What were the first US
pressings?
(credit for this addition has been lost, apologies to the
original author)
Among Genesis collectors, there is a question about whether the
first US pressings of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot and Live were on the
Charisma "pink scroll" labels or the "large mad
hatter" labels. This essay will attempt to answer that
question.
UK Releases of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot and Live
The three albums in question had the following release patterns
in the UK. As far as I can tell, the information below is not
disputed by any collector.
Nursery Cryme:
1st Issue: "Pink Scroll" Label
2nd Issue: "Large Mad Hatter" Label
3rd Issue: "Small Mad Hatter" Label
Foxtrot:
1st Issue: "Large Mad Hatter" Label
2nd Issue: "Small Mad Hatter" Label
Live:
1st Issue: "Large Mad Hatter" Label
2nd Issue: "Small Mad Hatter" Label
US Releases of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot and Live
In the US, all three of the albums in question were released on
pink scroll labels. This leads many collectors to
believe that, like B&C Records in the UK, these were the
first labels that Charisma's US distributor, Buddah Records,
used. These collectors assert that Buddah followed the UK pattern
of pink scroll, large mad hatter then
small mad hatter, though Buddah would appear to have
used the pink scroll labels longer than B&C did
in the UK due to the fact that Buddah released Foxtrot and Live
on the pink scroll labels.
Scrutiny
Unfortunately, this theory does not appear to hold up under
scrutiny, for many reasons:
The Nursery Cryme EP, a 3-song 7 sampler EP from
Buddah Records, released shortly after Nursery Cryme, was
released on the mad hatter label. No one is aware of
any pink scroll issues. Around the same time period,
Happy The Man was released as a 7 single in the
UK on the pink scroll label.
The promo LPs of both Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot, which one
would assume were released around the same time as the market
LPs, were all issued on large mad hatter labels. No
one is aware of any pink scroll copies of the promo
LPs.
The promo LPs of both Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot were
gatefold. It does not make logical sense that the promo LPs would
have gatefold covers and the first market releases wouldn't.
The US pink scroll issues of Nursery Cryme
were not released with gatefold sleeves. The large mad
hatter issues were issued with gatefold sleeves, pressed on
heavier vinyl than their pink scroll counterparts,
and tend to be harder to find than the pink scroll
releases.
Though I am lead to believe that there were a small number
of pink scroll issues of Foxtrot in gatefold sleeves,
the vast majority of them were non-gatefold, and the one gatefold
pink scroll copy that I have seen had a promotional
Buddah inner sleeve showing Live as one of the albums available.
The large mad hatter issues of Foxtrot were issued in
gatefold sleeves and tend to be harder to find than the
pink scroll issues.
Having a non-gatefold sleeve as a first issue of Nursery
Cryme and Foxtrot would not make sense from a promotional
standpoint since the non-gatefold sleeves have no song listings,
credits, etc. They are 100% artwork. In essense, Buddah would
have been relying purely on the recognition of the name
Genesis to sell the records, which would not have
been a wise move in the early days when nobody in the US knew who
Genesis was.
Both the market (b/w Willow Farm) and promo (b/w Watcher
of the Skies) singles for Watcher of the Skies were released on
mad hatter labels. It is safe to assume that there
were not multiple print runs of these. No one is aware of any
pink scroll copies.
The pink scroll issue of Live comes in a
promotional Buddah inner sleeve showing Live as one of the albums
available. Usually, first issues of albums which have promotional
inner sleeves do not usually show the album itself as one of the
ones available.
The large mad hatter issues of Nursery Cryme,
Foxtrot and Live all have simple black inner sleeves with
Buddah's logo and the words Pleasure From the Buddah
Group. This corresponds to one of the inserts in the
Nursery Cryme EP, a letter from Buddah's promotions department,
which has the same phrase in the upper left corner. Granted, the
promotional inner sleeves also have that sentence but I have not
seen a promotional inner sleeve issued with a Genesis record that
did not show Live on it. That says to me that the promotional
inner sleeves were issued after Nursery Cryme and Foxtrot, and
probably after Live's original release as well since the
large mad hatter copies of Live have the all black
inner sleeve mentioned above.
Based on the nine points outlined above, it is my opinion that
the large mad hatter issues of Nursery Cryme, Foxtrot
and Live were the first pressings, the pink scroll
releases 2nd pressings and the small mad hatter
releases the 3rd pressings. The one outstanding question is, why
would Buddah go from a large mad hatter label to a
pink scroll label when that's completely backward
from what was done in the UK? I do not have a definitive answer,
though I have a plausible theory, assuming that I am correct that
the large mad hatter was the first pressing:
Right after Live's release, Charisma changed their US distributor
from Buddah Records to Atlantic Records. Selling England by the
Pound (1973), the first US release distributed by Atlantic, was
only released with the small mad hatter label, which
did not appear in the UK until 1975. Both Selling England By the
Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway were released with the
large mad hatter labels in the UK. Therefore, it
appears that there was a pattern of the US using the up and
coming labels before they were rolled out in the UK. Buddah
was obviously using the large mad hatters well before
they were being used in the UK, and Atlantic was obviously using
the small mad hatter well before the UK. It is my
theory that after the distribution change from Buddah to
Atlantic, Buddah ran out of Charisma's large mad
hatter labels and needed more for printing. Since Charisma
was no longer actively doing business with Buddah, they may have
sent them a batch of pink scroll labels which were
not being used anymore and probably just laying around. After
all, Atlantic was the distributor now, and Charisma's main
marketing outlet in the US, so it makes sense that Atlantic would
get the current labels and nobody would care what Buddah got.
Then after Buddah had used up all the pink scroll
labels, they were issued small mad hatters. By the
time the small mad hatter issues of Nursery Cryme,
Foxtrot and Live were released (probably sometime in late 1974),
Genesis had already been signed to Atlantic and their albums were
being released on Atco Records with Atco labels, not Charisma.
Here is how I break out the US releases:
Nursery Cryme
1st Issue: Large mad hatter label with gatefold
sleeve and black inner sleeve.
2nd Issue: Pink scroll label with non-gatefold
sleeve.
3rd Issue: Small mad hatter label with non-gatefold
sleeve.
Foxtrot
1st Issue: Large mad hatter label with gatefold
sleeve and black inner sleeve.
2nd Issue: Pink scroll label, few with gatefold, most
with a non-gatefold sleeve.
3rd Issue: Small mad hatter label with non-gatefold
sleeve.
Live
1st Issue: Large mad hatter label with black inner
sleeve.
2nd Issue: Pink scroll label.
3rd Issue: Small mad hatter label.