A mispress like this is typically completely destroyed at the plant well before it even cools down, so this is probably the only one extant, likely lifted from the plant inside a coat flap surfacing 50+ years later to stun us all!
The question of how a Parrot label ends up on a United Artists single still lingered though. Was the wrong label shipped to the pressing plant? Were both singles pressed at the same plant? Was it something else?
A bit of sleuthing this week and we have an answer.
First order of business was to identify the exact Traffic pressing involved in the mispressing to get as close to the point of error as possible. From there we could work backwards to the Genesis single. The buyer remained anonymous, but the seller thankfully was forthcoming with details and images:
The matrix runouts are as follows:
"The Silent Sun" side - ZTSP-124469-1B
"That's Me!" side - ZTSP-124468-2B
No "WIP 6025" in the dead wax
The runouts are etched
On the "That's Me!" side there are two sets of initials etched in the dead wax as well. The first is hard to make out, the second is "K.S."
[ed: of minor note, the labels were also erroneously pressed on the opposite sides: Silent Sun on the Traffic B side, That's Me! on the A. I guess if you're going to screw up... go big?]
Using the Discogs database for source material (and a bit of deductive reasoning given scant details in the data), the field was narrowed down to one most likely candidate. Simplest way forward from there was to just get one myself and inspect it. One more piece in the collection is all, and at $1 per copy pressed correctly, it was an easy outlay for the cause. The single was received within days. It matched the seller's images of the mispress runouts exactly, so we had the orignal single of the mispress to work with.
So now, how to connect back to Genesis? Discogs didn't even have runouts of this single we had in hand, nor of the Gensis ones, so no more help there.
Only after several runs inspecting the Traffic single runouts did I recognize, only partially pressed, the often hard to find small (3mm) "P" which signified a Columbia Records, Pitman plant pressing. Bingo!
Referring back to the stock Genesis Parrot promos in hand the same "P" was found on the transparent Parrot promo. Queries made to the Genesis community on two of the stock Parrot issues also confirmed the "P", and that was that:
The mispressing occured as an inhouse error at the Columbia Records Pitman pressing plant where both singles were being pressed.
Release dates also suggest the manner of the error:
The Traffic single was a Nov. 1967 release, Genesis Feb. 1968. The Genesis labels probably arrived at the plant as the Traffic single was being pressed. Both being black, easily confused in haste, a bunch of Genesis labels probably incorrectly went down to the floor.
And so... one bad day at the plant for a runner and presto: another rarity is born.