DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN US LP variations: Pinckneyville pressing (Pressing Plant owned by MCA Records)

Although one of the best sounding vinyls among his early original releases, collecting-wise, the US release of DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN LP (US Columbia JC 35318) has not been so attractive to me, especially compared to the other classic albums such as BORN TO RUN or THE RIVER. This is probably because it is a single album housed in a single pocket sleeve without significant variations, with the exception of the

Still-sealed US vinyl collection of the DARKNESS album from my archive

picture disc edition that is not commercially available and released solely for promoting the album in the U.S. market; the half-speed mastered LP (US Columbia HC 45318), another notable variation, is classified as a reissue - not an original. Nonetheless, there still exist minor but noticeable variations, for example, in the font size (large or small) and color (black or white) used for displaying track listing and album credits on the rear LP sleeve, respectively, and thickness and printing quality of the inner sleeve with a B&W photo portrait and the credits, as briefly mentioned here.

The US DARKNESS label variants: Left, a typical label associated with vinyl copies pressed in Santa Maria, CA (and other locations); Right, an unusual label found on the vinyl LP pressed in Pinckneyville, IL. Note that the inner ring on the label (often called stamper ring) is much smaller on the Pinckneyville pressing.

Typesetting of the record labels of this LP album is yet another example that shows the significant  variation found on the US versions. Two examples are shown here. One label is taken from a vinyl copy pressed at the Santa Maria Pressing Plant, CA, according to the dead wax inscription (see here for the dead wax signature for this particular pressing factory), that features common Arial/Helvetica-like fonts regularly used back then for both red-commercial and whilte-promotional labels of the U.S. Columbia Records. Found on the other label is, however, an apparently different font which to me looks like Calibri (I'm not an expert on font, so this and the aforementioned font names may not be appropriate). Such a difference in label printing usually indicates that these vinyls are pressed at different locations each other. So, where did copies of the vinyl disc carrying this unusual labels come from?
 

A representative signature ◈-P-◈ for Pinckneyville
pressings that is found on the dead wax space
(stamped on both sides).

There is an interesting fact that, when the US Columbia Records were about to release DARKENESS LP late May 1978, there was a strike going on at the Pitman factory, NJ, a major vinyl pressing plant supplying a large percentage of records sold on the East Coast. According to a series of the Billboard magazine articles covering this labor issue (found in total seven magazine issues from April 15th to May 27th), the cause of the strike was a dispute over wages and mandatory work on Sunday. The strike apparently forced the company to delay the pressing, distribution and releases of some titles. The May-20th issue of the magazine reports as follows: “At an a&r and marketing meeting at CBS last Monday (May 8th, 1978) some low priorty releases were rescheduled but the company is going ahead with major releases by Barbra Streisand and Bruce Springsteen at the end of the month.”  So, what the Columbia Records did to keep on the schedule for major releases was to use several pressing plants that were not normally contracted with for manufacturing their products. In fact, the late May release, that was to be coincident with the beginning of the album promotion tour, was postponed to June 2nd. This was, however, not due to shut down of the plant, but to Bruce's decision to remix The Promised Land, hence the whole side 2, immediately before the completion of the album production (as told in Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story by Dave Marsh, Doubleday, 1979).

This copy is one of such products and pressed at a pressing plant located in Pinckneyville, IL, and owned back then by MCA Records, as indicated by a unique dead wax stamp ◈-P-◈. The exact matrix codes are as follows on each side (hand-etched, oblique; stamped, straight):

• Side 1:  ◈-P-◈    A side   PAL-35318-1L   PMI     TML-M
• Side 2:  ◈-P-◈                PBL-35318-2P   PMI     TML-S  

Hand-etched matrix numbers (left) and a "TML-M" stamp (right) on Side 1 of the DARKNESS Pinckneyville pressing. The symbolic stamp specific to the pressing plant and "A side" hand-etching are not pictured. 
 

On the other hand, one of the Santa Maria pressings I own shows the following matrix numbers:

• Side 1:  1S   PAL-35318-1A   TML-M        D1
• Side 2:  1S   PBL-35318-2C   TML-M        D3

As most of you know, another stamp "TML" is unique to and commonly found in original pressings for this album. This refers to "THE MASTERING LAB" that is located in Los Angeles, established by late Doug Sax, a great mastering engineer, and was back then considered one of the best ever mastering studios. The suffixes "M" and "S" indicate cutting lathes (for the Scully master and slave lathes, respectively). Note that a TML stamp is not playing side-specific and I've in fact observed every possible combination in my collection (Side 1/2: TML-M/-M; TML-M/-S; TML-S/-M; and TML-S/-S). The hand-written "PMI" seems also to be specific to vinyl discs pressed at the Pinckneyville factory because I don't probably own, or at least don't recall, any other vinyl pressings with this three-letter code on their dead wax space in my entire vinyl collection, except for this particular copy. I can't figure out what it stands for, however. While the label font and its arrangement look apparently different from the others as pictured above, as far as I examined, the sleeves (both outer and inner) show no obvious particularity, using large fonts for track-listing and black letters for album credit description.