 |
| The Japanese edition is found out to be just a simple repackage of the European release, additionally reproducing the rear sleeve as a slick insert for Japanese credits and information (see the enlarged image of the portion below). Note that vinyl discs are not originally protected by frosted inner plastic poly bags. Including such poly bags was normal for conventional vinyl discs released in Japan, though. |
 |
Confused by description. As opposed to what the sticker says
in English, the vinyl discs never look multi-colored. On the last
line, however, it also says "amber-colored record" in Japanese. |
In Japan,
TUNNEL OF LOVE was Bruce Springsteen's last album released on vinyl, and in the 29 years since then, no vinyl albums have been pressed here under his name. Last September,
Sony Music Japan International (
SMJI) announced that the company would release the vinyl edition of the latest album
CHAPTER & VERSE for the domestic market on December 7th, 2016. The advertisement said that the LP discs would be issued on "
Multi Color Vinyl" and limited to
1,000 copies. Unfortunately, the vinyls are not pressed domestically but imported from Europe, and priced considerably high as a double-disc set [
6,480 JPY (including 8% consumption tax) = US $57.59 as of today's exchange rate]. As a vinyl collector, however, I had high expectations on this release as something special because it was a Japanese production famous for careful work and because of the first vinyl LP release here in almost three decades.
 |
| Album credits on the slick insert of the Japanese release (upper) and on the actual rear sleeve originally manufactured in Europe (lower). |
There is a Japanese blog written by an anonymous
SMJI's staff who always provides up-to-date information on currently on-going projects he is involved in. According to him, the export to Japan was delayed due to recent high demands for pressing vinyl discs at an European pressing plant (at
GZ-Media in
Czech Republic, specifically; thanks
Eddy for the info) that was responsible for supplying these records to Japan. Therefore, the release here was postponed to two weeks behind the original date slated for early December. Interestingly, he blogged that they (
SMJI's staff) didn't know what the vinyl discs looked like until they saw the actual LPs, meaning that the situation got out of their control when it came to pressing vinyls. This may explain the contradictory description regarding vinyl color as found on the company's advertisement on various media and on the golden sticker on the front sleeve [
i.e. multi color vinyl (written in English) versus
amber-colored record (in Japanese)]. He also mentioned on the blog that, owing to the defective discs contained in the imported lot, the limited copy number must be less than 1,000 although the exact number was not revealed. Anyway, I have received two copies of this expected release right on the rescheduled date (December 21st), which was pre-ordered on last September from Amazon (with no discount).
 |
On the top side of the Obi, there is a small misprint of
the catalog number "SIJP 29-3" (correctly "SIJP 29-30"). |
Frankly, what I saw was disappointing, to say the least. My point is that this new release lacks what has made Japanese LP releases so reputable over the years. It does have an Obi and booklet. However, I never thought that the whole package was imported including the sleeve that prints the foreign label name (
Columbia), catalog number (
88985370831) and album credits. So, in order to rectify these,
what SMJI did was to recreate the rear sleeve as a slick insert to put the relevant Japanese information on it, such as the domestic catalog number (
SIJP 29-30), bar code, retail price (
6,000 JPY plus tax) and so on. You cannot know that it's a Japanese LP from the sleeve spine if you stock it on the record shelf because the spine credits remain unmodified, leaving the original EU catalog number and label name. As such, in my opinion, the result looks
totally sloppy compared to past "
Made In Japan" LPs of Springsteen, even though the sleeve comes with an Obi and a gold sticker glued on front. The Japan-exclusive 8-page booklet features mainly lyrics translation into Japanese and track-to-track liner notes, which are nothing special just reprinted from the CD releases, with no pictures except album discography on the last page. Another shortcoming is, as already mentioned above, that the vinyl discs are certainly colored (
amber or
golden brown) but never look multi-colored as announced and advertised ("marble colored" would be more appropriate). If it had been done so, to the best of my knowledge, this could have been the first ever official multi-colored vinyl release (In comparison, there are many bootleg releases pressed on multi-colored vinyl). In conclusion, I dare say that this is nothing but a rip-off for vinyl collectors, because of the fixed retail price which is greedy expensive, and because I can see no real merit in purchasing this release compared to the overseas counterparts.
