Description WE CURRENTLY HAVE  MORE THAN 300  LISTED ITEMS Click here to see ALL our ROCK auctions Our PSYCH & PROGRESSIVE  auctions Our PUNK & NEW WAVE  auctions Our  JAZZ auctions Our BLUE NOTE JAZZ auctions  Our BLUES auctions Our CLASSICAL auctions Our COUNTRY auctions Our FUNK auctions Our LATIN auctions Our METAL auctionsOur REGGAE auctions Our SOUL auctions Our STILL SEALED ITEMS  Our PROMO auctions Our ACETATE  auctions Our TEST PRESSING  auctions  Our AUDIOPHILE auctions · THE ROLLING STONES - THE SONGS OF THE ROLLING STONES - INSANELY RARE  ORIGINAL 1975 ABKCO (THE ROLLING STONES' PUBLISHING COMPANY) PROMO-ONLY PUBLISHER DEMO  ALBUM NEVER COMMERCIALLY RELEASED IN ANY WAY, MANNER OR FORM ; ORIGINAL 1975 ABKCO RECORDS MONO SAMPLER LP MPD-2 · THIS ALBUM CONTAINS 30 ROLLING STONES MONO SONGS IN ABRIDGED FORM (NONE LONGER THAN 2:50); TRACK LENGTHS VARY FROM 1:00 ('SOMETHING HAPPENED TO ME YESTERDAY') TO '2:50' ('WILD HORSES') · ORIGINAL U.S. PRESSING *** ONE OF THE WORLD'S RAREST RECORDS IN EXISTENCE (WE WOULD RANK IT ONE OF THE TOP-100 *** · ORIGINAL TURQUOISE (AQUA BLUE) ABKCO LABEL WITH DARK BLUE LOGO AND PRINT · THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, FIRST (AND ONLY) U.S. PRESSING; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING. · ORIGINAL, THICK CARDBOARD COVER (AMERICAN STYLE) · INSANELY RARE, QUICKLY WITHDRAWN (AND MUCH RARER OF THE TWO VERSIONS) FLAMING-ORANGE COVER SHOWING THE ROLLING STONES PERFORMANCE AT THE 'ROCK'N'ROLL CIRCUS' TV SHOW (DECEMBER 1968); WE BELIEVE THE ORANGE 'ROCK 'N' ROLL CIRCUS' COVER WAS WITHDRAWN FOR LEGAL (COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT) REASONS; PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR EXPLANATION. · CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS · THE RECORD HAS A 'STERLING' MACHINE STAMP IN THE TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) AREA, WHICH IS GENERALLY CONSIDERED A PROOF OF AUTHENTICITY OF THE FIRST PRESSING. · MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) ENDS WITH '-1A/-1B'.  ON SOME LABELS,  SUFFIX '–1' DENOTES THE VERY FIRST, ORIGINAL PRESSING) · FAIRLY THICK VINYL PRESSING On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and  10 being the most severe), we assess the thickness of the vinyl as 6. · This album has NEVER been available on legitimate Compact Disc or in any other way, manner or format. (PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW) (Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a 'recycled' image from our previous auction. What you see is what you’ll get.  GUARANTEED!) This is a truly remarkable release, and in more ways than one might think.  Please read on, we will try to provide some background. In 1975, concurrently with ABKCO's release of the Rolling Stones' Metamorphosis album (a collection of the Stones' 1960s leftovers, demos and discarded oddities released as a purely money-grabbing act), ABKCO Music, the publishing arm of the London Records, released this bizarre (we are tempted to say: surreal) sampler of no less than 30 (count ‘em) of the Stones' abridged and truncated songs (none longer than  half of their original timings) and seemingly selected at random  - so random, in fact, that the selections  beggar belief: there seems to be no rhyme or reason to the song choices whatsoever (except a rather odd one -- please read on and you will find out). Some of the Stones biggest and best-known charting hits (Paint it Black,  Jumpin' Jack Flash, Satisfaction,  Honky Tonk Women) are intertwined without any regard to chronological order, sequence or historical consistency with oddities, obscurities,  odds and ends and little known B-sides very few people know (or care to know) about, tracks such as Ride On Baby,  One More Time, Loving Cup,  Live with me, Sittin' on a Fence  or Sing This All Together. Taken at face value, the selections do not seem to follow any discernible logic or pattern: tracks come from all over the Stones' vast catalog covering the first ten years of the group's existence (1963-1972), leapfrog one from another, totally detached and unmoored from their original musical, stylistic and historical context and are patched up like one gigantic Rock'n'Roll Frankenstein;  but what surely must be the most baffling feature of all is the inclusion of the tracks from the two albums (Sticky Fingers and Exile on a Main Street) to which