Record Club of America

Pre-cursor to the RCA Record Club. Check the deadwax. They frequently used the same masterings as their commercial counterparts, only difference being the record club sticker on the cover.

 

The sticker is literal when it states: "made by Atlantic for RCOA". All copies I have seen are standard Atlantic stampers and jackets. The club merely distrubuted and sold the lps, but wasn't involved in the manufacturing. Buy w Confidence, I do.

 

Thanks, Clay, I did not know this.

I remember as a kid getting my first package from RCoA, with Who's Next, Fragile, Déjà Vu, Zep IV, Never A Dull Moment. This was the first time I'd heard all of those LP's, except of course for what was played on the radio (Roundabout, Won't Get Fooled Again, etc.). And all are still albums I play to this day, almost 40 years later...although the CSNY is the only one I still have the original copy of.

I had joined other record clubs after that and received lots of albums from them, but receiving that specific package was firmly imbedded in my childhood memories.

 

My copy of King Crimson' debut LP was an RCOA pressing. It had no bottom end. I don't have a stock/non RCOA pressing to compare. Other than that album the rest of my RCOA pressings sounded fine.

 

Some preferred pressings have undergone modifications of the original master tape that required written special instructions at the cutting stage that may have been ignored, misplaced or simply not included when the tapes were sent to the facility, yes?

Or, the cynic in me may just think the engineer had a stack of jobs on one side of his desk, a stack of masters on the other, and a deadline.




Now playing on Ariel Stream: Swing Out Sister - Circulate

 

It really just depends on what it is ... some of them are simply standard pressings by the original label with a sticker on the jacket, and those are going to be ok. I just found a Les McCann/Eddie Harris album like this last week, and recently picked up a Zep IV Pecko that's the same situation.

Others were actually pressed by the Club, and those tend to be pretty junky and are best avoided. If you're able to decipher deadwax writing you can figure out if the pressing is by the original label. An easier giveaway is that often the RCOAs are on flimsy Dynaflex vinyl.

 

To be clear, thinking more about this the ones that have the little sticker thats says: Manufactured by Atlantic are the ones I would typically vouch for. I have seen CTH Columbia Machine pressed copies of LZ II that DON't have this sticker and were made from who knows what.
so at the end of the day you've gotta know your Atlantic hand etched -letter series or you could end up with some ********.

Also pointing out that I can't vouch for any NON-Atlantic family presses done by RCOA. I was just sharing my experiences with Atlantic early 70s stuff.

 

I have a RCOA issue of the Raspberries debut, and it's mastered from vinyl! So you definitely should be skeptical of the non sticker RCOA pressings.

 

None of the records I've had from RCOA had thrilled me. I don't know where they did the pressings on the titles I have but the records don't sound all that good or look good.

The 8 tracks differences are more pronounced. Earlier on they employed a style that looked like Ampex tapes, but they weren't. The later ones really sounded bad. On a version of Roberta Flack's First Take, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" fades about 20 seconds too early. That's what we're dealing with...

In my experience, the records and tapes were inferior. They want belly up in the mid 70's if I'm not mistaken.

 

The worst of the worst. A must to avoid in the '70's. Bad vinyl, bad mastering. Bad. The only good record club pressings were when the club & label were the same (i.e. Columbia or Epic records from the Columbia Record Club, RCA records from the RCA Record Club, were OK, because they just used stock copies-All others, forget it..) The Record Club Of America was not affiliated with any label, so all thier records sucked.

 

AFAIK, Record Club of America never pressed a record. Everything came from labels and had a sticker. Fremer covered them in Stereophile a decade or more ago, you could look it up. Maybe I remember wrong.

 

I can vouch for the fact that their pre-recorded cassettes were really bad.

Like the 8-Tracks, they also had the glued on "early Ampex" style labels with a picture of the album cover and a track listing below that . All of the cassette cases, regardless of the original label, were white, a clear giveaway that these were manufactured "in-house" .

The sound on these cassettes was horrible! Most were distant sounding and hissy. They sounded like pirated copies. On a couple you could even hear the other side of the tape gently playing backwards in the background! LOL!

Wow! I had not thought of these guys for decades! Thanks for the trip back to my rock and roll youth...

 

Pretty much what Island UK vinyl sounded like too. It is the mix. I haven't heard the new mix yet, but I'm hoping it is a bit more bottom end centric.

