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Never seen before this Japan-only extreme scarcity that is
accompanied with a 7-page info sheet from the company
(CBS/SONY Japan) |
Recently, this mega rare vinyl LP was up for a major Japanese auction site and the competition closed last weekend. The copy went to someone (not me!) who paid over
$1,100 (
129,500 JPY exactly) as a result of a cumulative total of
36 bids. It is interesting to note that this is the
fourth copy of this
custom promotion-only album auctioned off here that I saw less than a year
ago. The
first copy was put on auction last April in 2016 and the
winning bid was
241,000 JPY with a cumulative total of
30 bids. The
second one came out last June and was sold for
219,500 JPY, which involved total
58 bids.
Late December last year, the
third one was won for
193,000 JPY with total
44 bids.
As far as I examined the images that were shown on the individual
auction pages, these auctioned records were different, independent
copies each other. I think this is quite a rare case that
such an extreme scarcity suddenly emerged four times on the auction site within 10 months, taking into account the frequency by which it appeared on auction in the past and the limited copy
number pressed back in 1978 (reportedly 100 copies, the unconfirmed
number of which has been exported to the US; check
the previous blog).
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| Last page features two newspaper articles from the US and Japan, and introduces the publication of Thunder Road, the first fanzine just out 4 months before the release of the DARKNESS album. |
However, what is reported above is not what I intend to highlight here. It was a stapled,
7-page information sheet that caught my attention in the latest auction, which accompanied the auctioned record (as shown in the image above). The front page is titled:
LAST AMERICAN HERO FROM ASBURY PARK N.J. / BRUCE THE BOSS SPRINGSTEEN ON THE STREET AGAIN. If you remember, this xerox-copied paper stuff was previously shown
here as one of the two info sheets that are included in the promotional package of the Japanese white-label promo (WLP) copy for
DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN LP. I have never seen before any copies of the
LAST AMERICAN HERO ... LP coming with such an info sheet, except for this particular one.
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Hypothetically "Reconstituted" LAST AMERICAN HERO promo-only LP set
(my LAST AMERICAN sheet comes with the WLP DARKNESS vinyl disc) |
The latest auction, however, raised the possibility that the info sheet, as its title tells, was prepared
for this promo-only custom LP rather than for the WLP
DARKNESS LP that is also issued around the same time in Japan. In fact, circulating copies of the Japanese
DARKNESS promo LP more often contain another 5-page information sheet (titled
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SPRING BACK; again, see
here), but seldom include the
LAST AMERICAN ... sheet. The possibility is also supported by the fact that the
SPRING BACK sheet carries the
DARKNESS album-related info such as tracklist, credits and the front sleeve picture, while the
LAST AMERICAN sheet mainly features a brief biography of Springsteen and a reprint article (that is translated into Japanese) from the June 5th/1978 issue of
NEWSWEEK titled
SPRINGSTEEN RESPRUNG. It is also noted that the
LAST AMERICAN sheet provides no substantial info for the then new release of his long-awaited 4th album (no introduction, no pictures, no tracklist and so on), except just a few lines below the large-font title that notify the simultaneous release of the LP and the first single therefrom.
Thus, although not conclusive and needing further investigation, I'm starting to think that this one of the rarest Springsteen collectibles from Japan originally comes with the info sheet in addition to the English/Japanese lyric insert.
If so, this mega rarity would not be complete without either one of these paper parts.
