To commemorate scoring Black Sabbath concert tickets for the April 20, 2014 show in Calgary, I decided to make my largest and longest post yet. Most of you wouldn’t give a crap about this stuff, but please indulge an old man and his neurotic hangups.

Thanks to my ongoing sell off of duplicates and other unwanted hardcore and punk records, I was able to concentrate on acquiring something I thought completely unachievable in the past. Original, first press, UK copies of the first six Black Sabbath albums.

Getting into Sabbath, or any early hard rock collecting, is just on a different level from punk and hardcore collecting. You start venturing into the realm of the creepy, 60 year old, know-it-all types that you find at record swap meets. They operate on a completely different level when it comes to record prices, variants and most of all, condition. Since we are talking about 40+ year old records, it is a major issue.

After doing lots of online research, I was able to get a handle on what the first press/first issue records were, what the distinguishing signs or marks were, and what I should be looking for in the credits and matrices. After one furious month, I had it done.

My only condition for buying was that I needed a first press (or close) and that the vinyl had to be EX or NM. A tall order for old records with high demand. Funny thing though, apparently all you need is lots of money and you can get anything you want!

One of the first things I heard from the hard rock community online is that when it comes to Black Sabbath records, the best are the original UK pressings. They are apparently far superior in sound quality to the European or North American ones. Audiophiles are a funny breed. They can detect and hear shit the rest of us can’t. With their descriptions of music as airy, warm, dry, and coarse, I’ll take their word for it.

We might as well get started with the self titled first album. This was pressed in 1970 on Vertigo Records. The Vertigo swirl found on the cover, labels and inner sleeve are considered classics in collecting. The inner sleeve alone can sell for $50.

This copy I have is a second version of the first press as the B side label is missing the “A Phillips Record Product”. The matrix, catalog number and sleeve are all unchanged.

The original Vertigo album comes as a gatefold which is way cooler that the simple standard sleeve we got here in North America on Warner Brothers. The layout starts the band down that slippery Satanic slope they tried in vain to dig themselves out of. An inverted cross will tend to do that.

I dig the inside of the gatefold big time.

Second we have Paranoid. This one is also on Vertigo with the swirl labels, inner sleeve and cover.

The layout is close to the same as the WB one we got here with the exception of the color and some of the written text. I don’t know what it is in the design of these gatefolds, but they are so much much better than the ones we have now. They don’t crack or fold any of the cardboard if that makes sense.

Unfortunately, there is some sticker removal damage on the front. Not the worst thing ever, but compared to the rest, I may have to upgrade some day.

Next up is the collector’s wet dream. First press Master of Reality on Vertigo Records. This was unique as the first press came in a laminated and embossed box style cover. The album opened from the top with a flap which contained the record and a six panel poster of the band.

Due to the age of this record, finding a copy with no box damage, the laminate still intact, and complete with an original poster is rare. Rare means expensive. Really, really expensive. I’m glad someone bought all my Poison The Well and Thursday records! Later European Vertigo issues had a standard sleeve and smaller poster. Fuck that though. Go big or go home. Accept no substitutes!

This one was unique for Vertigo as the labels and inner sleeve were inversed with white on black as opposed to the standard black on white. The inner sleeve with this one is in near mint condition as well.

This was also the first time the band went with lyrics and credits on the back cover as there was nowhere else to go with the box style.

This one is easily my crown jewel of the collection. The laminate is 95% intact and that is way better shape than most. This is becoming super hard to find in top condition. So happy to have this.

Next up is Volume 4. This one is also on Vertigo Records and comes complete with the swirl on the gatefold sleeve, labels and inner sleeve.

Another big feature is the gatefold comes with a booklet insert attached at the fold. I was so happy to score one that was not only attached, but in such great condition.

This is a legit first press with “Porky” and “Pecko” etched matrices, “VO Price Code” on the back cover and no song lengths on the inner cover. I bought this online through a private deal outside Discogs or ebay. I was kind of scared to say the least. When this arrived as described and in perfect shape, it was one of my happiest days of the year.

