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| The Japanese CD editions of NEBRASKA (up to the third pressing) featuring the long version of My Father's House have been typical collector's items. Shown is a brief description from a mini-catalog of Backstreets Records issued around 1988. |
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We, collectors, are always interested in an alternative take or mix on a previously released track, even if the difference is subtle between the two. Among the overwhelming amount of officially released Springsteen's studio/home recordings,
My Father's House with an extended coda is the first such example of a regular album track. However, neither he nor the record company intentionally released it, which, for unknown reasons, resulted from using an alternative "pseudo-stereo" album mix featuring this song as the only outstandingly different track from the standard release (see the
relevant entry in
BruceBase; see also
09/22/2016). This extended version has long been believed to be available exclusively on the CD copies of
NEBRASKA originally pressed at a Japanese factory in 1985 (
CBS/SONY 32DP 357), which were also exported for the first CD release in other countries, including the
U.S. (
Columbia CK 38358) and
Europe (
CBS CDCBS 25100). Note that such CD copies were recalled in the
U.S. However,
Sony Japan continuously pressed the CD variant for the domestic market until the third pressing in 1995 (
SRCS 7860; the second pressing with the catalog number
25DP 5246 in 1988).
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The vinyl reissue (the fourth Brazilian copy in my collection) was shipped from that country on October 25th, last year, which I received on November 10th. The faster delivery than I expected, considering the current situation under the COVID-19 pandemic.
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However, this long belief turned out to be erroneous. As I reported previously in a series of blog posts on this topic (
05/22/2019,
07/13/2019, and
07/22/2019), the vinyl copies of the album issued in
Brazil (
CBS 138.641) back in 1982 already contained the alternative take instead of the regular track. It was three years before the Japanese version came out, and it was not a CD but vinyl. To the best of my knowledge, the Brazilian LP is the only commercially available source for this track in the vinyl format. So, the story behind how it came about might have differed between Brazilian and Japanese cases as the release year and format are different (
i.e., 1982 vs. 1985; vinyl vs. CD). Curiously, the Japanese and Brazilian versions are not the same strictly, differing in the playing time, with the former clocking in at
5 min 35 sec while the latter lasting
5 min 43 sec (see
07/13/2019).
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Record labels on early (lower two) and late (upper two) Brazilian pressings of
NEBRASKA LP. The latter is identified only by the release year (1985) printed
on the side-one label (the side-two label remains non-updated). |
Owing to the huge success of
BORN IN THE U.S.A., the vinyl album of
NEBRASKA was repressed in the mid-1980s worldwide, in many countries, including
Brazil.
So, I was wondering whether the Brazilian reissue continued to contain the extended version or not. Sometime in quarantine days last year, I ordered and obtained a 1985's repressing from a Brazilian seller (the copy is shown in the
previous post). By appearance, there are no obvious differences between the original and reissue, and the latter is distinguished from the former only by the
side-A label that states "
1985." I don't know if the lyric sheet, like the original pressing, was included in the reissue (mine did not). Disc's dead-wax matrix numbers are as follows, which look similar but not identical to those for one of the three 1982 releases I possess (Copy #2, see
07/13/2019):
- Side A: EL C 138641 A 1-2-5 AL-38358 I
- Side B: EL C 138641 B 1-1-9 BL-38358
The Side B label still prints the running time of My Father's House as 5 min 43 sec, and this side exactly plays Track 3 as listed. So, probably all the Brazilian copies feature the extended version of this song.
The next post will continue on NEBRASKA LP, focusing on Asian pressings.
