Vinyl Records - Part 3

Hello again. This is the last part of my presentation series on vinyl records. This one is the shortest one of the whole bunch ;)

The last thing I’d like to talk about is the “hardcore” aspect of vinyl collecting, namely finding vinyl oddities/very rare albums and releases which never made it to the digital-era music market… If you're not too interested in such peculiarities then you can safely skip reading this part. I don't want to bore you people on purpose ;).

What kind of rarities are we talking about? Here are some examples that I’m aware of:

a) Album releases with different covers

Example: the original LP of the “In Through The Out Door” album by Led Zeppelin is said to have been released with 6 different cover designs. One of them is a photo of a guy in a dressed in white sitting in a bar (that’s the design that appears on most today’s CD releases of this album). There’s also a cover design showing also the guy in the bar, but it’s shown from a different perspective, having the guy in the white suit in front of you. I’ve also seen a design that looks like the album’s wrapped up in cheap and plain packing paper with the album title printed on it like it’s been stamped (I’ve also seen this cover design on the recent “mini vinyl” CD releases). Click here for a website that showcases all the mentioned cover designs.

There’s also a story about a Jimi Hendrix Experience album, namely “Electric Ladyland”. It’s said that it had 2 cover designs and that the first edition of the LP cover featured Jimi with a lot of naked women. Shortly after, this design has been misteriously replaced by a “less intimidating” one (it’s totally different than the original, it shows Jimi’s head during a live performance). Also, not every country accepted the first design, so their first edition had the second design.

b) Album releases with errors made by the printing company/record manufacturer

Some collectors have managed to find some LP’s with “glitches”. For example: side B being the same as side A, less tracks on the record than stated on the album cover/label and vice versa, etc.

There’s also the story of the Rolling Stones album “Aftermath”. When it was released under the Decca music label, there was a printing glitch. One of the most famous songs which came from that album, “Paint It Black” was written “Paint It, Black” on the cover (not in the track listing on the back, but on the front side, under the album title there’s written in a smaller font: “Including Paint It, Black”) and on the record’s label. Later in an interview when asked about this small colon issue, band-member Keith Richards said “That’s not ours. Ask Decca about it. It’s their fault.”

c) Promodiscs and bootlegs

Promodiscs are vinyl records issued especially for record shops and music reporters in order to showcase the album. They are always marked that they’re for promotional causes only and that they’re not for sale, but sometimes you can find such records on sale today.

A promodisc notice on the back of the record's cover

Bootlegs are illegal pressings. These are either pirated copies of original albums or material unreleased by the music artist’s label. One of the most common practice with bootleg releases was to smuggle a tape recorder to a band’s concert, record the music from the audience and then release it to the market, mostly in small quantities.

There’s also a lot of music that has never been (and maybe never will be) released on a digital medium, especially in jazz and classical music.

These aren’t the only examples of vinyl rarities. I’ve got 2 albums in my personal collection which are pretty rare. Let me tell you about them and why are they so significant:

1. Black Sabbath – “Black Sabbath” (NEMS edition)

This is a 1976 re-edition of the first Black Sabbath album by the NEMS music label. The original one was released in 1970 by Warner Brothers. Here’s the review of this particular edition taken from allmusic.com:

“British record label NEMS, which contributed both the Live at Last and Greatest Hits albums to Black Sabbath’s catalog, also issued their own versions of some of the band’s classic Warner Bros. releases in the late ’70s. Aside from the recurring misspelling of Ozzy Osbourne’s name (”Ossie”) in the liner notes of the NEMS releases, there are some interesting differences between the Warner Bros. versions and the re-releases. Most significantly different is the first album, Black Sabbath, which, in NEMS’ pressing, bears a completely different track listing than the better-known version, and the song “Wicked World” is replaced by a Crow cover called “Evil Woman.” Diehards should watch the used vinyl bins for this oddity.”

I managed to snatch this album from an Internet auction for less than 10 złoty! Other "vinyl hunters" probably didn’t know of the significance of this record or thought that it was another re-re-release of insignificant value. Their loss ;)

2. Deep Purple – “Shades of Deep Purple” (Tetragrammaton edition)

Many people think that Deep Purple started off with EMI. Problem is that they didn’t. Their first album, titled “Shades of Deep Purple”, has been recorded and released by a small American record label called Tetragrammaton. The debut was a success and pretty soon EMI came a’ knockin’ to Deep Purple with a contract offer. The band took the deal and EMI bought the rights to the first album. Funny thing is though, that until the 2000 CD remaster release, every release of “Shades of Deep Purple” under EMI was made not from the original master tapes, but from a dubbed copy vinyl disc, which was pretty inferior quality-wise. Apparently, Tetragrammaton has kept the original studio tapes until just recently. Thanks to that, one can say that the original first edition LP is the best sounding one.

Anyway, apart from the story above, it is the very first edition of the LP, so it’s pretty rare nowadays.

Final advice: always try and look for some information on a particular release before discarding it, even when it doesn’t look too promising. Many collectors found real vinyl treasures by sticking to this method.

That’s all on this subject for now. I hope you found my presentation interesting. Happy commenting ;) (constructive criticism is also welcome).