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All the promotional 12-inch discs from BITUSA come with red labels
except for the title track release whose labels are white (see below). |
Revisiting the vinyl bootleg on the last three consecutive posts (
April 20,
23 and
24) brought me back to the era of
BORN IN THE U.S.A. Around 1984-85, not only had we the flood of live bootlegs from the 15-month world tour, but also we saw plenty of official 7" and 12" vinyl releases from various countries worldwide. While I was looking forward to collecting every forthcoming 7" single from the album with a previously unreleased track on the flip side, it was a series of promotional 12" vinyls that also called my attention. This was simply because the format would at least theoretically provide better sound than 7" or LP format for a given song. My favorite was, and still is
I'm Goin' Down (US Columbia CAS 2174), not lyrically but for its enjoyable melody. So, I occasionally pull the copy from my record shelf and give a listen to it played loudly on my DENON turntable.
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The only white label promo 12-inch vinyl release in the US since 1982?
Left: One sealed with an orange sticker and the other opened. |
Regarding these custom promotion-only 12" vinyl releases from the
BITUSA album, I have had several trivial questions over the years since I started building a vinyl collection (and they remain unanswered). For example, I cannot help wondering why the choice is made of playing these vinyls at 33 1/3 rpm instead of 45 rpm. To my understanding, the latter spin speed should generally offer better sound quality if the vinyl disc is 12-inch in diameter. It is also curious that the promo 12" vinyl has never been issued for the second single cut (that is,
Cover Me), although all the other six single releases of 7" disc have their own promotional 12" counterparts (
i.e.,
Dancing In The Dark,
Born In The U.S.A.,
I'm On Fire,
Glory Days,
I'm Goin' Down, and
My Hometown). Not serious but just curious.
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Found on the dead wax area of both sides is a MASTERDISK
stamp with "RL", a signature of mastering engineer
Robert (Bob) Ludwick. Hand-etched matrix numbers
are P XSM-173076-1B/P XSM-173076-1C (not shown). |
Among the six promo-only 12-inch vinyls,
Born In The U.S.A. (
US Columbia AS 1959) is unique in two respects [Don't confuse this with the 5-track 12" EP in a bizarre-colored sleeve (
US Columbia AS 1957); I'm talking about the single track promo]. One is that this release comes with an old-styled, generic white die-cut sleeve with a gold promo stamp on the rear. By contrast, all the others are housed in custom promo-only sleeves featuring B&W photos taken from individual commercial 7" releases. The other uniqueness lies in that this is the only
white label issue. To my knowledge, since as early as 1981, the US Columbia Records have stopped using white labels for promotional releases in LP and 12" formats. In fact, no white label version is known to exist for
NEBRASKA and all the subsequent album releases. This is also true for custom promo-only vinyls in these formats that have been released in 1981 and thereafter, as exemplified by the
AS REQUESTED AROUND THE WORLD compilation LP (
US Columbia AS 978; red labels) and the
Fade Away 12" EP (
US Columbia AS 928; custom black & blue labels), with the exception of the 12" promo version of
Santa Clause Is Comin' To Town (
US Columbia AS 1329). The reason is still not clear why the white labels are used only for the title track from the album released in 1984.
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A small, numbered sticker underneath the shrink wrap of the
sealed copy (which may originate from the pressing plant?). |
Collector-wise, what I found potentially interesting is that one of the two promo copies in my collection came with a small orange sticker that says "
ZIA 195 QUALITY INSPECT". No ideas what "
ZIA" stands for and what the
hand-written number refers to, though. The sticker is not pasted on the shrink but directly on the die-cut sleeve. Because the copy is still sealed, the sticker must have been pasted before its manufacture is completed. Only my guess is that this sticker might be used to approve the quality of the product, although I still can't figure out what "195" actually means.
Hello. One thought, ZIA may be the Phoenix and Tucson AZ based used record store chain. They often reseal vinyl for sale. The 195 may actually be a $1.95 resale price.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for your post and information. I think your thought is very probably true because I bought a batch of promo 12” discs including this one back in 1999, through eBay from the seller whose address was in Phoenix, Arizona (check the last paragraph of the blog article on August 15th, 2016; https://manattop.blogspot.jp/2016/08/classic-vinyl-bootleg-revisited-live-on.html). Now I’m very happy that one of my long trivial questions has a reasonable answer although it was different from what I thought.
ReplyDelete"195" is obviously $1.95. Notice that "95" is written as a superscript. And I highly doubt that Columbia would shrinkwrap promotional 12" singles.
ReplyDeleteYes, as already pointed out by the first comment made by an anonymous reader.
ReplyDelete