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LIVE on Coral Records: the first ever professionally looking Springsteen bootleg prompts CBS Records to file a suit against a record retailer in New York City to halt selling the copies in the summer of 1976. |
Released in late 1975 or early 1976,
LIVE on
Coral Records (NR-909-2) was probably the most famous bootleg of Springsteen throughout the vinyl era. As already introduced in
the last blog, this
title captures one of the most important concerts in his
career that is performed 41 years ago tonight and aired through radio broadcast on WNEW-FM in Manhattan, New York City. Unlike the
contemporary Bruceleg releases back then, this double-disc release came out in an attractive gate-fold and full-color sleeve (outer sleeve only) with the custom black & silver labels. However, what makes its
existence widely recognized to music fans and industry people is the fact that CBS Records, involving
Springsteen and
The Bottom Line club
from where the bootlegged performance was aired, accused a City's record store of
displaying and selling many copies of this underground artifact.
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A repressed copy on the Black-Gold Concerts label has much simpler appearance than the original Coral Records version. Lower left panel shows the credits as found on the rear sleeve of each releases. |
An overview of the lawsuit is summarized in two consecutive issues of the
Billboard
magazine in the summer of 1976. According to the first article reported in
the August 14 issue, the defendant in the action launched in
New York City Supreme Court, was
The Record Breaker,
located in Greenwich Village area of the City and offering this bootleg
to customers at $7.99 (equivalent to $34.05 in 2016, using inflation
calculator on the DollarTimes website). The plaintiffs including
Springsteen filed a suit against this retailer shop on August 6th to halt the
sale of
the bootleg record. In the following issue (published on August 21,
1976), the
magazine reports that the suit was amicably resolved on August 10th
*,
less than a week after the court action was initiated, for
an undisclosed monetary settlement, and that
The Record Breaker
agreed to discontinue the sale of the alleged bootleg. The magazine
continues that the record shop is said to have bought a quantity of the
bootleg from
a street vender who is not an established wholesaler.
*Hunt's bootleg section of Blinded By The Light (P. Humphries & C. Hunt, 1985, Plexus, London) describes the date as September 10th, but I think this being incorrect in light of Billboard's reports.
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Hand-etched matrix numbers indicate that both the original Coral Records (left, with custom label) and reissue Black-Gold Concerts (right, with blank label) vinyl discs are pressed from the same stampers (shown are those found on the dead wax space on Side 2) |
It
is of note that this case was filed against a retailer, thus leaving
bootlegger(s) unconfirmed or unidentified. The rear sleeve
states that the album is produced by
Alberto Pittigliani and released by "
Coral Records Ltda. Av. Borges de Medeiros 1121, Rio de Janeiro (which is, by the way, a real address according to Google Maps)". However,
generally any credit statement or copyright notice on bootleg record is not to be trusted and this
bootleg is purportedly of East Coast origin. As a result of the lawsuit
settlement, many of the copies have reportedly been seized, which further
restricted the availability and made it quite rare. Later, it was
repressed on the
Black-Gold Concerts
label (BG-909-2) and reissued under a more specific title (
LIVE AT THE BOTTOM LINE; Do not confuse with another similar bootleg title featured in
the last blog)
using the same stampers from which the original was pressed. The record
labels are plain blank and the single pocket sleeve is black &
white, with similar and different cover
designs on front and rear, respectively, to the
Coral Records version. Found on the bottom right corner on the rear sleeve is a small credit on the location of the label as "
Toronto, Ontario M5A 2L1".
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Copies of LIVE on Coral Records were an object of envy to Bruceleg collectors even here in Japan back in the 1980's (from a domestic bootleg dealer's catalog) |
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Back in the mid-to-late 1980s when Springsteen's popularity peaked here, the original edition of
LIVE on
Coral Records
was one of the most, if not the most, sought-after classic bootleg
among Bruceleg collectors. Shown on the right is a part of the scanned
image of a mail-order catalog I received circa 1986-1987 from a
well-known Bruceleg dealer in Japan. As you can see, the two used copies
were listed on the catalog and offered for sale to collectors at insane
prices (in Japanese Yen) that would be incredibly profitable to the seller (Or
the out-of-norm prices might reflect exceptionally high wholesale prices fixed by greedy export distributors of bootleg records abroad).
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Custom label on Disc 1 from the Coral Records release. Putting three tracks on Side 2 results in severe editing of the slow, long version of The E Street Shuffle probably due to the disc capacity |
As mentioned on
the last blog, it is almost certain that
LIVE on
Coral Records is the second vinyl-bootleg release of this
Bottom Line concert, following
LIVE AT THE BOTTOM LINE 75/8/15 that is underrated in my opinion. So, aside from packaging, what are the notable differences, if any, between these two bootlegs of the same show? Track listing indicates that
LIVE comprises the whole show (14 song) while
THE BOTTOM LINE omits the lengthy
Kitty's Back.
On the former bootleg, however, DJ's talk is completely eliminated (see
the last blog). Moreover, some of the performed songs are heavily edited on the
Coral Records version. First, about the first
two thirds of the rap part (about first 6 min of a total of 9 min) is
cut on
The E Street Shuffle, most probably due to space limitation (
i.e. Side 2 contains two more tracks beside this slow long performance that is 20-min long if not edited out). Second, excluding the beginning and ending, the most part of
Born To Run
is replaced by the official studio recording. The reason for this is
not clear. One possibility is that there were defects in the recorded live tape that might cause the
live track to be patched seamlessly with the official source (as exemplified by
THE JERSEY DEVIL, the first known vinyl Bruceleg, where the defective live recording on what is later known as
Thunder Road is modified in the same way). In fact, careful listening suggests that the source tapes used for vinyl pressing are different between the two releases. Finally, the final encore song
Quarter To Three, while incomplete on both bootleg releases, is chopped off much earlier on the
Coral Records version (running only for 2.5 min and suddenly cut;
THE BOTTOM LINE version is over 4 min long though still short; it must be about 6 min long if left unedited). In conclusion,
LIVE on
Coral Records is far more attractive in terms of packaging, but as for content-wise, I cannot rate it higher than the
THE BOTTOM LINE set.
I
remember back on the last day of
1999, I bought a mixed
bag of promotional US 12" vinyls from an eBay seller in Arizona, Phoenix, that included a copy of
Born In The U.S.A. Upon opening the box parcel when it arrived to me, to my surprise, the seller included a bit tatty copy of
LIVE on
Coral Records as
a bonus record! A small exciting moment, even though I then already
owned two copies of this particular bootleg. At the same time, I
couldn't help thinking about how the situation had changed surrounding vinyl
bootleg (
i.e., one of the most highly valued titles in the 1980s
was available for free at the end of the 1990s), although generally, vinyl records were already low-valued due to the
rise of CD. Still, as shown at the top of this page, all three copies have been kept in my collection.
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