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.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN US LP variations: Decoding two- or three-letter matrix hand etchings on the early pressings (Part 2 of 2)

NOTE: Vinyl discs reported here with the hand-etched matrix code "PPP" was found not to be pressed at the Pitman factory. Please check the updated information in the blog entry from 8/20/2022.

One yet unelucidated DARKNESS matrix code found
in some of the early U.S. pressings.

In some fraction of the early vinyl copies of the U.S. DARKNESS album released in June 1978, you can find at least four different varieties of hand-etched matrix codes, PN, PMI, PMN and PK. Each code specifies one of the four pressing plants that had been used unusually and temporarily for making Springsteen's fourth LP, due to the transient shutdown of the Pitman plant, one of the three major Columbia plants back then. In the last post, I attempted to crack these codes and proposed that: (1) the first and shared letter P might denote the Pitman plant because it is the most probable common term; (2) a second letter, N, M or K, refers to an initial of company that owned one of these pressing plants; and (3) a third letter, I or N, specifies the State where a company locates its own facilities. According to these assumptions, I interpreted the four matrix codes as follows: PN for Pitman/North American Music Industries, Scranton, Pennsylvania; PMI for Pitman/MCA Records, Pinckneyville, Illinois; PMN for Pitman/MCA Records, Gloversville, New York; and PK for Pitman/Keel Manufacturing Corp., Hauppauge (blog posts 1 and 2), New York.

There may be more examples but I cannot so far find any others, except for the three-letter code PPP, which is hand-inscribed on the run-off matrix of SIDE 2 of the certain pressings. I own four such copies whose rear sleeve features the large track listing and black font credits (see the last post for the details of the rear sleeve variation). The four copies share the identical matrix information and the machine-stamped TML-M inscription is found on both sides of vinyl disc. Thus, these pressings are not repressed copies (see this

Upper: The original SIDE 1 matrix number suffix 1AD is crossed out, after which
1AG is added. Two-letter suffixes usually don't indicate initial pressings.
Lower: The likely pressing plant-specific code PPP is found on SIDE 2 only.

post for an example of repressing). However, they are also found not to be initial or very early pressings because their matrix number suffix consists of two letters as visible on each side (1AG/1AB). Like the other four matrix hand-etchings, I first presumed that PPP encodes a unique pressing plant name and its geographical location. So far, however, I couldn't think of any plausible interpretation for this matrix code using the aforementioned assumption rules.

The following are what I consider as key facts and circumstances:

1. As explained above, the PPP-handetching pressings are NOT regarded as initial or very early copies that are originally released on June 2nd, 1978.
2. The pressing number seems NOT to be small since these copies are relatively found easily at used record shops or online auction, suggesting that they were pressed at a Columbia's regular pressing plant.
3. Upon the settlement of strike, the Pitman plant resumed the operation by the end of May or early June in 1978 (according to the 05/27/1978 issue of the Billboard Magazine), and thus it is most likely that this facility got started pressing the DARKNESS album by early summer in 1978.
4. These particular vinyl discs were apparently NOT pressed at Santa Maria and Terre Haute plants, the other two regular Columbia plants in operation back then, because their representative matrix codes, such as 1S and T1, are not found on the dead-wax space. 

Taking these into account, I guess the most probable pressing plant that had pressed these discs would be the Pitman plant, even though what exactly the triple P encodes remains unelucidated (All I can say is that one P letter, at least, must refer to Pitman). Having said so, I am still not certain about whether my guess is right or wrong. So, I would like to know if other interpretations are possible on this code.

Finally, I have examined my collection and summarized, as shown above, the relationship of record company/pressing plant/matrix information for the early U.S. pressings of the DARKNESS LP. It must be noted that, as the tabulation is solely based on my own copies I have kept to date, this summary is not complete and still missing relevant pressings that should be incorporated herein. For instance, I guess there would be a few more variants that were pressed at non-regular pressing plants. Another guess is whether the Santa Maria 1A/2A pressing has been available (as I have never seen the copies). Does anyone have a copy of such?

 → Check here for the updated information.

DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN US LP variations: Decoding two- or three-letter matrix hand etchings on the early pressings (Part 1 of 2)

Left, The first news article on the Pitman strike reported in the Billboard magazine (issue 04/15/1978; Note that Billboard has put the magazine issues into the public domain by releasing them to Google Books and The Internet Archive); and middle & right, Pressing plant-specific matrix hand etchings as found on the early vinyl copies of DARKNESS released in the United States. For the details, refer to the main text.

