📷 Gallery Tijuana Brass Longboxes

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Harry

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A mention of CD longboxes prompted me to dig out the box of them that I saved from years ago. I thought I'd scan some and post them here. The first batch of TjB albums on CD included the first six, plus BEAT OF THE BRASS. Missing here is WHIPPED CREAM since I purchased the Japanese version first along with SRO and they didn't have longboxes.

I actually think that the better part of the bunch of compilations came first. It occurred to me that someone upgrading their collection would not need to by compilations unless they were released first, and that's what a lot of record companies did.

01-Lonely-Bull-Front.jpg
01-Lonely-Bull-Rear.jpg

02-Volume2-Front.jpg
02-Volume2-Rear.jpg
 
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I did not seen "Solid Brass" (1972 compilation) though at my old record & CD store "The Turntable" in Midland, Michigan back in 1989 though!! That store closed in late 2003 because of people downloading material on computer!!! The Saginaw, MI store also closed around 2008.
 
Harry: Those pictures are beautiful. I was a long time record collector until around 1987 when I bought my first CD - Classics 1 (in a long box), at Tower Records on West 4 Street in NY. And I bought the first CD release of Volume 2, and all the others at that time. It's now year 2021, over 2,000 CDs later, and I guess I'm going to stay "old school". Thanks for the memory.
 
I have a bunch of Herb solo too, but didn't have time to scan them yesterday. Also, some of Sergio and Lani and Cat Stevens - and a bunch of Beatles-related.
 
I have a bunch of Herb solo too, but didn't have time to scan them yesterday. Also, some of Sergio and Lani and Cat Stevens - and a bunch of Beatles-related.
Well the reason now I remember it was 1987 is because of buying Keep Your Eye On Me (in a long box) as well. But before I bought the individual CDs I had to get a quick fix with Classics Vol 1.
 
I really liked "Longboxes." In hindsight I wished I'd kept them, but as a collector of many things, storage would've been impractical. I found great joy in converting them into postcards to my Navy friends deployed at the time. Every longbox usually produced two postcards; some as many as four (and in a few cases only one)...

--Mr Bill
 
Its sure nice to see these Longboxes again i saw a few of them in stores and only a few of my Herb Alpert Cds came in them they were Greatest Hits. Classics volume 1. Under A Spanish moon. And North on South Street. And the longboxes sadly were lost later. But the pics shown are 100% Accurate I only wish I could've collected them all when they were available sadly I was Too poor to afford them at the time
 
In May of 1983, there were no more long boxes because artists ban the box. The first to do so was Peter Gabriel "Shaking The Tree: 16 Golden Greats" in late 1990!!!
 
The first album I think I got in a long box was Uptownship by Hugh Masekela at a Sam Goody in a Delaware County, PA mall. At this time, I had started moving to cds from vinyl or cassette.
 
In May of 1983, there were no more long boxes because artists ban the box. The first to do so was Peter Gabriel "Shaking The Tree: 16 Golden Greats" in late 1990!!!
I think you're off a decade. CDs didn't become commonplace until well into the 80s. Originally intended to serve as both a theft deterrent AND to allow stores to place CDs in the same bins as LP records, the long box was discontinued in 1993 after CD sales dwarfed LP sales, and, as you correctly mention, artists concerned for the environment (such as Gabriel, David Byrne and many others) put their foot down. Some artists embraced the longbox, though, incorporating it as a part of the art of their release or for other social causes.

The theft aspect is interesting to me. After the longbox went away, many stores just put CDs in this big ugly longbox-sized plastic frame with an alarm strip in it. And what about cassettes? I don't recall a theft problem with those, but then a friend of mine who worked at a record store reminded me his shop kept cassettes in a locked cabinet where the customer had to have the employee get it out for them. Plus they made those ugly plastic frames for cassettes, too.

The earliest longboxes were printed with the record cover (like with Harry's examples above) but later, to avoid printing thousands of different longboxes (and thousands of different inserts and booklets), the record companies just went with generic longboxes with a hole for the CD to show through... To some extent I'm sure that saved on some paper!

--Mr Bill
 
For the life of me, I can't remember if my first three CDs were in longboxes. And I can only remember two of the three titles. This was in 1983, when there were maybe just a couple dozen titles available. (I had gathered up several titles before I could get a CD player imported from Japan.) The Columbia labels always used an annoying plastic clamshell for their CDs in the early days. Never fun to get open.
 
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