I paid a visit to my local record store and flipping through the vinyl was a copy of Big Star Radio City with the original William Eggleston front cover in shrink wrap. At first, even second or third glance this would appear to be an original Ardent pressing. The back features the tag line "Ardent Records Are Distributed By The Stax Organization" and in the upper left is the old 70's Ardent Records logo with the original stock number of ADS-1501. The label is even more convincing as it is a facsimile of the original with "Ardent Records, Distributed By Stax Records, Inc., 98 North Avalon, Memphis, USA" on the bottom of the original Ardent label. Unfortunately the sound of this album is not great and on certain tracks it is a little sibilant. Oddly enough I have some Stax records from this era and they suffer from similar problems. Did someone obtain the original mother stamper? In fact the only indication that this is a "reissue" is that under the Ardent tag line on the back cover in semi-fine print is the line "Manufactured Under License Or Distributed By The Concord Music Group." Is it just me or is that wording a bit bizarre?

This is not the first time that I have bought an album like this. The first one I bought was a replica of the British 1973 pressing of the 1970 Soundtracks album by Can, United Artists UAS-29283. The first indication that this was not an original was the price was too low and it was again, sealed and the most notable was the line "Trademark owned & Authorized by United Artist" which was odd since the company is actually United Artists and has not been in the record business at least since 1980. Unlike the Big Star album, this one sounded marvelous and much better than even the remastered SACD version of the album. This was soon followed by a sealed copy of the American United Artists pressing of Can's album Future Days. This one had no hints anywhere on the cover that it was a reissue except again the lower price and the shrink wrap. The indication on this one is the United Artists label was black with silver printing and it was pressed on blue vinyl. By no means was Can a big selling act here in the states, so I have my doubts that UA spent money pressing them on custom vinyl when during that period, as it was shocking that UA spent money on quality control. Unlike Soundtracks this one sounded not so good, but, again like the Big Star albums, appropriate for the label at that time. Apart from the colored vinyl and oddly colored label, the fonts on all the lettering was correct and the trail off writing was dead on with other UA albums I happen to own. Again this makes me wonder if the original mother disc was involved in the manufacture of these albums.

As far as the covers go, it used to be easy to spot a counterfeit because the cover was either not completely in focus, off color or evidently second generation. On these the covers are perfect and the Future Days cover is even embossed.

Anybody else come across anything like this? Kinda cool idea if you want something that looks like the original pressing, but you don't feel like parting with the cash to obtain one.

Sounds like you've hit on a bootleg copy, not unusual for certain scarce titles. An excellent example is the band Bohemian Vendetta, whose sole release, titled Bohemian Vendetta [Mainstream/US/1968], has been bootlegged a few times. There are several others, nearly all of them valuable "collector" LPs. Radio City qualifies as such, I should think.


Big Star Radio City...on certain tracks it is a little sibilant.


I have two original Ardent label copies of Radio City, both of which have the sibilance you described. I also have a FLAC copy of a reissue (Classic Records?): Sibilance.

Some reissue labels have a fetish about exact reproductions, although due to legal issues there are limits.

An eBay seller once sold me a Holst Planets on Decca as the original, but it was the Speaker's Corner reissue. It was really tough to tell, because they even got Tony Hawkins to master it and they stamped his original Decca mastering engineer code in the deadwax.

However, they could not legally print 'Made in Great Britain' on the label, because they pressed them in Germany, nor does the cover say 'Made and Printed by Garrod and Lofthouse'. The dead giveaway is that the record is in a fake 1963 Decca inner sleeve, although the original was issued in 1971.

I often wonder about some of the new re-releases in five or ten or fifteen years' time, when some of them will look every bit as old as some of the better-condition originals. A bit of sleuthwork is required sometimes, already, when buying LPs.

Living in Hong Kong, it isn't unusual to run across pressings of the same album from, say, the US, the UK, Germany, France, Holland, Hong Kong (often combined with Singapore and Malaysia releases on the same label), Taiwan and Japan. And those are just the authorized/legal ones! Sometimes you have to study them and the fine print and deadwax markings for a while, to figure out just what you are holding!

Some of the counterfeits or odd-country releases do have "collectible" value, though, especially if they are from famous groups like the Beatles, where some people want "complete" collections.