Things take a turn with the next album Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. The band was fully coked out of their heads at this point and getting robbed blind by their label and management. As a measure to remedy the situation, and give the band more creative and financial freedom, they moved to the short lived WWA label.

WWA would end up repressing their entire back catalog, but Sabbath Bloody Sabbath was the only first press release the label would have. This version is so awesome just for the fact it came in a gatefold sleeve with this awesome trippy picture of the band. The Warner Brothers version here had none of this.

It also comes with this awesome double sided inner sleeve with lyrics and credits. Mine has some creasing on it but you can’t have everything.

I might have to try and run down some more WWA presses. Word is they are pretty rare and just as collectible as the Vertigo stuff. I might need a second job though.

Finally, we have the Sabotage album. The UK first press was released on NEMS Records. I only knew NEMS as the label that released Live At Last. Back in 1980 we all thought it was a bootleg as it wasn’t on Warner Brothers and it came out after Dio was already around for Heaven and Hell. Oh, the days before the internet!

Sabotage was pretty light on bells and whistles. Standard sleeve but with a weird paper texture that is different than the normal glossy one usually used. Other than that, it isn’t too different from the Warner Brothers version.

That’s it. I still own all my Canadian pressings of these albums as well as everything from Technical Ecstasy all the way up to Headless Cross. Oh and 13. Can’t forget the album of the year – 13. I’m not sure how much love they will get now that I have these around though.
This manic exercise put a lot of things in perspective for me. For one thing, you don’t even bat an eye when someone tells you postage will be 25 pounds. In fact you ask if you can pay more as long as it is tracked, insured, triple boxed, use alternate inner sleeves for shipping, etc. Risking corner damage or split seams to save on postage seems insane. I guess that comes from spending two mortgage payments on six records. In our normal collecting world, punks freak if postage is higher than $8. It will be interesting adjusting again.

Black Sabbath are the greatest band of all time. That is all. I sold my soul for rock and roll!

This piece is cross-posted from We Will Bury You! with permission from the author.

At 59, I am old enough (and hopefully wise enough) to understand that nostalgia and memories from one’s youth tend to positively bias your feelings about many experiences.  So I will attempt to keep my feelings about vinyl records even keeled.

None of today’s youth will ever experience the excitement of riding one’s bicycle down to the local record store to purchase the latest 45 RPM release of that song that you had been listening to on the AM radio for the past month.  It was the 1960’s, and a mere 25 cents could fulfill this experience.  But wait!  Before you actually purchased this 7 inch wafer of vinyl, you could take it to a private listening booth equipped with a record player and “preview” the two songs.  Some patrons would misuse this privilege and never buy the record, others might damage the unsold records from mishandling.  I, on the other hand, wished to perform some QA/QC on that particular record prior to commitment.  Then, I would race home to play it on my parents Magnavox mono console.  Although two-sided, the A side usually contained the hit song, and I would play it over and over at elevated volume until my parents protested.  If there was evidence that several songs in a collection were popular, then I would purchase the 33 RPM LP instead.  If you could get your hands on a jukebox version of a 45 record, then both sides A and B would be popular hits, sometimes even different artists.

Whether it is a 130 year old wax cylindrical record from my Edison antique phonograph or a modern 180 gram vinyl LP, there is nothing like the tactile experience of holding something “physical” that contains not only information, but memories, pleasures, history.  There is no electronic media created today that will last as long as a vinyl record, at least not without some conversion or transformation process.  You cannot compare a flash memory card with that beautiful LP record with its center label, printed inner jacket, and colorful outer jacket.  Some of those albums even came with a small poster.  And not all vinyl records were black in color.  I have a Beatles 45 in clear green and an Elvis Presley 45 in bright red.

OK, before you label me as a dinosaur, I should tell you that I have a pretty decent collection of music CDs and MP3 files.  It is not that digital music is bad, it is just that most digital forms of music have not been deployed properly.  I use the word “deployed” because the technology is out there, but is not utilized because of society’s preference for quantity over quality.  Media like compact discs actually sound pretty good, but media like Sirius/XM, HD Radio, and most MP3 type files suffer from compression, lack of dynamics, low sampling rates, and psycho-acoustic manipulation.  If you think that this compromise does not matter, or you cannot hear the difference, then you need to get your hearing checked.  A well-kept vinyl LP record will have a distinctly better sound than Sirius/XM, hands down.  It is interesting how some people can notice this, and some cannot.  I am always up on my soapbox preaching this issue.  I do not think that much of the younger generation even know what true high-fidelity sounds like.  And I am talking about high-fidelity from older technologies, let alone new!

