LP Differences- Record Club vs. Store Copy

rockdoctor

Well-Known Member
Here is an item of interest. Years ago, I got Melanie's Candles In The Rain through a record club. Many years later, I picked up a copy and looked at it at a thrift store. I noticed a song on the thrift store copy that was not on the record club copy. I have never seen a different copy like that before or since. Anyone else ever notice that in their club buying days? I did buy the thrift store copy to have the extra song.
 
I've had experiences with a few club albums where some songs were either omitted or substituted I don't remember offhand which and at the beginning of the CD Era some albums had extra songs added to them and when the clubs started offering CDs they made it a point to mention "CD version Contains more tracks than LPs and Tapes" just a little extra food for thought
 
I think it was more common with "discount labels" than record club versions, although the practice may have evolved. I know at our music store, every now and then somebody would bring in an LP or tape that either they wanted to exchange for something else, or maybe it was "defective" in some way. I got very good at spotting the telltale signs of a record-club copy -- albums usually looked the same except they would have something like "Product of Columbia Record Club" or something like that in small print on the back. Sometimes the spine text would be different as well.

Cassette and 8-track tapes often looked very different -- for example a genuine A&M 8-track for a while was in a black cartridge with no slip-case and a plastic "clip" over the tape end to protect the exposed tape. If a tape was from the Columbia Tape Club, it would be in the standard Columbia packaging, which was a standard slip case with cutouts for the front and back labels.

There was a discount label called Pickwick that would reissue hit LPs sometimes with different artwork and occasionally missing a song or two. But not always.... I got a Pickwick version of Alan Parsons' Tales of Mystery and Imagination that had all the songs intact, but the Pickwick version of Sergio Mendes' Crystal Illusions was missing one song. (I forget which song was gone.)

The idea of adding songs to CD versions was mainly a ploy to get people to buy the new format. Usually the added song was a reject that was not worth wasting time on, although the CD of Phil Collins' No Jacket Required had a terrific bonus track, "We Said Hello Goodbye," which I still enjoy today.
 
Yeah, the Pickwick reissues were hit and miss. They kept the hits and missed a song or two! (Ba-dum-bum)

I still have a crappy Pickwick reissue of Sergio's YE-ME-LE. I bought it as a refresh of my vinyl not realizing it was missing the song "Moanin'". It also had the sides reversed and the plug-ugliest record cover ever.
1655118336140.png
 
That bad album cover still reminds me of an early Genesis outtake with Peter Gabriel in one of his costumes. 🤣

My main beef with record club LPs is that the sound quality, and even the pressing quality, were low grade. I've never bought a used record club LP that sounded right--there is always something wrong with it compared to the original. I had For Animals Only (Baja) and Soul Burst (Tjader) that were from the Capitol Record Club (completely with their "SMAS"-series catalog numbers) that both sounded dull and distant, and the label colors on both were off. I bought a TJB Coney that had this very strange tonal quality to it, courtesy of the Columbia Record Club. (I didn't notice the microscopic "CRC" on the jacket until I got it home.)

CDs fared better since, being the digital age, the label could just copy a digital master and send it to the club. I also have an LP on the Intuition label (N.Y.C. by Steps Ahead) that was released in the digital era--late 80s--so the LP was probably made from a digital master, and it sounds nearly identical to the CD. The lone exception to the rule for LPs, in my experience.
 
I remember seeing the "extra songs" listing on the record club lists for cassettes and cd's. I was still buying lp's when I could so the extra songs note did not mean much to me.
 
Yeah, the Pickwick reissues were hit and miss. They kept the hits and missed a song or two! (Ba-dum-bum)

I still have a crappy Pickwick reissue of Sergio's YE-ME-LE. I bought it as a refresh of my vinyl not realizing it was missing the song "Moanin'". It also had the sides reversed and the plug-ugliest record cover ever.
1655118336140.png
Here is a thought. Pickwick would have had to buy the rights to use the painting from the original Ye Me Le and maybe the deMoraes family would not let them use it. That is how that hideous cover photo ended up on that release.
 
That bad album cover still reminds me of an early Genesis outtake with Peter Gabriel in one of his costumes. 🤣

My main beef with record club LPs is that the sound quality, and even the pressing quality, were low grade. I've never bought a used record club LP that sounded right--there is always something wrong with it compared to the original. I had For Animals Only (Baja) and Soul Burst (Tjader) that were from the Capitol Record Club (completely with their "SMAS"-series catalog numbers) that both sounded dull and distant, and the label colors on both were off. I bought a TJB Coney that had this very strange tonal quality to it, courtesy of the Columbia Record Club. (I didn't notice the microscopic "CRC" on the jacket until I got it home.)

