First CD releases 1982-83?

I have never seen that ABBA disc on CBS. Interesting.

 

My informants tell me that CBS simply imported the Polar versions of the CDs produced at Hannover and stuck new catalogue number stickers over the Polar ones.

There's a few CBS Abba discs around, including a Readers Digest compilation from the UK, a single from the Netherlands and an ultra rare edition of Gracias Por La Musica from the US. All of these were issued in the late 1980s.

 

That's something I'd wondered about for awhile - perhaps that explains why there's no "EPC" in the catalogue number, since it wouldn't actually be a proper Epic disc? I've pondered whether that was a typo/mistake in the list I had.

I am always in awe and appreciative of KennyG's resourceful information on this forum!

 

Thanks for that info. Much appreciated.

 

Exactly what I was thinking regarding the catalog number. And also right on concerning KennyG.

 

Yep - the disc would have been a Polar release, which would have been imported from West Germany.

As I explained before, there were two versions of each early European Abba CD release: a Polydor version for areas where PolyGram had the Abba licence and a Polar version for other areas, including Britain. Polar being Abba's Swedish record label, which licenced out the rights to their records across the world.

For some reason, Epic applied stickers to copies imported in this fashion with their own catalogue numbers. They seem to have given up on this after a while - all the discs in my collection that would have been imported by Epic lack stickers.

Towards the end of Epic's licence period, the discs would have been Polydor ones because, presumably due to falling demand, PolyGram eventually ceased pressing Polar discs at some point around 1987 and all the other licencees starting receiving Polydor discs.

 

Couple monts ago I saw ABBA compilation CD from Readers Digest. Thats true!

 

It depends on which one though. There's lots of Readers Digest compilations and only this one was made by CBS.

 

I worked at a record store at he time and definitely remember seeing a European CD of Roxy Music's AVALON.

 

THANKS.. most helpful

 

Excellent!

I had been meaning to post a list of these for ages.

By the way, you have a lot of the 810s listed as 800s.

Cheers

David

 

I think Brothers In Arms was one of the first CDs to have a big buzz about it as a album and also because it was DDD.

 

Forgive me if this has been posted before, but "Brothers In Arms" was likely the first album recorded for the Compact Disc format. The LP had truncated versions of several songs.

 

Does anyone have a list of the first CD releases for Warner Brothers? I'm curious as to when Prince's Controversy and 1999 were first issued on CD. I know that Purple Rain was released on CD in 1984, the same year it was released on vinyl.

 

Here's the the March '83 issue of Gramophone magazine which was a special issue with reviews of the first European CD releases and some features on the new format:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/parkylondon/sets/72157603615751469/

 

I saved the first two WEA CD catalogs. Controversy was the only Prince CD in the first batch of releases. But the second catalog had 4 Prince titles. I put scans of both catalogs on my website:

http://www.lindaronstadt.com/files/scans/W/c/wea_cd_catalogs_.html

 

Very cool. Lots o' targets listed in those catalogs.

 

Thanks! Do you know when those catalogs were issued? It's interesting that the second list includes Dirty Mind. That album was apparently not yet issued on CD when the NYT reviewed Lovesexy in 1988:

http://www.nytimes.com/1988/05/22/a...till-prince-charming.html?pagewanted=3&src=pm

Could the second catalog include some albums that were expected to be released but not in fact released until later on?

 

Dirty Mind exists as a West German target, meaning that it was issued on CD somewhere between 1983 and 1985. Now, there may have been a period when the album was out of print, meaning a lag between the time the West German target was no longer pressed and non-target pressings appeared. Even so, I would have expected non-target pressings to show up before 1988.

 

My copies of the first three albums (For You, Prince, and Dirty Mind) have a different style of lettering on the spine than the three albums that followed, closer to the font used on the original album covers. So it seems likely that Dirty Mind went out of print and then was reissued in 1988 or thereabouts. I didn't start buying CDs until the late 80s or early 90s.

Does anyone know if the target Prince CDs have a different mastering than the later CD issues? If so I might want to seek them out.

 

Someone is wrong then.
IIRC Dirty Mind was one of the first four or five CDs I ever bought when they first came out, in '83-84. My copy of Dirty Mind came in long box, and is the only target CD I own.

 

The reviewer doesn't say that Dirty Mind wasn't yet available on CD in that 1988 Lovesexy review. What he says is that maybe Prince should sneak the Black Album out by putting it on the end of the Dirty Mind CD since he regards them to be similar in some ways - and there's room for both on one disc.

I would guess from the physical characteristics of the target pressings that "Dirty Mind" and "Controversy" were both out on CD by 1984. I don't think they've ever been out of print.

I don't think there are any Prince CDs that have been remastered since their first issue - it's possible that there might be tiny differences between pressings but nothing major like different transfers as far as I know.

 

There was also a Knight-Ridder story by Gary Graff from March 8, 1987 on compact disc releases that said the following about Prince's output:

"PRINCE. All the post-Dirty Mind albums are on disc and each features sound superior to the album. Beware of 1999, though, which is missing the dance vamp "D.M.S.R.""

Unfortunately, I don't have a link (I found the article on Westlaw). I don't know why the reviewer would have referred to "post-Dirty Mind albums" being on CD if Dirty Mind was in print on CD at that point.

I wish I had access to the Schwann catalog series as that might answer the question definitively.

 

Very interesting.

I had absolutely no idea Jeff Beck's THERE & BACK — a favorite here — was one of the first CDs.

 

The Japanese issue was when you consider the catalog number -- 35 8P-5. For some reason, There & Back did not come out so early in the U.S. There is no Japan-for-U.S. pressing. The earliest is a U.S. DADC pressing.