Collecting log: Devil With The Blue Dress Medley (live) from NO NUKES 1979 (a.k.a. the MUSE concert), a U.S. custom promotion-only 12" disc released as the 100-numbered 33⅓-speed limited edition (Part 1 of 4)

Various NO NUKES releases (from left): a Japanese regular copy with the Obi strip; a custom U.S. promo-only 12" disc played at 45 rpm (still with the price tag of $10); same but played instead at 33⅓ rpm; a U.S. test pressing made at a Columbia Records plant in Santa Maria; and a white label U.S. promo copy.

You may be wondering why my blog was not updated for quite some time. Have I run out of material to write about?  Never, of course not and there are still plenty left. In the past months, my work-life balance was skewed too much towards work, which has kept me away from blogging and other hobbies for unpredictably long periods. In addition to this main reason, during this period, I have become a victim of the evil of eBay Global Shipping Program (GSP) thrice. In each case, the seller in the U.S. adopted GSP for the international delivery, even though I pleaded him/her not to do so and to reconsider to use another option (i.e., any method of direct shipping from a seller to a buyer) instead of this quite inconvenient program for overseas buyers. As a result, without explicit explanation, the "extremely rare items" of Springsteen vinyl collectibles I won were restricted at the Global Shipping Center and not allowed for export to my location.

eBay Order Details displayed on my account: I lost my invaluable
items every time I saw these irritating and disgusting messages from
eBay due exclusively to the Global Shipping Program which was
 introduced around in 2017.

Even worse, my restricted items were "confiscated" by the transportation company for future resale somewhere in the U.S. in order to compensate for the monetary loss due to the refunds I and seller received. So, there are no chances forever that I recover "my items". Of course, I wanted to know the persuasive reason for the item restriction, but after several attempts, I learnt that the eBay Customer Support was totally useless and not quite helpful at all on this matter. This prompted me to make inquiries directly to Pitney Bowes, the company that is responsible for the Global Shipping, and I finally received the official answer from their customer service as to what really happened (Maybe I report here the full account on this issue sometime in future). Anyway, terribly disappointing experiences in these transactions have certainly demotivated me for doing blog things, and to some extent, hunting vinyl collectibles on eBay particularly from U.S. sellers.

A clipping of the commemorative radio program table for the
release of THE RIVER, taken from an old issue (no. 23 in 1980) 
of a major FM magazine published in Japan. The nearly 2-hour
program (aired from 16:10 to 18:00 and hosted by DJ Sayuri
Yamamoto) started off with three songs (Born To Run / Badlands /
The Promised Land; #1-3) from the two preceding albums and
then the entire 20 songs from the then-new album were aired
in the original sequence (#4-14, 17-24). Two live tracks (Stay /
Devil With The Blue Dress Medley; #15 &16) from the NO NUKES
album were played in between Discs 1 and 2 of the double album.

During these unpleasant days, one of the things that made me feel happy was NUGS monthly releases of official live archive series. Late last year, the second December release (thanks to Christmas holidays) saw the two-night stand from the Musicians United for Safe Energy (MUSE) Concerts For a Non-Nuclear Future (NO NUKES), performed at the Madison Square Garden in New York City, September 21-22, 1979. This particular archive release was really a great Christmas gift to me because the first night performance contained "THE" version of Devil With The Blue Dress Medley (often referred to as Detroit Medley), the very first live recording of Springsteen I have ever listened to among official and unofficial sources. I still remember my skin tingled through this listening experience. That was late in 1980 on the radio airplay from NHK-FM station during the commemorative program for the release of THE RIVER, and was before I started building up vinyl bootleg collection sometime in summer 1981.

In contrast to the wealth of recent live archive downloads, there were only a scarce number of his official live recordings available around the time I became interested in his music through his 5th album. To the best of my knowledge, by 1981 when I started collecting, only the following live tracks were officially released in vinyl form for regular retail sale, promotional purposes, or radioshow programs in the U.S.:

Regular releases

• Stay / Devil With The Blue Dress Medley, recorded on September 21, 1979, and released in 1979 on the soundtrack 3-LP album NO NUKES (Asylum ML-801)
• Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, recorded on December 12, 1975, and released in 1981 on the charity single album IN HARMONY 2 (Columbia AL 37641)

Promotion-only releases

• Circus Song, recorded on May 1, 1973, and released as a 7-inch EP with two other tracks in 1973 on the Columbia Play:Back series (AS 52)
• Devil With The Blue Dress Medley, recorded as above and released as a 12-inch EP in 1979, backed with Jackson Browne's Before The Deluge (Asylum AS-11442)
• Santa Claus Is Comin' To Town, recorded as above and released on both sides of 7-inch and 12-inch singles in 1981 (Columbia AE107 and AS 1329, respectively)

Radioshow releases

• Bishop Danced / Prove It All Night, recorded on January 31, 1973 / July 1, 1978 and released in 1980 on the 5-LP radioshow program called ROCK ON THE ROAD Part II: The American Bands (D.I.R. Broadcasting Corporation, no number)


The King Biscuit Flower Hour 4-CD release
celebrating its 15th anniversary broadcast
with Spirit In The Night live from the
legendary Max's Kansas City club 1973.

Speaking of radioshows, live recordings were often not pressed on vinyl discs but sent to radio stations in tape form. I'm not sure whether the very early shows of King Biscuit Flower Hour in 1973 exist in vinyl form when the radio program aired the three live songs (Bishop Danced, Mary Queen Of Arkansas and Spirit In The Night) recorded at the Max's Kansas City club. The re-broadcast program is though available as radioshow discs in both vinyl and CD formats that are pressed and distributed to radio stations in 1984 and 1988, respectively (check here). As far as I know, the instrumental Paradise By The "C", not from the Roxy 1978 recording but at a Berkeley 1978 concert where the above-mentioned live performance of Prove It All Night is also sourced, has not been released in any official vinyl/CD format.

From Backstreets Records Warehouse Catalog #44
(Auction Catalog Spring 1997)

As listed above, the 12-inch promotional vinyl disc of Devil With The Blue Dress Medley was (and still stands as) one of the old vinyl collectibles. Interestingly, although the vast majority of the circulating copies play at 45 rpm, the 33⅓-speed version was also pressed in a limited run of 100 copies. I don't exactly remember how and when I got to know the information as to the existence of this alternate pressing and the reason behind it. Maybe from mail-order catalogs from overseas. Or more probably through communications with someone at the Backstreets Records as I was once a subscriber in the 1980s to 1990s to the fanzine they published. However, it was certainly before they auctioned this special 12" promo on their warehouse catalog spring 1997 (see the scan right).
— To be continued.