CDs fared better since, being the digital age, the label could just copy a digital master and send it to the club. I also have an LP on the Intuition label (N.Y.C. by Steps Ahead) that was released in the digital era--late 80s--so the LP was probably made from a digital master, and it sounds nearly identical to the CD. The lone exception to the rule for LPs, in my experience.
In the CD age, especially the 80’s and 90’s when there were only a few CD plants, how many times would the same plant make the CD for the record club and for general release, just changing the silk screening and packaging fine print, but use the same master?
 
The idea of adding songs to CD versions was mainly a ploy to get people to buy the new format. Usually the added song was a reject that was not worth wasting time on, although the CD of Phil Collins' No Jacket Required had a terrific bonus track, "We Said Hello Goodbye," which I still enjoy today.
The No Jacket Required album sounds incomplete without "We Said Hello Goodbye"....
 
I had the original Virgin CD of Phil's album, bought on release week (it was an import since Atlantic in the US was not doing simultaneous CD releases yet), and for me the album officially ends with "Take Me Home," as it was released on that CD. I can't remember where I heard the bonus track though--maybe on a compilation?
 
That awful Sergio Mendes cover is the best example of "What we they thinking?!" I've even seen when it comes to record packaging. You have to wonder, who approved that thing, and has he been successful in his album-cover-designing career?

Maybe it was a printing mistake, like the time on WKRP in Cincinnati when a big standup display of Venus Flytrap advertising "Soul Suds" shampoo was accidentally printed with a picture of Herb Tarlek barbecuing.
 
I had the original Virgin CD of Phil's album, bought on release week (it was an import since Atlantic in the US was not doing simultaneous CD releases yet), and for me the album officially ends with "Take Me Home," as it was released on that CD. I can't remember where I heard the bonus track though--maybe on a compilation?
My UK Pressed Virgin Nimbus CD that I purchased in March 1985 has the extra track.

Atlantic shipped an advance copy of the LP without the jacket to our College radio station.....
 
Phil Collins "We Said Hello Goodbye" went to # 34 in May or June 1988 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary Charts NOT on Hot 100 or Mainstream Rock. That song is also in the movie "Playing For Keeps" starring Marisa Tomei from October of 1986. Nothing to recommend because it wasn't a great movie!!!
 
I just checked my CD copy. It's a Made In USA by Laser Video Inc., red ring Atlantic disc. It's in a smooth-edged jewel case and has as track 11, "We Said Hello Goodbye". Windows Media lists that track as a Bonus track for whatever that's worth.

I can't recall where I obtained this one, but one page of the inner booklet is upside down.
 
Atlantic shipped an advance copy of the LP without the jacket to our College radio station.....
The LP didn't have the track, far as I know, hence the "bonus" on CD. I wish I had bought an LP copy of that one, but CDs were the "big new thing" back then and I grabbed my UK copy either in the store when I first saw it, or mail order with some sort of advance order maybe. (We had a really good record store who would source new releases from the EU or UK if the US label wasn't doing a simultaneous CD release. It's also how I got Sting's Bring On The Night live set the week it was first released, as opposed to A&M in the US releasing it years later.

And of course there was no jacket for the advance LP....as it wasn't required.






😁
 
I just checked my CD copy. It's a Made In USA by Laser Video Inc., red ring Atlantic disc.
Mine, being a UK (or EU?) release, was silver with the track listing and other info in Phil's printing. Very hard to read, as it was printed in red.

Face Value was the best in terms of art--it had a pale blue Virgin label with Phil's lettering clearly printed in black. A shame it developed a hub crack, just sitting on the shelf unused for years. (I made a CD-R copy once I discovered the track.) My version of Hello, I Must Be Going was the awful sounding US CD release, one of the first CDs ever released in fact. (One of my first three CDs purchased.) Had one of those ugly "target" labels. Still a bit miffed that I sold the LP--it sounded way better.
 
I just checked my CD copy. It's a Made In USA by Laser Video Inc., red ring Atlantic disc. It's in a smooth-edged jewel case and has as track 11, "We Said Hello Goodbye". Windows Media lists that track as a Bonus track for whatever that's worth.

I can't recall where I obtained this one, but one page of the inner booklet is upside down.
I just added my copy of NO JACKET REQUIRED to Discogs. It wasn't there. My copy must be some sort of rare version if it wasn't already up there.

 
Capitol Record Club releases would have an SMAS-xxxx catalog number on the jacket and the label.
I have an issue of Carole King Tapestry that has the SMAS on the label. It was an early pressing as it still had Ode70 on it as well as the SP 77009. The labels are reversed on the record itself. Side one label is side 2 songs.
 
[Mod: posts about the Greatest Hits series have been separated out into their own thread.]
 
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