Originally With Obi-Strip.
Outside Japan, this was issued as a self titled album, but here has the only English word: "Sex" in the title.
Four way fold-out lyric sheet.
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Magic Marmalade 27th Apr 2022
| | Values for this have gone through the roof.
Often listed on Discogs and ebay now from £300 - £500 (and up!), but this value I have entered was the last sold price on ebay, and seems more reasonable.
(There is also a sold listing for the cassette version there for £60! :O) |
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Magic Marmalade 5th Jan 2018
| | Seek and ye shall find greg!
I'd forgotten the lyric sheet tucked in the front cover booklet :)
Had to joey about with the exposure to compensate for the white paper and my defective scanner (Which will soon be experiencing a very brief period of weightlessness, followed by a heavy thump, if it doesn't start co-operating!)
So it would seem that only the obi is the missing object for imported copies. |
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gregs45s SUBS 3rd Jan 2018
| | Indeed Holmes;)
It looks like there were at least two pressings MM,your one,which may have just been intended for export issue?,as i notice it has no Japanese lyric sheet as the one on Discogs has,and therefore was intended for Japan.
Time will tell no doubt;) |
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Magic Marmalade 2nd Jan 2018
| | Indeed, and no disc image on discogs (albeit mine is not very good - blame it on the scanner), which doesn't help.
But surely from such a small run they wouldn't change any of the features at any time?
(I mean you'd have to actively intervene in the printing process for the covers to add or take away something)
So new possibilities arise... Either there was quite simply more than one pressing - 2 at least - In which case, there may be many more of them out there than previously thought, and could mean that the possible 500 figure could just refer to just one, or each of these pressings, in which case, you could be looking at 1000 in total (or more... or less if one press was less than this)...
...Or, these could have been divided purposely if some where intended for export, and others for domestic sale.
I did read somewhere (Forgotten where) that the Warner-Pioneer relationship was fairly short lived, and disassociated in 1991 (?) Just around when this would have been released, so maybe they were half way through a press when instructed to remove it (but why not from the disc too?)
It is evidently not elementary Watson. |
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gregs45s SUBS 1st Jan 2018
| | I don't think yours is a fake MM,more likely just a different pressing,as to whether it's earlier or later,i wouldn't know but yours is still made by the Warner Pioneer Corporation,see Disc rim-text. |
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Magic Marmalade 1st Jan 2018
| | Hang on a moment....
...There's another oddness here!
The one listed on Discogs has: "Warner Pioneer Corporation" in black letters on the Japanese language spine... but mine does not!
so either mine could be a fake, or there was more than one pressing.
(Mine does look very professionally made, as does the disco-dogs one) |
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Magic Marmalade 1st Jan 2018
| | And a Happy New Year to you too Mr. Greg. :)
Probably the move to putting shrink wrapped CDs on the shelves in store was a labour saving policy... you could make more "efficiencies" by sacking a couple store bods then, and have the rest do something else with their time.
..although it could be that collectors or other nerdy types wanted them to leave it on there.
(And yet original vinyl copies of albums from the late fifties still turn up...hmmmm - someone telling porkies I think. Still can't get my head around how a Beatles album makes it all the way from the sixties still sealed... after all, it's not like anyone can get a home shrink-wrapping machine and do it themselves is it? :)
I am kind of hoping there's a Prince fan about who can inform us on why this issue was aborted, and the story of this disc in general... any purple people out there? |
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gregs45s SUBS 1st Jan 2018
| | A nice find MM,a great start to the new year,it has raised a question in my mind though,were early CD'S shrink-wrapped in cellophane?,or were they unwrapped/open?,i honestly can't remember,so after a quick search on t'net,i found these two quotes :
"In the early days of CD's in UK/Ireland most were opened before they were put on shelves and the CD was taken out only to be redeemed on purchase"
reply....
"And having worked in the biz i can confirm that many CD's sold in the UK never came shrink-wrapped from the factory."
(might explain the export sticker being on the case itself?)
(PS I realise this particular CD isn't that early,but i can't recall when shrink-wrapped CD's became common on shelves) |
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Magic Marmalade 1st Jan 2018
| | Also just occurred to me why many of those that do turn up will be missing the obi strip...
... The HMV sticker on my case will mean that the bods at HMV would have had to remove the shrink wrap to put it on there, and therefore likely to have discarded the loose strip as packaging.
So if one does turn up with obi, it's likely direct from Japan, and I can't image HMV brought over just one or two, but a box or two to share among their stores (in such quantities as they deemed they could sell), and so, from a (possible) run of only 500, many may have gone over-seas, leaving only a few in Japan itself, meaning the obi must be extremely rare indeed, and therefore the inclusion of which in any offered, must jack up the price to truly eye watering levels! |
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Magic Marmalade 1st Jan 2018
| | Did not know what or who this was when I bought it from the charity shop the other day... I only went on the basis that whenever I see Japanese writing in a CD, it's worth a punt.
...Turns out, I may have found a fair old bit of rarity here!
(Happy New Year to me, happy new year to me... :)
Having a dig about on the net when I got it home, it seems this is a Prince project band who appeared in the Purple Rain film, and named after the singer Apollonia, who replaced a lady named Vanity - formerly "Vanity 6" (I expect all you Prince people already know this).
But this particular CD issue is hard to get a beat on, other than to say that it seems this Japanese issue was the only appearance on the CD format anywhere in the world (until recently, when a limited remastered version was released, and a bootleg or two that is floating about.
I can't seem to find any reason as to why this is so, but I've seen a couple of references in Amazon reviews (US site) that this original CD had only 500 copies pressed (Can't find any confirmation of this from other sources, so only anecdotal)...
...So it would seem this was a cancelled release, or a mistake of some kind.
The underside of the CD tray (when popped out of the case) has a "Patents Pending" stamp, with the number: SA6VB - which may help with identifying original parts.
Inner ring matrix: WPCP-3701 1A1 TO |
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