 

I LOVED the Record Club. I had a record player and a lack of albums. They took care of that.
Some of my favorites were sent in error, like
Colloseum- Those who are About To Die
An Evening With PDQ Bach
Emmitt Rhodes
Sugarloaf- Spaceship Earth
They made it right and let me keep the albums sent in error.
Among my favorite LPs I got were
Best of Bee Gees
Led Zeppelin II
Four Sides Of Melanie
Many A Mile- Buffy St Marie

There were dozens of others. They were cheap as dirt(1.99 for their "licenced labels)with sales that gave you another LP from their overstock list.

I remember when they opened the warehouse for sale to the public 20 some years later, I was giggling when I heard the asking prices for this vinyl. I was like Um, I didn't buy it when it was 1.49 why would I spend that much now?

 

When they went belly up, in the mid '70s, the RCOA warehouse stock was mothballed.

In the '90s, they made that stuff available again, hoping to make a fortune by selling the stuff as collectables. Problem was that most of what they had were very common titles, and many were RCOA pressings (which were bad to hideous). AND they wanted WAY too much for the stuff...That sale lasted a year or so, then disappeared...I don't know if they sold off the remaining (huge) inventory to someone, bulldozed it all, or if they are waiting to have another sale ~40 years on...

 

Had a Joan Baez record from RCOA and the pressing looked like Presswell might have been the house they used for some things. The record simply did not look like a Vanguard pressing. I also had a Country Joe and the Fish LP from RCOA. It had the correct graphics with the wrong color label-- (yellow instead of Vanguard's usual metallic gold). Stuff that was on ABC (Steppenwolf) looked normal just the worst of the lot as far as pressings went.

More info:

http://www.yorkblog.com/onlyyork/2010/08/when-vinyl-was-king-rememberin.html

 

The dead wax on my Record of America Herbie Mann Push Push is ST-EM-712299 PR so if I read correctly it's the Embryo label pressed at Presswell? The dead wax also has 9.1.71 and AT G P . The label also has Dist. By Cotiillon div. Of Atlantic Recording Corp. 1841 B'way. N.Y.N.Y
My guess is this wasn't 'manufactured by ROA.

 

I belonged to the club back in the day. It was a great deal. They were almost giving the stuff away it was so cheap.

As far as quality went, in my experience it seemed to depend on the label. The Atlantic titles I got (Zeppelin, Yes, ELP...) were pretty good. However, the Elton John S/T (Uni/Mca) was very harsh in the high end. Nasty sounding.

 

Hey, no problem Yep, they really liked that Ampex design. Even now I see stuff on eBay listed as Ampex when it's really our friends at RCOA. The 8 tracks sounded like pirated copies too, listening to one last night I could have sworn I heard a needle pop, heh.

 

WOW, never thought on finding so much infos about RCoA... two questions from a not-USA guy:
- kwadguy, could you post a full resolution scan of the catalogue?
- tape cover layout: the 8-track layout was clearly inspired from Ampex tapes, with some differencies; the most striking one is that many 8-track tapes had songs sequence divided in just two programs instead of four - and sometimes these are mistaken as quad carts. Question is: for the 8-track that had this "2 programs" layout, the CASSETTE layout was EXACTLY THE SAME, without the vertical 8-8 right bar, or not? Since they were able to cut corners on a sphere...

Couple of examples: LZ4 copies the Ampex layout and use different fonts (notice the different song sequences from the regular version), ELP Trilogy has the "two programs" layout.

 

About ten years ago, they advertised in Goldmine and DISCoveries to sell off all remaining sealed inventory, which included all the Partridge Family and Davy Jones Bell LPs and cassettes. I still have the DJ lp, and it is apparent they didn't even get access to the cover art from Bell....the back cover is a scan/xerox of the original and suffers as a result (since the back cover is a rather dark b&w shot). Thr RCOA back cover is a black blotchy mess.

I recall the PF albums not sounding bad at all.

Note that the Bell RCOA albums had no identifier to what they were on the cover. I never checked the dead wax to see if there was something there to distinguish from the original.

 

I am pretty surprised that whoever owns the old RCOA stock hasn't tried to sell it again, giving the new raging vinyl market. (They tried in the mid '90s, then disappeared). Even though a lot of it is bad, I am sure they could sell it off now for pretty good money. It appears a lot of the inventory is still piled up at the old RCOA headquarters (based on pictures on the Web from a few years ago)...

 

That is how I remember it too. There were other record clubs where you got to choose like 12 albums for a penny, but you were committing to buy "x" number of albums in the future at an inflated price, and I considered myself too smart for that. But I liked the deal Record Club Of America was offering.

 

You couldn't not like the deal that RCoA offered: A few albums for the cost of shipping and then you can quit. Their business model was based on people staying with them and buying more stuff at closer to full price. But, obviously, their business model was flawed, since they went out of business in a few years.