Collecting log: Blinded By The Light U.S. 7" singles (Part 2 of 4) ー The promo-only white label is more common than the stock copies, but do you know two versions exist?

A recent purchase (right) made me aware of the existence of two different editions of the while-label promotional disc for Springsteen's first commercially issued single. No, of course, I'm not talking about two different company sleeves. Note the surface of the discs — one looks shining while the other sort of matte, which is not caused by ageing but rather reflects original physical properties of the discs.

White label promotional (WLP) releases of 7" singles are generally valued more highly than the regular stock counterparts, simply for the former are usually rarer than the latter in existence. However, the opposite is also true in particular circumstances where the stock copies go far beyond poor sales. This, in fact, is the case for Blinded By The Light / The Angel (Columbia 4-45805) and  Spirit In The Night / For You (Columbia 4-45864), Springsteen's first and second singles cut from his debut album in 1973. As mentioned in the last post (02/12/2020), the standard U.S. copies of Blinded By The Light, which were released today 47 years ago, have been sold at outrageous prices in auction and collector's markets. By contrast, the WLP 7" is relatively easier to find out with a vastly lower expense (see table below), unless it comes in the custom promotion-only colour sleeve. By the way, do you know that two versions exist for the WLP disc?

Last September, I made a short visit with my wife to the closest major city to my location in West Japan. While my wife was enjoying shopping at a giant department store, I visited a small used record shop nearby where I came across a WLP copy of this single in an old orange/white company sleeve. This was a bit surprising to me because such an old (pre-Born To Run) promo copy is nowadays quite hard to encounter in-store here. The copy looked a little deteriorated and priced at 4,104 Yen that included an 8% national consumption tax (= US $36.7 as of today's exchange rate). After a brief consideration (as I already got a copy many years ago), I decided to pick it up.
 
As I wrote previously (between 05/11/2016 and 05/29/2016), an interesting fact with 7" singles issued by U.S. Columbia, at least Springsteen's, is that most of the standard edition are made of polystyrene (hereafter called styrene). Although my 7" collection never is huge (as I'm not a 7" mania), all the U.S. stock singles in my possession are styrene-made except for the "tall font" edition of Born To Run / Meeting Across The River (Columbia 3-10209) and a few others released in the 1990s. However, the early WLP discs, released by 1975, are opposite: all my copies for Blinded By The Light, Spirit In The Night, Born To Run, and Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out (all mono/stereo coupling) are made of polyvinyl chloride (vinyl), excluding a custom promotion-only Spirit In The Night - Growin' Up / Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) (Columbia AE7 1088), although this does not necessarily deny the existence of styrene-WLP for these early 7-inches.

The matrix numbers on the mono side of styrene-mold (left) and vinyl-pressed (upper right) discs.
A roughly hand-scratched "S" is found on the vinyl disc only (lower right).

So, after going home and checking this old 7" purchase, I did not expect that it was a styrene-mold disc. According to the information provided by a 7" collector/expert (05/29/2016), back then at Columbia Records, vinyl discs were pressed at the Santa Maria factory, CA, whereas styrene records were produced at the Pitman plant, NJ, for this disc format. Consistent with this, my old WLP disc has the plant-specific matrix hand-etching S (for Santa Maria), as shown below (oblique, hand-etched; straight, machine-stamped):

Vinyl pressing is generally distinguished from
styrene mold by the presence of a so-called
stamper ring around the center hole (indicated
by a green arrow) and a rather tapered edge
of a disc (left in the lower image). For the
details, check the previous post (2016/05/14).

Vinyl WLP edition (manufactured in Santa Maria)

• Mono side:    J ZSP158224-2D      S
• Stereo side:     ZSS158225-2D      S

Styrene WLP edition (manufactured in Pitman)

• Mono side:    J ZSP158224-2B
• Stereo side:     ZSS158225-2B

Two Columbia U.S. series prefixes, ZSP and ZSS, refer to 7" single playable at 45 rpm in mono and stereo, respectively, with a single letter J (as J ZSP) denoting disk jockey (thus assigned for promotional copy). And here's the matrix numbers for the stock copies (as pictured in 02/12/2020):  

Styrene regular stock edition (manufactured in Pitman) 

• Side A:    ZSS158225-2A   (Blinded By The Light)
• Side B:    ZSS158226-1B   (The Angel)

Comparing the three matrix numbers for the stereo version of Blinded By The Light (underlined above), interestingly, the suffix code (-2A) of the standard disc precedes those of WLP records (-2B and -2D), which rarely occurs generally. At least with Springsteen's records, neither I know any other similar instance, nor do I know why this rare case happened, except for the debut LP. I'm also not sure whether the differences in the matrix suffixes just reflect the difference in the location of manufacturing plant (namely Pitman or Santa Maria), or indicate the differences in both the location and timing of manufacture (i.e., I guess there is the possibility that -2A might be issued earlier than -2B and -2D).

