THE RIVER 2LP: The US Columbia Santa Maria Plant pressing

Recently, I obtained a US analog copy of my favorite album from a US eBay seller. It was a cheap buy as you can guess from the relatively worn sleeve conditions. However, the highly priced international shipping of LP package,

Before and after cleaning LP sleeve: Vertically aligned two images on the left
(before cleaning) are taken from the actual auction page. The "20" marking on
the front sleeve is very faint (yellow circled). There is 
a small corner cut on the
upper-left corner of the rear face of the sleeve which has a gold promo stamp.

which cost close to triple the amounts of the item this time, always annoys me as a non-US resident. After delivery of the LP across the Pacific, the first thing I had to do was to remove the handwritten black markings "20" made on both the front and back covers, which I guess indicate the set price ($20) when this copy was once sold on store shelves before being auctioned. It was not a tough or cautious work because the album sleeve was still glossy laminated, thus relatively tolerant to a little rough wiping with convenient organic solvents like absolute ethanol (although the use of which generally causes damage to sleeves such as de-colorization). 

The sole reason why I purchased this rather worn copy was that it was a white label promo probably pressed at the Columbia Santa Maria Pressing Plant, CA, which I had not owned before. Early in this blog, I wrote about two slightly different labels on the US pressing of THE RIVER LP (here). They differ notably in the style of track listing, one with wide while the other with narrow spacing between track titles. This difference reflects where a label is printed, hence where a vinyl disc is pressed.

Two types of white US Columbia labels for THE RIVER. These are Terre Haute (left) and Santa Maria (right) pressings according to each dead-wax matrix inscription. Note that there is also the same difference for the regular red labels.

As occasionally mentioned in this blog, back in early 1980's when THE RIVER is originally pressed and then repressed, Columbia Records run three major plants for vinyl pressing: Terre Haute, IN (1953-1982), Pitman, NJ (1960-1986), and Santa Maria, CA (1963-1981). Vinyl copies pressed at the Santa Maria factory are usually identified

Typical examples of Santa Maria-specific matrix inscriptions: S1 on a
white label promo disc (left) and S2 on a red label regular disc (right).

by "S1" or "S2" which is hand-etched and rolling upside down to the left of the matrix number found on the dead wax (for example, "IS   PAL 36855" on Side 1). They are usually etched very faintly and sloppily compared to the matrix numbers that are also hand-etched, and so hard to recognize in some cases. To the best of my knowledge, such a Santa Maria-specific matrix inscription is always associated with the "narrow-spacing" track listing on both white promo and regular red Columbia labels on THE RIVER.

The catalog number 36854 printed on Santa Maria (left)
and Terre Haute (right) versions of Disc1 inner sleeve.

Another signature of the Santa Maria pressing is found on the inner sleeve for Disc 1. Printed on the upper right corner of the front face (listing track lineup) is 36854, the catalog number assigned for this album, that differs in the font style and position where it is printed, between Terre Haute and Santa Maria versions. Moreover, there seemingly is a trace of the erased five-digit number on the Santa Maria sleeve that corresponds in position to the catalog number printed on the Terre Haute sleeve. On the other hand, the inner sleeve for Disc 2 has no such digit number printed on either side of both versions.

By far I have not conducted detailed examination if there are any noticeable differences between Terre Haute and Pitman pressings, except what are etched and stamped on the dead wax (although no clear differences seem to exist on either outer or inner sleeve). It's my understanding that exploiting these differences that make it clear to distinguish one pressing from others offers a way of enjoying collecting multiple copies of the same title.

Collecting log: Brilliant Disguise Japanese custom promotion-only advanced 7" vinyl

Two major Brilliant 7" rarities: Promotion-only pre-release in Japan and Italian jukebox pressing, both coming with a unique custom insert sleeve. One of the Japanese copies I own is in fine condition (center) while the other has cellotape removed on the insert sleeve (left), as generally observed with Japanese promo 7" singles leaked and floating around from radio stations. The Italian single contains a colored title strip with a misprint (Brilliant "Disguide").

Brilliant Disguise continues. Speaking of the 7" single release of this title, the most sought-after collectible is probably the Japanese promotion-only advanced pressing (CBS/SONY XDSP 93095) released with the unique black & white picture insert. Alternatively, some collectors may mention the Italian jukebox 7" (CBS JC 152095 7) which also comes with the custom insert sleeve and is seldom seen; however, others are skeptical to its authenticity (I have no idea as to the authenticity of this very nice-looking release). By the way, about a week ago, I found a copy of the Japanese issue being auctioned at Yahoo! Japan although it was the picture insert only. I was just interested in the final result and so followed the auction to the end.

It's a custom sleeve insert only without the 7" vinyl. The auction
ended with a total of 10 bids.

It ended up selling for 2,600 Japanese Yen (roughly $23.50 at the current exchange rate) as shown on the right, which in my opinion is reasonable taking into account that it represents one of the only two unique promo sleeves available to Springsteen's 7" records released in Japan [another one is, needles to say, Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town live (CBS/SONY XDSP 93026)].