Most readers will know that recording companies are still pressing vinyl records, mostly the higher quality 180+ gram versions.  These records sound fantastic.  Not as convenient as a CD, but a lot of fun to listen to, and with that warm analogue sound.  My interest in vinyl has been renewed as of late, and I invested in a decent modern turntable and phono preamp to add to my vacuum tube stereo.  Yes, vacuum tube, i.e., hollow-state (versus solid-state).  I went as far as to partially restore a 1952 Seeburg M100C Jukebox, which holds fifty 45 RPM records (100 titles).  That jukebox simultaneously captures three of my interests at once: vinyl records, vacuum tube electronics, and electro-mechanical devices.  It is amazing to me how engineers in the early 1950’s managed to design a device that performed some pretty complex maneuvers using only mechanical parts, including memory function.  The design, colors, and lighting of that jukebox lure you into its grip, and after perusing the catalog of song titles, you are prompted to press those selection buttons, and be fascinated by the precise mechanical movements of the record selector in anticipation of hearing your favorite artist.  Can you think of any modern-day manufactured electronic device that can still operate flawlessly after 62 years?  Good luck…

I like vinyl.  I know that it will not be around forever, but I bet that it will outlast all of the other newer media combined.  I also hope that this recent revival in vinyl records continues to escalate.

Martin Minnicino

As home to most of the nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, music industry, Los Angeles naturally exerts an influence on the production of music. For all the Doobie Brothers’ protestations, bootlegging proved far more complex, politically and economically. While the internet and MP3s have opened up new opportunities for music, and at the same time have undermined traditional music industry structures, the confluence of music piracy and new recording technologies, fights over copyrights and artists royalties, and fans’ access to music stretch back much further.

Predictably, Southern California pirates played a critical role in all of this. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, by creating the eight-track, pushing the music industry to use new recording technology, and defining an anti-establishment ethos that continues to reverberate in the internet age, pirates in Los Angeles provided a window into the tensions over access to music that besets the sometimes obscene, but always difficult, ménage a trois relationship that exists between artist, label, and fan.

As noted by Alex Sayf Cummings in his recent book The Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century, piracy existed long before MP3s or even tape recorders. Los Angeles in the late 1960s and early 1970s played a critical role in twentieth century bootlegging and, by extension, the music industry.

First, take Glendale’s Earl “Madman” Muntz. Dressed in all white, driving an alabaster Lincoln Continental, and wearing a Napoleon hat, one could not miss the energetic salesman. Credited with establishing the “this guy is insane” approach to selling cars, Muntz squeezed prices and pushed sales by engaging in various wild antics. Muntz often advertised a daily special, destroying it by evening if he failed to unload it.

Having played a critical role in popularizing the drive-in market in the 1920s, cars and consumerism have long been at the heart of Glendale’s existence. Muntz capitalized on this relationship. By combining the car with the new technology of magnetic tape, Muntz bettered the practicality of four-track cartridges (two programs, two tracks each) and, in the process, played a crucial role in bringing the medium to the wider public. Luring Engineer Bill Golden from Texas, the two men improved upon the original model. As noted, California’s car culture played no small part in these developments and the development of four- and eight-track recordings, just as paralysis setting in on Los Angeles freeways made Muntz’s timing impeccable. As Golden told interviewers years later: “I guess it was kind of like iPods are now … For a teenager at that time [the car] was really a domain, and because of that it was a product that people would spend money on and put in their cars.”²

Aviation pioneer Santa Monica’s Bill Lear joined forces with Muntz and pushed the technology even further, adapting Muntz and Golden’s innovations to an eight-track format (four programs, two tracks each). Placing it in his Learjets and soliciting the car industry to install them in their vehicles, Lear helped to popularize the new technology.

