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.
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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.
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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
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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
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| 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.
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