On ebay someone is selling what they claim to be an original LP of the Black album circa 1988.

But look at the song names... Is this for real?

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eB...71498&rd=1

You are bidding on a near-mint original 1988 European copy of this classic album. Banned in 1988, this vinyl album soon filtered across Europe and into the UK, weeks after the official pulling its distribution. So as not to be seen to be producing an illegal production of the banned album, this Black Discs album label changed the recording artist name 'Royalty' and disguised the song names.

The songs running order is:

SIDE 1

THE CRUSH is LE GRIND
SYN D. KAY is CINDY C
ALIVE OFF HIM is DEAD ON IT
THE HATE OF 2 is WHEN 2 R IN LOVE

SIDE 2

ROBERT & GEORGINA is BOBGEORGE
SOUND OF MUSIC is SUPERFUNKYCALIFRAGISEXY
4 BLACK CITY 2 EAST BROMPTON is 2 NIGS UNITED 4 WEST COMPTON
FUNNY PLACE TO FIND HARD ROCK is HARD ROCK IN A FUNKY PLACE

These songs, though completely mis-labelled, are the original songs in the same order as on the original release/banned album.

banned? and yeah, the tracklist is a dead giveaway...this chit's faker than a 6th avenue prostitute's hair weave.

It's just a bootleg, it was never banned, just unreleased and copied 7 measures.

NouveauDance said:

I know the story behind the Black album. But ive never heard that track listing before and just had to check... Coulda come up with more imaginative song titles if he wanted to make his story sound genuine...

When I was buying Black albums back in '88-'90, they always had fake song titles on the labels... especially on the vinyl boots.

a crappy bootleg at that

Well I've seen fakes with wrong song titles but this persom looks like they're just making a fool of you. (not u personally but anyone who may fall for it)

Each title is an antonym for the real word (did I spell that right? I mean opposite...like opposite of synonym right?)

Dead On It -> Alive Off Him?



Clever Idea, but with a grade 4 vocabulary

Robert Georgina!

hell Souliacoulia is more believable!

and Superfunkycalifragisexy -?> refers to the title of a song in Mary Poppins, therefore he uses Sound of Music instead


We got a regular Weird Al on our hands!

just my take here...probably wrong. It seems as though the person is hiding this on ebay...with the track names so as to not alert the PP Removal squad.

But a simple question just to put out there...Is there any difference between whatever Black Album that was put out there and the one released in 94? It seems folly to me to pay an arm and a leg and your first born to get the vinyl "original" version. Am I missing something? Unless one want it ofr prosperity sake...or as an investment. But why all the hype on these things, as every time someone sees it on ebay...a thread gets posted asking if it's real.

one thing, the official vinyl should a lot better than the official cd, because the warners master was supposedly intended for a vinyl release, not cd.

I found one copy of the black album in an Austin record store a couple years ago and the label was similar in that the song titles were very bizarre. Like Japanese translations of the proper title or something. Anyway it was a hot record, good quality and had two bonus tracks: Old Friends 4 Sale (original) and All My Dreams. I learned something very interesting on this record; if you speed up All My Dreams it's a completely different song. Sadly my copy of this record was sent upriver with the auctioneers because I couldn't pay for my storage unit (where it was), because I was laid off and I was homeless. So yeah, VOTE KERRY.

Peace.

Could be hopelessly wrong here, but I always thought that the reason fake titles appeared on bootlegs were because the actual discs were more often than not pressed in legitimate record pressing plants and the fake titles were to put them off the scent of what they were actually pressing.

But that's probably a mere whimsey, invented by the fairies.

OK, just to clear this up...

This record is one of the earliest Bootlegs of the Black Album. It started
appearing around European record fairs and dodgy markets sometime in 1988
(not that long after the genuine Black Album was pulled in December '87). The
record itself was labelled with these bizarre alternate titles, so that
the pressing plant wouldn't realise they were manufacturing a boot. If I
remember correctly, most of these early Black Album boots were mastered from
a cassette copy of the original vinyl, and consequently the sound quality
wasn't so hot and it ran a little fast.
[Edited 10/25/04 11:56am]

ufoclub said:

Yes, this is true. It suffers from exactly the same problem as 'Sign O The Times'.
In fact all of Prince's CDs up to about 'Batman' were manufactured from masters
that were originally intended only for vinyl, and therefore sound somewhat
harsh, toppy, flat & quiet compared with later masters created with CD in mind.
SOTT and the Black Album are definitely the 2 albums most in need of a proper
CD remaster.

BorisFishpaw said:

etc, etc...

jmbcat said:

All my dreams...that's the beauty of the song. It's a song in a song! That's song is circulating on boots now.

was the store called "Technophelia"? I remember getting all my stuff there... plus the annaul record conventions... a long long time ago...

jmbcat said:

The copy i have on vinyl has the same sticker but its red instead of yellow.
The labels inside were totally blank so i wrote which songs were on each side.

that was my first ever bootleg.

My beloved copy of "Charade" on vinyl has on the label:

Hair Apparent (Prince)

Parade Wendy's Little Girl (Little Girl Wendy's Parade)
Try A New Position (New Position)
Wonderful (I Wonder U)
Can I Taste Your... Moon (Under The Cherry Moon)
Careful What You Say (There's Others Here With Us)
Slice Of Life (Life Can Be So Nice)
Aries In The Snow (Sometimes It Snows In April)
New Pals At A Bargain (Old Friends 4 Sale)
Strawberry Creams (In All My Dreams)
Men & Women (Girls and Boys)
Hate Or Be Poor (Love or Money)
Hell (Heaven)