The two men’s proximity to the L.A.-based music industry nullified their lack of connections. Despite being music industry outsiders, they prodded new developments in commercial recordings. For a long period, the industry had avoided employing magnetic tape as a recording medium; however, through Lear and Muntz’s deals with RCA for their music, Ford for their cars, and Motorola for their stereo equipment, the music tape cartridge finally reached a mass audience. Lear struck deals with other record companies, as did Muntz with Capitol in the late 1960s. With so many formats being available, record companies waited it out to see which one prevailed — and the eight-track emerged victorious as they finally embraced magnetic tape.

By the 1970s Muntz was out of the tape business. With thousands of four-tracks driving around Los Angeles, entrepreneurs attempted to step in and provide pre-recorded cartridges for consumers that labels no longer would. “How could the public get four-track tapes? What the hell are you supposed to do?” asked Los Angeles stereo equipment salesmen and bootlegger, Donald Koven. “What’s the public to do? … I was forced to give my customers good service.” Though Koven employed the arguments of bootleggers and pirates from earlier decades, California state officials disagreed.³ Coven pleaded “no contest” in 1971 when charged with violating a 1968 state law that made unauthorized reproduction of sound recordings illegal. California had become the first state after New York to do so.

The Great White Wonder and Rubber Dubber

Though eccentric, Muntz and Lear stood as paragons of American business, innovators and entrepreneurs firmly ensconced in the capitalist system. What arose along side their adventures into magnetic tape recording, though, declared itself firmly against capitalism — sort of. For all the talk of “underground records,” hazy Marxist organization, and a disgust with mainstream capitalism and consumerism, this new breed of bootleggers operated on some of the most basic of economic forces: scarcity, supply and demand, and marketing.

Late 1960s and early 1970s California — Los Angeles and San Francisco especially — exuded a counterculture ethos that bled into piracy and bootlegging. Just off Hollywood Boulevard at Las Palmas Avenue one could saunter into the Psychedelic Supermarket and pick up a copy of Bob Dylan’s “Great White Wonder,” known to be one of the first commercially available bootlegs (released by L.A.-based “Trademark of Quality” bootleg label), for a couple of bucks. Posters of ’60s rock bands, revolutionaries, and cartoons adorned the walls around the store, which offered typical sundries of the hippie era — pretty much everything but the drugs themselves. A few Angelenos recall the Psychedelic Supermarket as a stop along the way to the city’s occult/gothic scene that unfolded at what remained of Houdini’s castle in Laurel’s Canyon, “a cool rendezvous spot for the ‘spooky’ L.A. denizens who knew the scene,” recalled one blogger.

Los Angeles stood at the center all kinds of political and metaphysical experimentation. Espousing radical notions regarding intellectual property and music, a new wave of pirates pushed past the preservation and archiving goals of previous generations of music pirates. Instead, this new breed of “counterculture” bootlegger employed a “complex amalgam drawing upon both Marxist and utopian socialist writers, [that they] translated into the rhetoric of the New Left,” argued sociologists R. Serge Denisoff and Charles McCaghy.⁴

Popular music, a clear result of the capitalist machine so many bootleggers claimed to oppose, seems an unlikely source of rebellion. Yet, bootlegging offered these individuals and fans a form of revolt that combined characteristics of the counterculture movement: anti-corporate, anti-consumerism, and anti-technology attitudes regarding mainstream society. “Many of our salesmen would otherwise be pushing drugs,” twenty-something Los Angeles bootlegger Uncle Wiggly told journalists. “We give a lot of money to the free clinic and to the peace coalition. I don’t think there’s anything illegal about this.”⁵

Undoubtedly, Uncle Wiggly subscribed to a more radical idea of politics than mainstream America at the time. But others took their beliefs further. In fact, the most radical of bootlegging factions, Rubber Dubber, operated in Los Angeles out of their East L.A. warehouse. While its unassuming location shrouded it from attention, Rubber Dubber’s radical political rhetoric echoed that of Eastside lefties, like those in 1930s Boyle Heights, in its attention to collective action.

