink lyrics were exclusive to the 1st pressing (7:11).
Green lyrics appeared in both the 1st and 2nd (5:53) pressings, but were later removed.
Blue lyrics appeared in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd (4:58) pressings, but were removed for the 4th/CD (4:47) pressing.
Gold lyrics appeared in the 1st, 3rd and 4th/CD pressings, but not the 2nd.
Purple lyrics appeared in the 2nd, 3rd and 4th/CD pressings, but not the 1st.
"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the starship Boney M. for our first passenger flight to Venus.
Ready for countdown.
Ten. (Nightflight to Venus...)
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Six. (Nightflight to Venus...)
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two. (Nightflight to Venus...)
One.
Ignition.
Lift-off."
Nightflight to Venus
Way out there in space
Nightflight to Venus
Our new favorite place
Nightflight to Venus
We got the all-clear [OR] All systems are go
Nightflight to Venus
The moment is here [OR] The sky is a-glow
[The verse appears twice in the first pressing only - all other pressings replace the
original latter half with the second half of the otherwise unused second verse.]
(Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!
Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey!)
[This chant stands alone on pressings 1 and 2, but is mixed under the following
tour guide speech on 3 and 4. Oddly, pressing 2 is missing eight "hey"s.]
Nightflight to Venus!
Nightflight to Venus!
[As the placement of the chant differed, these sung lines appeared before the tour
guide's speech on pressings 1 and 2, but after the speech on 3 and 4.]
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have had a successful take-off on this first nightflight to Venus. Our flying time will be eight hours. You'll be travelling at a speed of 2,183 miles per second - that is, seven and one half million miles per hour. The distance from mother Earth to Venus is 60 million miles at this time."
"To your left, you can see the mountains of the Moon; and right in the center, under a huge plastic bubble, Moon City - a boomtown if ever there was one, because of the huge gold and diamond veins. As for Venus, it took almost ninety years to cool down the planet from its 500 degrees to the current pleasant 75 degrees, and to transform the atmosphere to make it inhabitable for Earth people."
Nightflight to Venus
Way out there in space
Nightflight to Venus
Our new favorite place
Nightflight to Venus
All systems are go
Nightflight to Venus
The sky is a-glow
[This verse went through a few changes - originally, it appeared in full, before losing
its last four lines for pressing 2; pressings 3 and 4 remove this verse completely. As
previously mentioned, the last four lines replaced those of the first verse in pressings 2-4.]
"Captain - unidentified object at eight o'clock. Two million miles away."
"Stand by for emergency maneuver."
"Object coming closer with the speed of light. We have eight more seconds. Object coming closer. We have five more seconds."
"Changing course by 4.6 degrees."
"Order executed."
"That was a close one, ladies and gentlemen. A meteor just passed us on its way to infinity. Well, you can see, even in space, traffic is getting heavier all the time."
"Ladies and gentlemen, in a few minutes, we are going to be landing on Venus. Push the button on your left side. The safety mechanism will do the rest for you. We hope you enjoyed the world's first nightflight to Venus. Have a good time there."
[At this point on all versions, the looped drum beat serves as a transition into "Rasputin,"
eventually accelerating to that song's slightly faster tempo.]
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Well, that should cover it; incidentally, an extremely truncated 1:30 edit of "Nightflight" (missing ALL vocal sections) was used as an intro for the 12" single of "Rasputin".
As for the torrent mentioned above, it can be downloaded from the Pirate Bay:
http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/3868953/Boney_M._-_Nightflight_To_Venus_Collection_(1978__2CD)
For fans of the album, especially those disappointed by the recent remastered edition (which STILL used the butchered 4th pressing versions), this is essential, first presenting the ultimate cut of the album compiled from several different sources, followed by numerous other variations. Dig that 'marching band trumpets' version of "Rasputin"! :-P
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