Two copies in my possession alongside the Roxy '75 concert poster (not real stuff, image taken from Brucebase). Also shown bottom are three early CD bootleg releases of the live broadcast. I don't own the Crystal Cat version because I have stopped collecting bootleg CDs since free online distribution was available for downloading electronic sound files in the late 1990s. |
*To be exact, the very last part of Pretty Flamingo is cut. On the other hand, neither of the Bottom Line bootlegs is complete in their recording, missing one song totally or editing a few tracks heavily (detailed here).
As the second Hoffman Avenue Records title, a noticeable upgrade from the first title THE JERSEY DEVIL is that all four sides of the double disc have the custom-designed record labels that look more skilled compared to the simple text-only, one-sided label of the previous release ("I always tried to put labels on the records," said Mr. Lou Cohan in his interview with the popular music writer Clinton Heylin in BOOTLEG: The Secret History Of The Other Recording Industry, 1996, St. Martin's Griffin, NY). The fold slick cover does not feature an amateurish cartoon drawing found on THE JERSEY DEVIL, but is lifted from the actual concert poster, which was a nice and appropriate idea in making a slick cover of a given live bootleg. The latest acquisition as mentioned on the previous blog post provided me with the second copy in my collection, and so as shown above, the Roxy poster shows up easily without removing shrink wrap from the sleeve of each copy.
Custom record labels of the first (HAR 147; left) and second (HAR 160; right) releases from Hoffman Avenue Records. |
An early flyer of Hoffman Avenue Records says, as of January 31, 1976, only four bootleg titles were available at their hands that included the first two Springsteen bootlegs. The description on THERE AIN'T NOBODY ... is as follows:
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2. Bruce Springsteen "The Roxy"- a double LP taped off the FM. Contains the entire show of one hour and 50 minutes! Thunder Road/10th Ave. Freeze-Out/Spirit in the Night/Pretty Flamingo/She's the One/Born to Run/Sandy/Backstreets/Kitty's Back/Jungleland/Rosalita/Goin' Back/Detroit Medley. Great covers and labels. $7.50 plus 50¢ postage. (According to Inflation Calculator on the DollarTimes website, $7.50 in 1976 had the same buying power as $33.31 in 2018)
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The three other titles are: #1, THE JERSEY DEVIL (Springsteen); #3, S.N.A.C.K. (Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Band); and #4, Basics in G Minor 4-track EP (Dylan).
THERE AIN'T NOBODY ... or THE ROXY: Which is the main title the bootlegger intended originally? |
Yet another flyer, which was issued later than the one mentioned above, lists more bootlegs such as their third Springsteen title HOT COALS FROM THE FIERY FURNACE (HAR 164; briefly mentioned previously here and there) and introduces again THERE AIN'T NOBODY ... as shown below:
RED. Mr. Cohan told Heylin that he always tried to use colored vinyl when it was available at the pressing plant (referenced from the aforementioned BOOTLEG book). So, I think when the first two Springsteen bootlegs were pressed for the first time in 1975, colored vinyls were not available at the plant(s) he used (and that's why the early flyer does not tell anything about vinyl color). However, such vinyl variations were probably available when Mr. Cohan was ready for pressing the third Hoffman
Avenue Records title in February 1976 (and I guess he has used them instead of black vinyl). To support this, I have never seen black vinyl copies of the early pressings for HOT COALS FROM THE FIERY FURNACE (with the custom picture labels; shown here). If this is true, colored vinyl versions of THE JERSEY DEVIL and THERE AIN'T NOBODY ... were probably pressed (as repressing) around the time when the initial, colored edition of HOT COALS ... was pressed. As far as I've seen, black vinyl copies of THERE AIN'T NOBODY ... is always coupled with the white slick insert. So, I am almost certain that the Roxy '75 bootleg was originally black vinyls and came out with the white slick insert.
— To be continued.
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