Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: 'E' TICKET, its very limited first edition, also known as the advanced release (Part 4 of 5)This article supplements and follows up on the previous posts on this bootleg in October 2014.

On June 23, 1979, the Billboard Issue reported a momentous
event—the Largest Recording Seizure in Los Angeles Ever: the
confiscated bootlegs included "E" TICKET, although the actual
album title was not given in the article (Note that Billboard has
released magazine issues into the public domain by releasing
them on Google Books and the Inernet Archive).

Arguably, "E" TICKET is one of the most famous and important releases in the history of Springsteen bootleg, emerging in the late 1970s and often pirated in the vinyl era. The sound quality is splendid as a bootleg, probably sourced from a demo cassette provided to a New York publisher in 1975 (see below). In addition, the bootleggers wisely avoided using a slick insert cover (the standard of bootleg back then) and borrowed a great outtake shot for DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (as you know, officially used for the front sleeve of the U.K. 12-inch single off THE RIVER; see 12/22/2019). So, the album sleeve was quite appealing, looking like an official product as if it followed DARKNESS, although the material was nothing related to this album. And don't forget that this release was one of those bootlegs that upset the man and the record company in 1979, leading to one of the most famous lawsuits against bootlegging in the history of the U.S. music industry.

In 1978, FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS was 
reviewed in two U.K. music newspapers by
Giovanni Dadomo in Sounds and Susan
Hill in Melody Maker.

Chronologically, it was the first illegal LP exclusively sourced from studio recordings of outtakes and unreleased tracks, including instrumentals. Perhaps FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS came out and circulated earlier in the underground market. However, this equally important bootleg was not a full studio-recording bootleg and contained two live recordings among the five featured songs. Whether which bootleg appeared first may be the subject of the debate. Although not definitive, the reason I believe the above is that FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS was picked up and reviewed in 1978 in two British music newspapers, Sounds (September 16 issue) and Melody Maker (November 11 issue), whereas "E" TICKET was reported as a subject of the lawsuit in 1979 in two major U.S. magazines, Billboard (June 23 issue; anonymously as an unauthorized album; see the image above) and Rolling Stone (September 6 issue; being mentioned the actual title).

The original picture sleeve of "E" TICKET has a printed spine, while 
as far as I know, all FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS issues, including  
the original, have no such spine, except for a later copy shown here.

It is widely known that the source of the FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS material is a six-track 12-inch acetate that was originally given to Intersong, a U.K.-based music publishing company, in 1973. Although the acetate also contained THE FEVER, this demo track was not included in the bootleg despite plenty of room for the inclusion (the complete content was later digitized properly and released in 1992 on a bootleg CD titled FORGOTTEN SONGS). In contrast, to my knowledge, there has been scarce information about the actual source of "E" TICKET, except for one case explained below. 

If I'm not mistaken, the second bootleg that featured unreleased
and studio outtakes from BORN TO RUN recording sessions was
ROULETTE, pressed in the U.S., and the third was VISITATION AT
FORT HORN, pressed in the U.K., although the latter bootleg
contained only one new track (i.e., a double vocal version of Night;
Linda Let Me Be The One was already included in the former).

Since the reunion tour in 1999-2000, I have stopped collecting bootleg CDs and occasionally downloaded what interested me from fan-based websites early in mp3 and lately in lossless formats. I remember, suddenly in early 2014, the fourteen tracks of the BORN IN THE STUDIO CD (see 06/01/2024), which included all the "E" TICKET tracks, were upgraded to high-resolution audio formats (in 16-bit/44 kHz and 24-bit/96 kHz) and distributed through torrent download websites. This was all thanks to the dedicated efforts of a group of American concert tapers/collectors known as JEMS, who told the tale of how they came to handle the source tape worth being upgraded in the text file attached with audio files (an excerpt; the full text available here at BruceBase Wiki):

Late last year [2013; annotated by this blogger], JEMS’ friend and fellow collector CB told us that he believed a cassette he had received from someone in the New York music publishing business not long after the release of Born to Run could likely be the original source tape for all subsequent copies and releases of this material.

I don't know of any other specific testimonies on the original source of "E" TICKET, although the information is still far from clear, and the details, such as the publisher's name, remain unknown. Mike Appel might have distributed such tapes to promote Springsteen and the then-forthcoming album (just my guess). However, even if this was true, he probably does not remember that.