Two examples of "date" stamped insert sleeves of the
Japanese promo 7": I Wanna Marry You/Be True
(CBS/SONY 07SP 525) and Atlantic City/Mansion On
The Hill (CBS/SONY 07SP 657)

The auctioned INSERT must have originated from a radio station, as it has a couple of scotch tape marks on front. In fact, many Japanese promo 7" issues in circulation suffer from such yellow-colored glue traces as a result of removing index tags that had been taped on the sleeve by radio station staff. The sleeves are also frequently stamped with the date of acquisition or on-sale date (see the picture left). Thus, generally, the fully intact copies are hard to come by. One of the two copies in my possession has indeed such unwanted modifications (tape marks) as seen in the image on the top of this page.

On the rear side of the insert sleeve are mainly Japanese writings, such as a few lines of advertising copy notes for this single release that are found on the top, and the bottom half of the sleeve is devoted to three small sections that include the largely abbreviated biography (which wrongly describes that LIVE/1975-85 is released in the end of 1985), the highest chart position on Billboard Hot 100 of the seven TOP 10 singles released from his then last studio-recording album BORN IN THE U.S.A., and the brief introduction about the then-forthcoming new album TUNNEL OF LOVE to be released on October 21st (reporting that besides the E Street Band, Springsteen might employ Nashville session players for the album recording).

Although the A-side labels of my two copies are pink-stamped, the label variant exists without stamp markings. As usual for the CBS/SONY releases, the matrix numbers are stamped but not hand-etched on the trail-off area. The JIS acronym (for Japanese Industrial Standards) is found only on Side A.

As the Lost In The Flood collector's web site briefly reports, there is a discrepancy in the catalog number for this custom promo release: XDSP 93095 on the sleeve and XDSP 93096 on the white labels. The machine-typed matrix numbers on the dead wax are consistent with the latter (XDSP-93096A1 on Side A and XDSP-93096B1 on Side B). A google search resulted in another promotion-only Japanese 7" vinyl with the catalog number XDSP 93095 for We Are Music performed by a US female singer called Martika. These indicate that the catalog number on the sleeve is a typographical error. There are label variations on Side A, with and without pinked stamp markings noting track name (both in English and Japanese) and length (4 : 15), release date (October 10th), and artist name. No variation has been found on the Side B label that is totally free of stamp markings, only with the catalog number, side indication and sample notification (with three Kanji characters) in black.

It's translucent bronze or amber upon exposure to a LED light
luminary. Note that this is a common feature to both promotional
and regular Springsteen 7" pressings from CBS/SONY JAPAN.

Finally, although the disc normally looks black, it turns transparent when exposed to high-intensity light. This, however, is not specific to this particular promotional pressing. As far as I examined, all the Springsteen 7" records from CBS/SONY JAPAN are the same in terms of light-dependent transparency. As mentioned on this blog previously (for example, see here or here), most of Springsteen's 7" singles are translucent red on the US Columbia label. Although both the US and Japanese 7" singles show the transparency under strong illumination, the main difference lies in the material and method used to make the disc, as the US records are styrene-molding whereas the Japanese ones are vinyl-pressing.

Collecting log: Brilliant Disguise/Lucky Man US45 with no large hole

Unplayable garbage or highly collectable?

Been busy lately, and that has made me completely away from blogging for more than a month. To give myself a short break (BTW, which was and still is the initial intention to start this blog), I made a quick note on a recent acquisition of a rare, one-of-a-kind erroneous 7-inch item. Shown here is a US stock copy of Brilliant Disguise/Lucky Man (US Columbia 38-07595), the first single from TUNNEL OF LOVE released in 1987. At the first glance, it looks like a small-holed Australian copy with the yellow/red sunburst CBS labels. As you find, however, glued on the 7" record are the US Columbia labels with NO LARGE HOLE!  So, this record is unplayable on any turntables, which makes it totally useless as music medium but appeals to curiosity seekers like me. As occasionally shown in this blog, I own several erroneous products of single and LP releases of Springsteen titles. This type however is never seen before.

The error disc comes in a generic Columbia sleeve rather than in the picture sleeve.

One thing that seemed odd was the fact that there is no small center hole punched out on each side of the paper label, even though it is there on the disc itself which is visible through the labels (see the image below). Why is this odd? When the clump of hot vinyl is pressed with stampers, it is held by a spindle on a pressing machine and sandwiched by a pair of paper labels. So, before setting on the pressing machine, record labels must be small-holed so that they are pressed together with the vinyl clump right on the center of a resultant disc ...

When the record is held against strong light, a small center hole
appears as yellow on the paper label. The disc is translucent red,
which is a proof of a styrene-made Columbia 7" single (the
filaments of a light source on the opposite side is visible as
figural red on the upper part of the dead wax area).

While writing this post up to this point, I recalled that it was not vinyl pressing but styrene molding! As I did mention previously, most of 7" discs from the US Columbia Records in the 1970s and 1980s are made by polystyrene which is injection-molded, not pressed like vinyl, and paper labels are glued on afterward. Then a styrene disc is punched out to make a large center hole, together with the glued labels. Obviously, this particular copy has escaped from this final step of the production, which explains why the paper labels remain intact without a small spindle hole.

Note that in the case of vinyl pressing (yes, relatively the small number of vinyl pressing does exist for Springsteen 7" releases by the US Columbia Records in both promotional and stock forms), the labels should have a small hole on the center even if the final step is skipped. Thus far I have never seen such an error disc, though.