Sep 22, 2016

Thoughts on My Father's House on NEBRASKA LP (Part 2 of 4)

Backstreets Records Ad for set sale circa 1993, featuring
NEBRASKA acetate and test pressing discs, both with the
alternate version of
My Father's House.
In Japan, the CD copies of NEBRASKA are pressed using differently mixed, two master tapes (i.e. impermissible narrow stereo mix used for the early copies and approved mono for the late ones). In addition to the mixing format, there are some more obvious differences between the two masters such as pitch, track length and sound volume. However, the most notable is that the early stereo-mixed copies, that was pressed from 1985 till 1995 in the Far East, contain a longer version of My Father's House with an extended and quiet keyboard coda. The last blog briefly introduces such CD issues for domestic and export markets and ends with the following question: Is there the possibility that the alternate take of My Father's House is featured on vinyl LP copies?

Before the commercial release of vinyl records, acetates and vinyl test pressing are created at the first and late steps in the vinyl manufacturing process, respectively. These rare and high-valued non-commercial discs have been circulated mostly for the US and UK releases of NEBRASKA LP. Shown images on the right are taken from the 1993 Holiday Catalog of Backstreets Records that advertises a copy each for the one-side (Side 2 only) acetate disc and the test pressing vinyl from the US, both described as featuring an alternate take of My Father's House.

An example of Side 2 label of the acetate disc.
What are hand-written differ slightly from those
described in the Backstreets
Records catalog as
above (neither in my possession nor the one
 recently auctioned on eBay as mentioned in the
main text; this image was downloaded
somewhere on the net around in 2002)
I don't exactly know whether the featured takes on the acetate and test pressing vinyl are identical to the one that appears on a series of Japan-pressed CD (although I think perhaps so), as I have never owned these extremely collectable discs. They are also infrequently sold at internet auction. Most recently, I saw the pair of one-sided acetates put on eBay late last year (December 2015) where the seller was asking US $2,500 for the set available through "Buy It Now" option. The existence of the test pressing vinyl which is, unlike the acetates, pressed usually right before having a record mass-produced, indicates that the alternate track had almost been made on the LP album. This is consistent with the often told tale that Springsteen ultimately rejected the alternate master mixed in stereo (see Brucebase, for example). Then, how about the regular vinyl pressing?
— To be continued.

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