Ever since I wrote my first articles about record collecting and DJing, I’ve been meaning to write something exploring some of the terminology behind the world of vinyl, and the coincidence of an intro from our friends at Sounds That Swing to one of their excellent newsletters, along with a debate on social media about the etiquette of playing ‘non originals’ at some types of record hop, prompted me to have a go at capturing how I understand it. As always with these blogs, I don’t claim for one moment that this is definitive or authoritative – just my attempt to get my head round it and maybe inform the discussion. I’ve based this largely on collecting 7” singles, but the principles should apply across the various manifestations of vinyl.

So let’s start at the top of the tree, shall we, with the Original. That’s fairly straightforward – it’s the record as originally issued for sale, ideally in the country in which it was recorded.;In other words, in the form it would first have been bought and played. As with anything, though, there are nuances – the company on who’s label it was first issued may have underestimated sales, meaning that there are first and subsequent ‘pressings’, or there may have been different pressings produced in various plants to spread production (and true afficionados will be able to identify what came from where from the information pressed into the ‘dead wax’ – the bit near the centre of the record where the grooves run out). Similarly, a record issued on a small local label might quickly get picked up by one of the larger companies, often referred to as the ‘majors’, and issued again – possibly with a different B side. Although technically a ‘reissue’, the fact that the issue on a new label occurred when the record was still new to the market gives the latter original status, if less rare. The same would apply when the record was issued in another country, in our case the UK, either on the UK version of the same label or on a UK label that had licensing arrangements – hence discs such as Elvis’ releases on HMV, or the output from various US labels released on the London American label, would be classed as ‘original UK releases’.

And to kick off the illustrations, here’s a couple of example of records issued on two different labels, and then in the UK on London:

And a bunch of US originals and their UK London counterparts:

And just to show it could go the other way, a couple of UK originals and their US issue counterparts:7

Confused yet? Well how about reissues? Although the term could be generically applied to any issue of a record that isn’t the first one, it’s usually employed to describe a release that puts a record back into the market having previously disappeared from the catalogue. It will probably come out on the current version of the original label, such as British records reissued under the EMI banner when the Columbia label was absorbed, and might have a different B side. Hence, although it’s ‘original’ in terms of being an official release from the parent label, it’s highly unlikely to have anything like the desirability or value of the true original.

And a few examples, including a couple with a UK issue thrown in for good luck…

And then there are ‘repros’ (short for reproduction). As the Sounds That Swing article put it, this is a new copy reproducing a record that was issued in the past. On that basis, technically it could be described as a ‘reissue’, but it is a particular type of reissue. The sound will be the same – not an alternative take or a re-recording. It will be on the same label, matching that used on the original if different versions of the label exist, and have the same B side coupling as the original. It it’s done well, on the right weight of vinyl and with the right printing technique for the label, it should be indistinguishable to the naked eye from a mint condition original. Of course, it isn’t an original, and most will have some clue, usually in the deadwax (for instance, one very accomplished producer of repros in the 1970s used to inscribe the repro date to avoid anyone trying to pass off their products as originals). What differentiates repros commercial terms is whether they are licensed or not. At one end of the scale, some producers will go to great lengths to identify the licence holder for the track, ensure that the right fees are paid, as well as attempting to secure a high quality first generation copy of the music itself from which to work. At the other end, unlicensed repros will often be dubbed from other vinyl copies or CD, and be issued without anyone involved in the original getting their cut – which effectively makes them bootlegs…

The original is on the left of each pair – note how the printing on the repro tends to look ‘flatter’…

And a bootleg (or ‘boot’) is any recording that is produced without the authority of the original licence holder, whether it appears to be on the original label (ie a repro) or anything else. Some purport to do a service in releasing material that has never been available elsewhere, like live recordings or alternate versions, or just finished tracks that didn’t make it into the original label’s release schedule but, much like the illicit liquor from which they derive their title, there’s no guarantee of quality and many artists fume not just at the loss of income but at the thought of having poor quality recordings circulating under their name. A welcome counter to the bootleggers are the small independent operators who seize on an unissued track for which there’s a strong market, negotiate a licence and press up a limited number of copies, sometimes under a generic label but sometimes recreating what the record would have looked like if issued on the artist’s original label at the time it was recorded, even down to period sleeve design. That elevates some discs to the status of very late releases, on the basis that they’ve never legitimately been available on single before!

To start with, some legal reissues, produced by real enthusiasts, with the original on the left where I’ve got one:

and a few where the provenance, shall we say, isn’t so certain (again, originals on the left)…

Well, that’s my take on it all. In purist terms, it can all get a bit confusing, not least as a repro is also a reissue and can be a boot as well, and terms get bandied around rather elastically. The most important thing is to know what it is you’re buying, and to be alert to any attempt to pass of as a genuine original anything which isn’t. Even without an encyclopaedic knowledge of pressing stamps and matrix numbers, there are some obvious giveaways – not least when a record that’s theoretically been knocking about for 60-odd years turns up in incredibly shiny condition with both vinyl and label apparently untouched by human (or even record collector) hand. OK, there are mint unplayed copies out there, but not many and they’ll usually have some kind of provenance behind them. Fortunately, there are some fantastic self-policing buying and selling forums out there, where the resident experts will quickly spot anything deliberately or unwittingly misleading, and sites like Discogs, Popsike and the amazing Rockin’ Country Style allow rapid research to determine not only what an original of a particular disc should look like but also to flag up that ‘too good to be true’ price hook. Likewise, any decent record dealer will keep original and repro stock clearly separated so you know where you are from the start; it’s worth noting, though, that some repros from the 70s and 80s are now so collectable in their own right that they can carry a premium.

I’ll come back to the subject of what to play where in a future article, as that’s much more subjective. In the meantime, see you at the record fairs and let me at that delicious vinyl…

PS – I started with the intention of scanning in the odd label to illustrate the points I was making but, like any good vinyl junkie, I just got carried away!