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My first BORN IN THE USA tour boot, obtained
Dec. of 1984 (image taken from Popsike) |
In the latest archive release (
i.e., August 5th, 1984, East Rutherford, NJ) from Springsteen’s official live download site, what I consider the best thing is to be able to hear two
NEBRASKA tunes
, Atlantic City and
Highway Patrolman, in awesome sound quality. Especially, an early, fresh performance of the former is a highlight of the show to me (as for the previously available full-band arrangements, I prefer the
MTV PLUGGED version to the one on
LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY which I never like). It is possible that this live version is the one that was seriously considered for inclusion on
LIVE 1975/85, but was left off. I well remember, despite the terrible sound quality, when for the first time I listened to the full-band live take through the magic of bootlegging (specifically
, BORN IN CINCINNATI, one of the earliest and crummiest bootlegs from the 1984 tour, capturing the July 6th concert). This really is an exciting and thrilling part of listening to his live performance.
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| Spanish white label promotional LP with biographies |
On collecting
NEBRASKA LP, you can easily come up with the gate-fold sleeve version from Holland or ex-Yugoslavia which is relatively common, or you may mention the rare Japanese LP with a cool poster. From my experience, however, it's really hard to come by white label promotional (WLP) copies for this album from any country. For the US release,
Blinded By The Light (P. Humphries and C. Hunt, 1985, Plexus Publishing) describes that
promotion copies featured mainly gold stamp "For demo only" with very few white labels pressed. To my knowledge, the US Columbia Records stopped using white labels for promotional releases some time by 1981, and in fact, I have never seen such a US copy for this album except for test pressing in my entire collecting career. The combination of the regular red label disc and the gold promo-stamped sleeve on the rear is often seen and circulated for the US pressings. For promo LPs, CBS/Sony Japan had replaced white labels by regular red labels before the Columbia Records did so. For example, there are no Japanese issues known to exist for the WLP version of
THE RIVER whilst the US WLP copies still have continued to turn up frequently on eBay; in Japan, the promotional LP vinyls for
THE RIVER through
TUNNEL OF LOVE (his last vinyl LP pressing in Japan) were issued with red labels on which printed is "Mi-hon-ban", the three Japanese Kanji characters meaning a sample disc.
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| NEBRASKA promo LP labels (left, Spanish; right, Japanese) |
So far, the only WLP copy I know of the existence for this album is the Spanish LP (CBS S 25100). I don't have the regular copy but assume that there are no significant differences between the two releases (
i.e., both comes in a fold-out cover with an inner sleeve printing Spanish lyric translation), except that the WLP copy contains a two-sheet biography and a short excerpt on another sheet from the article on
NEBRASKA by Christopher Connelly on
Rolling Stone, both in Spanish. I just want to ask you if any of you own or confirm the existence of WLP copies from other countries, particularly the US.
