Its been a little while since I did one of these and I apologize. Not working has kept me somewhat busy, too bad most of what has kept me preoccupied isn’t paying the bills. I wish I could say I was off galavanting around the globe, tracking down more records for the vault and to write about, but the truth is I’m broke so there isn’t any new vault additions in my immediate future.
Well, that aside lets get back to the topic at hand and that is the many flavors of the Butthole Surfers Cream Corn from the Socket of Davis EP. This one had quite a few variations, most in the way of the “pre-release” edition on various colors of vinyl.
Before it was officially released, Touch and Go put out a “pre-release” edition that came in a plain green sleeve with a die cut hole in the middle, and a sticker attached to it indicating what the record was. I would assume that these were promos as I never recall seeing these for sale new at a store, and I spent a great deal of my time back then visiting record stores and buying records every week after cashing my paycheck. This came on the following colors:
Blue vinyl,
clear vinyl,
green vinyl,
red vinyl,
and yellow vinyl.
Then when it was finally released “for real” with a proper sleeve, it came out in America on Touch and Go Records of course.
An interesting bit of complete record nerd trivia is that the first pressing of the regular Touch and Go release has the title to the song “Comb” omitted from the label.
It was corrected in the future pressings. I remember writing to Touch and Go when the record came out asking what the song was called since it wasn’t listed anywhere on the cover or label and they told me it was an error and what the song was called (I didn’t own any of the “pre-release” versions at the time as back then I hadn’t seen one yet).
The record, just like the album that came before it, Another Man’s Sac was licensed to Fundamental Music for overseas and like the aforementioned album, it had a totally different cover.
So there you have it, every variation of this fine record known to man sans the test pressing (which I do not own).
MXV,
Those plain green-sleeved discs actually were sold on a retail level. The store in Ohio that I was a manager/buyer for received 6 of ’em (all on yellow wax)for our first order of that particular record, and I know of two other record stores in West Virginia that also had the greensleeves in their racks (all either red or yellow wax). When the illo sleeves were finally produced, you could often find the leftover greensleeves lingering in the bins at a reduced price.
Wow, thanks for the info, I had never seen one for sale before outside of used copies so that was news to me. I guess the stores in my area either sold out of them before I ever got to them, or just never got them at all.
I’d love to get my grubby hands on those green and blue waxes…
Anyway, I have a red wax version that is not a pre-release. Just thought I’d let you know that there’s yet another version out there.
I bought the pre-release version on clear wax in 1985 at Dearborn Music, a record store outside of Detroit. That copy was stolen from me when I was 15. I now own 2 copies of the pre-release version, one on red wax, the other on yellow. I have yet to find another copy on clear wax to replace my original copy.