London/Abkco had lost any legal rights three years prior (1972), after the two parties (The Rolling Stones and Allen D. Klein, president of London/ABKCO and former Rolling Stones producer and manager) parted ways under particularly hostile and acrimonious circumstances (as a parting shot, the Group lovingly dedicated the long-unreleased and much-bootlegged 'Coq$ucker  Blues' to their former manager, although some argue that it was actually dedicated to their first manager, Andrew 'Loog' Oldham (needless to say, the offensive track is NOT included on this sampler :-)). Sticky Fingers is represented here with one track (Wild Horses), while Exile on a Main Street is represented with four tracks (All Down the Line, Shine a Light, Sweet Virginia and Loving Cup, the last two featuring Gram Parsons on backing vocals - the first and the last time Parsons would appear on a London/ABKCO release. We suspect that Gram Parsons also plays piano on 'All Down the Line' but have no way of proving. So, how did this disc even happen?  Surely this promotional LP sampler must be threading a real shaky legal ground, right? Well, not quite. ABKCO was apparently well within their legal rights to release it, and they did so by using a rather creative legal loophole. Allow us to explain: Until 1971, the Group was contractually bound with London records in an arrangement which granted London exclusive rights to the Group's entire US-based recording output and distribution, at which point (1971) the Stones' management abruptly (right the middle of the Sticky Fingers recording sessions) decided to sever the London contract and establish their own, independent recording label (named, creatively, 'The Rolling Stones Records'), presumably to allow the Group to retain more  money  artistic freedom.  Henceforth,  with a few minor exceptions, starting with the 'Sticky Fingers' , all new recordings - both studio and 'live' - by the Group would be released on their own recording imprint. However, and this is where the legal plot thickens into a spicy Rock'n'Roll goulash, the Group was also contractually bound with London in a much more inextricable manner which could not be immediately legally untangled: namely, ABKCO Music, the London Records' publishing arm, continued to legally control the Group's PUBLISHING, COPYRIGHT,  LICENSING AND BROADCAST CLEARANCE RIGHTS well into the early 2000s (when the two parties inexplicably kissed and made up and became the best buds forever). This schizoid legal arrangement, wherein London no longer had any legal rights to commercially release the new material by the Group, but continued controlling publishing and licensing rights of ALL material penned by the group  - old and new alike - for nearly three more decades, formed the legal basis for the release of this disc. Namely, ABKCO was legally entitled to promote the Stones' material to various recording artists, radio stations and media producers by periodically releasing the publisher demo discs to the world at large (the purpose of which was to induce other recording artists to cover the Stones' songs (and pay them royalties in the process) or to use their music as film music and then collect royalties from those sources)  - as long, that is, as those promotional publisher demo discs contained only morsels and snippets of the Stones' songs which could not be commercially used in such abridged form.  In short, ABKCO was legally permitted to release tasty morsels of the Stones tunes, as long as the songs themselves were truncated into the bite-sized samples.  Therefore,  this sampler bypasses London Records' legal loss of the Rolling Stones' catalog and transforms it into royalties' and copyright-marketing tool.  Clever,  eh? The 'coq$ucker' seems to have won this legal round,  and the Stones could not get any legal satisfaction whatsoever.  