— Continued to Part 5 / Back to Part 1, Part 2, or Part 3.

Classic Vinyl Bootleg Revisited: 'E' TICKET, its very limited first edition, also known as the advanced release (Part 3 of 5)This article supplements and follows up on the previous posts on this bootleg in October 2014.

"When vinyl records were ready, the sleeves were not.”
That was what I was told, explaining why these classic bootlegs
from the late 1970s existed in two forms: one simple and the
other looking like official products.

About thirty years ago, or in the mid-1990s, I obtained this renowned Bruceleg from the late 1970s in an unusual form—a bit inky, plain, simple sleeve—from someone in Southern California, where bootlegging activities were the most active in the 1970s. He told me that the very early pressings were not housed in that well-made, black-and white sleeve we know but came in a plain white cover on which the album title and artist name were stamped with a handwritten serial number. He continued this was because the vinyl discs were pressed before the sleeves were finished, so the first pressing did not have a printed sleeve. This also probably explains why LIVE IN THE PROMISED LAND was first issued as a triple-vinyl box with a numbered insert rather than the famous gatefold sleeve.

However, since then, I had never seen such bootleg copies until I found one recently auctioned last March. So, what I wanted to do in the first place was to know if the auctioned copy was really the same issue as my possessions, as reported in the previous post  (06/26/2024) and summarized below:

• First, the vinyl disc was identical to my two copies based on the labels and the matrix number on SIDE A.
• Second, the plain white sleeve looked quite similar to mine and those used for other West Coast bootlegs in the 1970s.
• Third, although blurry and messy, the stamped letters on the front sleeve, which might otherwise have been created using a stencil sheet rather than a rubber stamp (or sort of), were found to be identical to those on my copies.

The difference is clear at a glance: writing, size, and ink.
The upper image is courtesy of and used with permission
from HiFi Dojo.

And lastly, one more critical element to be examined is the serial number handwritten on the sleeve. The number "#20" on the auctioned copy was written in a larger script using black ink, whereas that of my possession, #21, was smaller with blue ink, as previously reported (see 10/12/2014 and 06/01/2024) and shown here. Based on the hand scripts, these numbers are identified clearly as being from the pens of different persons. This is the only major difference I found between the auctioned copy and my possession (along with another with copy number "#27") and may clarify why the way of stamping on the sleeve is contrastingly different: the sleeve of #20 is stamped roughly and messy, while the stamped images on #21 and #27 are clear and legible.

Then, the next question arises: why were two different persons engaged in the handwork? Of course, there are several possibilities we can think of. For example, two or more bootleggers were involved in the album production, and they individually stamped the covers and gave each handwritten number. As a completely different scenario, although I think it's unlikely, the stamped sleeves were originally released without a serial number, which was later handwritten by collectors who got the copies. In the late 1970s, several bootlegs were issued with a limited number, but almost all were stamped rather than handwritten (for example, see 05/16/2015 and 07/26/2020). I cannot go into more detail as I have no other information or material to examine.

According to Clinton Heylin, along with "E" TICKET, THE DEMO TAPES
is one of the four classic vinyl bootlegs of Springsteen studio outtakes
(the remainders being FIRE ON THE FINGERTIPS and SON YOU MAY
KISS THE BRIDE; C. Heylin, E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce
Springsteen & the E Street Band, Viking Books, London, 2013).
The original copies of this U.K.-pressed bootleg were numbered
by stamping, not by handwriting.

By the way, you may wonder how the auction turned out. It was around 6 p.m. on March 14 (in Japan Standard Time) that I noticed it on eBay, which was, if my memory is correct, about five hours after the said bootleg copy was opened for auction by the seller in New York (i.e., March 14 midnight in U.S. Eastern Standard Time; Note that eBay has utilized the Western Standard Time as the official time). It was a Buy-It-Now auction set at $118.80, so I could have purchased it (although the sustained depreciation of the Japanese Yen against the U.S. dollar and increasing international shipping costs have become a heavy burden for us Japanese collectors). In fact, I was quite tempted to do so, but in the end, I did not. The auction was closed five hours later (around 10 a.m. EST on the same day), and the result has been listed on Popsike here. I bet only serious (and probably knowledgeable) collectors would buy this never-nice-looking record—the current owner may be someone who frequently visits and reads this blog. Even if so, I wouldn't be surprised and wish they could be.

— Continued to Part 4 / Back to Part 1 or Part 2.