First CD releases 1982-83?

Schwanns were notoriously unreliable.
You'd have better luck with a Phonolog.
Or a WB price sheet.

 

They presumably meant to say that all the albums from Dirty Mind on were on CD in '87.

These were the first Prince CDs released:

Dirty Mind
Controversy
1999
Purple Rain
Around The World In A Day

None of them have ever been out of print as far as I'm aware.

 

Hi Michael,

Thank you for the thought. I certainly would be an interest project.
Only trouble is, it would involve using time that I'd much prefer to use making new recordings, using everything I've learned about the history of recorded sound.

And fitting the new recordings (and everything else associated with them like finding artists, preparing projects, recording them, mastering them, building Web pages to get them out, etc. etc.) in between regular day-to-day work takes up most of my "free" time.

I'm currently moving into the post-production phase on two recordings I did earlier this Spring. One of which I believe will be the world's first truly "purist" rock recording.

Best regards,
Barry
www.soundkeeperrecordings.com
www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

Something to consider is that, while some WEA targets were out early, the repressings didn't happen for quite awhile. So store stock was empty on a given title in the mid 80s.

I missed out on the target of Asia S/T and didn't see it again in a store for a couple years, when it was repressed at PolyGram as a non-target.

The stores all said "backordered" at the distributors for a year or two.

 

1983 MJ with 35-8P-02 and 35-8P-11



1983 trade magazine ad

 

Cool! 35 8P-11 in color:

 

I am assuming that these discs are in BLUE SWIRL/BLUE TEXT pattern? If so there's one title more to the lot. Soft Cell - Non-stop Erotic Cabaret, Vertigo 800 061-2

 

I've read somewhere that Bee Gees Living Eyes was the first promo CD to be pressed in 1981. Was it?

 

The Bee Gees disc was the first showing for the public in the UK TV show called "Tomorrow's World", not sure if this was the first promo CD.

 

Yes, blue swirl/blue text pattern. Should it be the definitive list (by cat. no.)?

800 035-2 / Status Quo - 1+9+8+2
800 044-2 / Genesis - Abacab
800 050-2 / Dire Straits - Making Movies
800 051-2 / Dire Straits - Dire Straits
800 052-2 / Dire Straits - Communique
800 053-2 / Status Quo - Never Too Late
800 060-2 / Thin Lizzy - Lizzy Killers
800 061-2 / Soft Cell - Non-stop Erotic Cabaret
800 062-2 / Status Quo - 12 Gold Bars
800 088-2 / Dire Straits - Love Over Gold

 

.

 

I mean the first pressing with BLUE TEXT

 

Yeah, I caught that on my own and already had fixed my post.

 

It seems that all these ten titles have been re-released with black text. The other Vertigo blue swirl with black text and superior cat.no. should be first pressings

 

I'm not sure if the BLUE SWIRL/BLACK TEXT are re-issue of Blue Swirl/Blue Text. Apparently don't. I think that all of these copies went on the market in 1983, however Blue Swirl/Blue Text were issued in the very early 1983 in Europe (since March till October). Those discs are in just one variant (and pattern close to the other early copies from the same time). The later Blue Swirl/Black Text were issued in two variants ("MADE IN W.GERMANY" and "MADE IN W. GERMANY BY POLYGRAM" printed along the bottom disc edge) and were likely available in late 1983 and early 1984.

 

I'm not sure too but I still believe that black text are 2nd issues. I think that all the black text CDs have the 2 variants (with and without Polygram), also those that originally were issued with blue text (I'm sure for the Dire Straits titles). And I believe that also in this case there is a chronological order: the copies with Polygram came later.
I tend to agree with the Lazlo's theory of the "two colors of ink"

 

It may have been the first CD of an actual commercially-released album to be demonstrated in public, but I don't think I'd count it as a "promo" since it was only used to show off the format at at the October/November AES convention. It's unlikely the quantities pressed exceeded the single digits as they would have had to be created as one-offs -- PolyGram's plant wasn't fully online at the time AFAIK -- so it's very unlikely that any copies were distributed.

At the moment, the earliest public CD demonstration I know of was on 15 April 1981 at the Salzburg Festival, where Sony, Philips and PolyGram presented at the invitation of the Herbert von Karajan Foundation. They used prototype transports from Sony and Philips hooked to external DACs to play sample selections from Karajan-conducted performances of Parsifal, Die Zauberflöte and Falstaff. I don't know if they used multiple discs at Salzburg or just a single disc with all the sample material on it, but there were also followup press demos of a number of different titles, most apparently pressed by CBS/Sony, later that summer in the UK. So Living Eyes is pretty far down the list really.

 

I have at least 9 Schwann catalogs from 1984 (including the December, 1984 issue). As of that December, 1984 issue, the *only* Prince album on CD was Controversy. By June, 1985 (the next issue I own), Dirty Mind and several others had been added: