The Man Who Sold The World

Counterfeit of the original US Mercury edition of the album, see [r710468]. This version has simple etched matrices, with the text base oriented toward the grooves (see images). Artwork is identical to the counterfeit linked below. For the counterfeit with more elaborate matrices (SR- prefix, M1 or M2 suffix), and with the text base oriented toward the label, please see [r2833017] Not dated but it is fair to speculate pressed sometime post-1972 when Bowie was becoming more well known. The country is also unknown but judging by the sleeve construction probably USA. There are said to be many more bootlegs of this album than real copies as it sold very few on release. The bootleg is a very faithful reproduction of the original and appears almost exactly identical except for these prominent differences: 1- the matrix # is hand-scratched, NOT machine stamped 2- about 2 seconds of music is missing from All The Madmen, there is a jump cut which misses out the words 'all as sane as' from the line 'For I'm quite content they're all as sane as me' from the end of the second chorus. Someone who had not heard the album before would probably not notice this edit. This is not a skip it is quite smoothly done and sounds like a tape edit. It is probably more likely to have been needle dropped from a copy that skipped, since the ends of the missing phrase, "they're" and the part of "meee" are one rotation apart. Apart from this omission the music is of a professional sounding quality, yet sounds thinner when a/b compared to an original. 3 - The rear cover speech bubble "Oh by jingo" on an authentic Mercury cover is positioned very close under the lyrics above it (below the lyric "So softly a supergod cries (second times dies)"). On counterfeits, the speech bubble is almost three line spaces below. 4 - The three targeting stripes above the Mercury logo on top right front corner, which usually stretch around over the top edge, here fall short of the edge on front, likely due to being copied from a flat printed cover, rather than being a tip-on layer that was printed from a larger master art. All Selections published by PRS. Ltd (ASCAP) Recorded at Trident Studios and Advision Studios, London, England Remixed at Trident Studios, London, England Many thanks to our engineer, Ken. proo