What can you do? You can't always get what you want! So, while this sampler is typically described as a 'promotional-only' release (which it most certainly is)  it is much more than that: it belongs to the  rarest of all promotional subsets:  PUBLISHER DEMO DISCS. Still, one is puzzled by the timing and the format of the release. What could possibly have prompted ABKCO to release such an apparently incongruent set of tracks? More importantly, how(and why!)  in the heavens' name does one properly "promote" one of the world's best - and best known - catalogs, known to virtually every man, woman and child on the planet? Well, there could be two possible reasons: firstly, ABKCO may have wanted to hype to the world at large the Stones' lesser tracks - seldom heard, rarely broadcasted and often ignored by the general audiences - songs which could still be used in commercials or in the movies, in order to increase the profit potential of the Group's lesser, non-performing musical assets (indeed, many of these tracks, even the lesser or obscure ones, such as 'Something Happened To Me Yesterday'  ultimately made it to the TeeVee commericals; in this particular case, the Lexmark printer commercial). We can only assume that ABKCO granted TV stations and commercial-makers a significant licensing discount in order to motivate them to use these little known  tracks the buying public rarely associates with the pivotal moments in their lives. The second motive may have been a wee bit more surreptitious.  Namely, coincidentally with the release of this demo sampler, ABKCO released the exploitational  'Metamprophis', a collection of the Stones odds-and-ends recorded in various London- and Decca recording sessions between 1964 and 1969. In a way, 'Songs of the Rolling Stones' may have played a dual role: a marketing tool for the Stones' publishing and licensing rights and a promotional tool for 'Metamorphosis'. Indeed, the strange similarities between 'Metamorphosis' and 'The Songs of the Rolling Stones' are striking and we believe that 'Metamorphosis' exploits the exact same legal loophole as 'The Songs of the Rolling Stones': - Both albums conspicuously AVOID mentioning Rolling Stones as the recording artists anywhere on the cover or in the liner notes, a move which may have been necessitated by London Records' loss of legal rights to the Stones' catalog (and use of the Group's name).  On 'The Songs of the Rolling Stones' , the Group's name appears only in the album title, on 'Metamphosis', the group is only mentioned on the record labels; you can fine-comb both sides of the Metamorphosis cover with an electron microscope until you are turquoise in the face, you won't be able to find 'Rolling Stones' mentioned anywhere - except, as a shy, timid afterthought  - on the spine. - Both albums use snippets and faded versions of the Rolling Stones tracks, although 'Songs of...' uses previously released versions, while ''Metamorphosis' uses unreleased and demo versions; most of the tracks on Metamorphosis are actually full-length versions, although some with the abrupt and unexpected fades, a move which may have been prompted in order to avert any legal challenge and to present these songs as 'demo' takes (which, in fact, they were, just not PUBLISHER demos).  In fact, we believe that the Rolling Stones management did attempt to stage a legal challenge and served a stern cease-and-desist order to ABKCO based on ABKCO's unlicensed use of the image of the Rolling Stones from the Rock'n'Roll Circus TV show, and that ABKCO did, in fact, promptly withdraw the orange photo cover version of the sampler, but this legal ruse was foiled by ABKCO after the label replaced the 'banned' Rock'n'Roll Circus photo  with the more innocuous (and much less dramatic) composite photo of the Group in the field (the Mark II line-up of the Group with Mick Taylor) , apparently taken from the photo shoot for the 'Let it Bleed' album, superimposed on the image of the Group taken during the photo session for the 'Between the Buttons' album (the Mark I line-up of the Group with Brian Jones) - The two albums are the only analog releases by the Stones (notwithstanding the obscure 1977 Made-for-TV 'Greatest Hits' package) to appear on the ABKCO label. All other  Stones releases prior to 1986 appeared on London Records. So, what else makes this incredible set unique? - Firstly, this is the ONLY place where you will find some of these tracks in MONO. To the best of our knowledge and recollection, none of the tracks off the 'Exile'  album were ever released in mono, not even in promotional-only form. 'All down the line' was briefly available in mono as a promo-only 7' single, but the promo-only mono single version was significantly different (not just the mix; the entire take was different) from the album version we have on this sampler.  