This copy with the sunburst stock labels resembles another holy grail
but is in fact a "Collectables" series reissue (Columbia 13-33323)
that was released sometime in the 1990s, coupled with Born To Run,
but not with For You. The disc shows characteristics of vinyl but not
of styrene.
 

Anyway, it is obvious that WLP copies for the debut single occur as two variants that differ in chemical precursors used for making discs. I guess this would also hold true for the second single Spirit In The Night since the circumstance around the matrix numbers and pressing plant is similar or rather more complicated. Although I don't own the regular stock pressing (= a holy grail collectable), my WLP copy is made of vinyl with the matrix number suffixes -1C/-1E (mono/stereo) and "T" hand-etchings, indicating that it was not manufactured at Pitman or Santa Maria but at the Terre Haute plant, IN. This single needs further exploration though...

— To be continued to Part 3 / back to Part 1.

Collecting log: Blinded By The Light U.S. 7" singles (Part 1 of 4) — Extremely scarce regular stock

The previous blog post (01/30/2020) reported a recent addition to my collection, which is considered one of the holy grail 7" singles of Springsteen. Since this month marks the 47th anniversary of the release of another holy grail, I found it might be a good opportunity to introduce it here.

Like most copies in circulation, the custom-picture sleeve of mine is folded and assembled by a slipshod job, with a slightly worn appearance. Underneath are the first (right) and second (left) Japanese releases for the debut album.

Blinded By The Light / The Angel (US Columbia 4-45805), his first commercial single from the debut album GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, N.J., was released on the 23rd of February, 1973. As wide-spreadly known, this 7" disc with the stock sunburst labels is a top collectible of all time, which is easily confirmed, for instance, by a quick search for Top 10 auction results through the Popsike database (check winning bids on the table below). It is often said that less than 100 copies are known to exist simply because they didn't sell and have seldom circulated since then. Still, Blinded is more common than the regular stock

 

copies of Spirit In The Night / For You (US Columbia 4-45864), the second single off the album and yet another holy grail with even higher value. These two kinds of stock 7" copies represent a typical example of how a standard copy becomes much rarer than the white-label promo edition that is generally of more value and illustrate how a cheap, trashy, and mediocre item is suddenly transformed into an incredibly rare collectible following dramatic changes in artist's status and reputation from unknown or local cult to nationwide, and then to worldwide.

Like every copy of this in existence, it is also a top gem in my inventory. According to my purchase log, I obtained this copy from a U.S. seller in the 1990s when the internet became available as a useful tool to exploit the collector's market. Mine is a (further rarer) stock copy that was distributed for promotion, coming in the custom-picture

The 7" track is shortened to 3 min 58 sec compared to the album
version (5 min 2 sec), which is reflected in the edited lyrics printed
on the rear sleeve.

sleeve and with a small promo sticker saying "Promotional Record For Broadcast & Review NOT FOR SALE" that is glued on the B-side label. Let me remind you that the disc is not a vinyl pressing but a styrene molding (that appears translucent red when exposed to strong illumination), just as many of the 7" copies made in the U.S. by Columbia Records (for polystyrene records, see the four consecutive posts from 05/11/2016 to 05/29/2016). Although there are no pressing plant-specific inscriptions on the dead wax, I assume that this was manufactured at the Pitman factory because Springsteen was then unknown and just came out from the East Coast. The matrix numbers are machine-typed as follows:

• Side A:   ZSS 158225-2A
• Side B:   ZSS 158226-1B

The promo sticker is also found on the A-side of the second single from the breakthrough third album. Two insets show the matrix numbers for the Blinded single (left, side A; right, side B).

Just for your information, the matrix-number prefix ZSS used back then by the Columbia labels referred to 7" singles recorded in stereo and playable at 45 rpm. The suffix code of Side A matrix number is -2A  — I don't know if there are copies in circulation with the suffix -1A (because I own just one copy and couldn't find the matrix information on publicly available databases such as Discogs and 45cat). Does anyone have a copy with the dead-wax -1A/-1B suffix code?  It is unlikely, though, that such discs exist, considering the beyond-poor sales (In other words, probably, the -2A copies are the first and only edition in existence).

You may know all the above already, and what I want to talk about here mainly is not this extreme rarity but the rather common white-label promo counterpart.
— To be continued to Part 2.