As I first introduced here March in the last year, there is a small unusual variety of the early U.S. pressings of his fourth album, as to where they were pressed. These variants occurred because, when the LP was ready for production, the Pitman pressing plant, one of the three major plants used by Columbia Records back then, was not available for the operation due to continued labor issues that first happened on the 2nd of April 1978, according to Billboard Magazine. Thus far, I have confirmed that at least four vinyl manufacturing plants, excluding the other two major Columbia-related plants in Santa Maria and Terre Haute, made up for the shortfall in vinyl pressing at the early phase of the album release. The said four plants were owned by the following companies that had probably never been involved in Springsteen's album production before:

• North American Music Industries (NAMI), Scranton, PA
• MCA Records, Pinckneyville, IL
• MCA Records, Gloversville, NY
• Keel Manufacturing Corp., Hauppauge, NY (posts 1 and 2)

Most probably, these plants contributed only to the early pressing but were not utilized when the album was repressed, for I have never seen any relevant copies without TML dead-wax stamps (a signature of the early pressings; see this post for more info) or housed in the later LP sleeves*.

*To my understanding and as mentioned here previously, with the exception of Half-Speed Mastered and recent Remastered reissues, there exist three kinds of different sleeves for the US DARKNESS LP with variations on the rear: 
      #1, large track listing/black font credits without barcodes;
      #2, small track listing/white font credits without barcodes; and
      #3, small track listing/white font credits with barcodes.

Upper, left to right: #1 sleeve, white label promo Terre Haute pressing; #2
sleeve, regular Terre Haute pressing; #3 sleeve, regular Pitman (?) pressing;
and the Japanese white label promo first pressing (Obi is removed to indicate
the absence of barcodes). Lower: thick (left) and thin (right) inner sleeves.

These issues are also distinguished by some differences found in the accompanying inner sleeve and lyric insert. For example, the inner sleeve is grouped into two variations which are made of thick and thin papers with standard and poor quality images, respectively. Generally, #1 and #2 come with the thick inner sleeve whereas the thin version is mostly associated with #3. Although I am not sure, #1 was probably out slightly earlier than #2 because I have never seen white label promo copies that came in the #2 sleeve. The Japanese first pressing and all the subsequent vinyl issues there feature the small track listing, indicating that the #2 sleeve probably appeared on the U.S. market less than one month following the #1 version (Note that the first Japanese pressing is released one month behind the original U.S. release; see this post). So, here I refer to both #2 and #3 as "later LP sleeves" even though I know some collectors claim that #1 and #2 appeared simultaneously (i.e. they were printed by different printers). Post your comments if you have different views and information on the U.S. rear sleeve variation.

As I already explained in a series of the previous posts, each of these unusual vinyl discs has a unique symbol that is stamped on the run-off groove area, such as that denoting the Union Jack (i.e. Keel pressings) or a stylized U.S. Capitol building (i.e. NAMI pressings). Each symbol is specific to one of the four pressing plants and thus signifies where a vinyl copy originated from. In addition, such vinyl copies carry a unique, hand-written, two- or three-letter matrix code that is also specific to a pressing plant, as listed below (and shown in the above pictures).

• PN for NAMI, Scranton, PA
• PMI for MCA Records, Pinckneyville, IL
• PMN for MCA Records, Gloversville, NY
• PK for Keel Manufacturing Corp., Hauppauge, NY (posts 1 and 2)

So, what do these simple short codes mean?  It is a matter of fun for me to crack these matrix inscriptions, even if my interpretations may often be found incorrect. First, all the codes begin with "P", for which I assume "Pitman" since I cannot come up with any other commonalities, that are indicated by this single letter, among these pressing plants except the fact that they have served as substitutes for that New Jersey plant. The second letter in each code (N, M or K) probably refers to the initial of company name (i.e. N for NAMI, M for MCA, and K for Keel). The third letter in PMI or PMN distinguishes the location of the two plants back then owned by MCA Records (i.e. I for Illinois or N for New York). To summarize:

• PN = Pitman + NAMI
• PMI = Pitman + MCA + IL
• PMN = Pitman + MCA + NY
• PK = Pitman + Keel

While I am still not certain with regard to the first letter "P", I think this interpretation sounds logically good. There is, however, yet another three-letter code which I cannot figure out thus far. The code is found on the dead wax space of not very early, but not later repressed copies (coming in #1 sleeve), based on the matrix number suffixes. 
— To be continued.