Rubber Dubber established a media identity and functioned as a “capitalist commune,” producing live performance bootlegs of notable artists like Jimi Hendrix and James Taylor, with striking artwork and photography, complete with their own logo. The organization sent new bootlegs to Rolling Stone for review, and though Columbia Records threatened to withdraw advertising from the magazine as result, agents soon started contacting the collective in the hopes the group would bootleg their up-and-coming clients.

Rubber Dubber leaders, who remained shrouded in mystery and rumor, argued that they provided a service that connected artists with fans by eliminating the middle man: the record label. To some extent this was true since, unlike labels, which had levels of bureaucracy to wade through and agents to cajole and coerce, bootleggers simply snatched up the latest concert tickets, dispatched someone to record the performance, and produced a bootleg.

L.A’s proliferation of venues meant countless opportunities for bootlegging. Rubber Dubber captured Neil Young at the Los Angeles Music Center and Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, and Jimi Hendrix at the Forum. A Rolling Stone interview with the bootleggers responsible for “Great White Wonder” underlines the endless opportunity and immediacy of L.A. piracy. “Do you know what will happen if you get away with [bootlegging]? Why if John Mayall or anybody opens at the Whisky tonight they’ll be a live recording of it on the stands by the middle of next week,” an exasperated Jerry Hopkins pointed out.⁶

Rubber Dubber professed a quasi-Marxian vision that echoed the rhetoric, at least of Eastside radicals decades earlier. “Everybody in Rubber Dubber has to work,” one of its leaders told an interviewer, “but nobody has to work all the time, and nobody works the same job every day. Each person knows how to do every facet of the operation, so if somebody gets sick or wants to take a vacation, somebody else can take over.”⁷

The group’s leaders went even further, attesting that all profits they produced were to be shared equally and even claiming that artists received cuts of bootleg royalties. Still, whatever the rhetoric, the reality remained much murkier, as one former employee claims no such profit sharing existed: sales teams worked on commission, artists never got a dime, and the workers never shared in the proceeds. “It didn’t take long to see through those guys,” he told Cummings. “They were only in it for personal gain.”⁸

If Rubber Dubber’s ultimate intentions veered significantly from their espoused ideology, they were hardly the only ones. Indeed, for every Rubber Dubber, there was a Godzilla’s American Phonograph Record Export Service. Located in Glendale, Godzilla made no bones about its approach as the company issued catalogs that openly embraced basic capitalism. “We offer these high quality original productions at the lowest, most competitive prices possible,” its catalog noted. “This enables your firm to have a substantial profit margin when reselling this product.” With a sly nod to the counterculture, Godzilla’s owners also noted that underground records, being easier to sell wholesale or to retailers, produced greater profit margins.⁹

Whether they were radicals or opportunists, the game was soon over. Congress passed the first-ever copyright for sound recordings in 1971, under heavy pressure from the recording industry. For years pirates and bootleggers had exploited the gray area in the law that protected songwriters and their written compositions, but provided no separate copyright for recorded performances as creative works in their own right. In response to the new law, Rubber Dubber and others scrambled to clear their stock. The age of the “counter culture” bootlegger who aimed to take down the system ended, and piracy returned to preservation and archival duties.

In the end, Muntz, Lear, and Rubber Dubber may have espoused different political beliefs, but they all looked to exploit technological and legal vacuums regarding music production and recording and capitalized on the unique advantages offered by Los Angeles. The eerie symmetry between the copyright issues of the 1970s and those of today’s internet age (i.e. Napster and Facebook, as depicted in “The Social Network”) suggest that L.A.’s spaces and places have long played a critical role in shaping how we listen to and consume music.

¹ Alex Sayf Cummings, The Democracy of Sound: Music Piracy and the Remaking of American Copyright in the Twentieth Century, (New York: Oxford UP, 2013), pg 150.
² Ibid, pg 83.
³ Ibid, pg. 85.
⁴ Ibid, pg. 106.
⁵ Ibid, pg. 103.
⁶ Ibid, pg. 98.
⁷ Ibid, pg. 103.
⁸ Ibid, pg. 118.
⁹ Ibid, pg. 114.

Note: This article was originally published in the Intersections column for the KCET Departures website, June 27, 2013