Tracks from 'Beggars Banquet' (2 tracks) 'Sticky Fingers' (1 track) and "Let it Bleed" (4 tracks) which appear here in mono are the first and only time these tracks were made available in United States in mono.  - This is the ONLY Rolling Stones LP release  where you will find non-charting 'Exile' tracks mixed with the London tracks released between 1964 and 1971. Not until 2002 "Forty Licks" compilation can one find the London material mixed with the Exile- (and post-Exile) material. - This is the ONLY LP where you will find abridged versions of these songs. Nowhere else will you find a 1'48' version of Honky Tonk Woman, a 1:45 version of 'Satisfaction' , 1:55 version of 'You can't always get what you want' or a 1:28 version of 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' -  On repeated listening, a strange pattern begins to emerge:  virtually all of the songs (probably more than three quarters) seems to be bound into a coherent whole by one rather awkward common denominator: Mick Jagger's girl-bashing and misogyny (please pardon our paranoia). But then again, one would be hard-pressed to find a Jagger-Richard song which doesn't fit this particular pattern. Perhaps this was Allen D. Klein's revenge for the " Coq$ucker" slur? Like, "hey, Mr. Jagger,  you may not be  quite as hetero as you claim to be"? So, there you have it, folks. The long and short (mostly long, mostly factual, some speculative) story of  ONE OF THE WORLD'S RAREST RECORDS. Copies of this album typically turn up for sale about once a year on the average; we believe that less than 20 were sold since the inception of the internet era. *** Track listing: Under My Thumb (1:30)/I'm Free (1:25)/Sittin' On A Fence (1:30)/Ride On Baby (1:25)/Salt Of The Earth (1:58)/No Expectations (2:00)/Wild Horses (2:50)/Paint It Black (1:58)/Let's Spend The Night Together (1:37)/Midnight Rambler (2:18)/You Can't Always Get What You Want (1:55)/Stupid Girl (1:45)/One More Try (1:10)/The Last Time (1:38)/Sing This All Together (1:07)//Jumpin' Jack Flash (1:28)You Got The Silver (2:00)/All Down The Line (1:40)/(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (1:45)/Play With Fire (1:45)/Live With Me (1:43)/Yesterday's Papers (1:15)/Someting Happened To Me Yesterday (1:00)/Sweet Virginia (1:55)/Blue Turns To Grey (1:12)/Out Of Time (1:56)/Shine A Light (2:20)/Loving Cup (2:00)/Ruby Tuesday (1:44)/Honky Tonk Women (1:48) *** THE PROMOTIONAL, , RADIO STATION-, AUDITION OR DEMONSTRATION COPIES AND RELEASES (such as the one we have here) were often distributed to the radio stations before the record was released to the public, sometimes as much as four months ahead. These records are generally considered to be the 'first among equals': the VERY FIRST generation and the VERY FIRST pressings of the particular title; a PROTOTYPE and the earliest known official pressing of the record.  In this case, though, this is a rather moot point,  since this rare promo-only MONO version of the album was never commercially released to begin with. For additional historical information on this album CLICK HERE TO SEE IF WE HAVE OTHER LISTED ITEMS BY THIS GROUP OR ARTIST   CLICK HERE · CONDITION: · RECORD (IMPORTANT NOTE: unless otherwise noted, ALL records are graded visually, and NOT play-graded!; we  grade records under the strong, diffuse room light or discrete sunlight) (a) WE GRADE THE VINYL AS STRONG VERY GOOD++ . CAUTION: The vinyl is NOT MINT or NEAR MINT, but is nevertheless in a very nice and clean condition. There are some surface marks and abrasions, mostly light and superficial, although some may be longer than 1.1/4 inches (1 inch = 2.5 centimeters) (b) The record is pressed on a RELATIVELY  thick, inflexible vinyl. This is NOT a thin, flimsy ('dynaflex' type),  vinyl, but not the thickest, most rigid vinyl, either. (c) Stereo copies of this album are NOT known to exist. (d) Of course, this is a full-bodied ANALOG recording, and not an inferior, digital recording!!! · THE COVER (THIS IS THE RARE, WITHDRAWN, ORANGE 'ROCK & ROLL CIRCUS, COVER) THE COVER IS NICE --- ABOUT EXCELLENT OR VERY GOOD++ (VG++). The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover: - Cover has a partially split top seam (between 2 and 4 inches  / 5 to 10 centimeters); This split seam was delicately taped by the previous owner with a piece of transparent scotch tape - Cover has a minor 'bump' (1/2" tear/cut)  on the back panel, near the opening side, delicately repaired from the inside (NO PIECE OF CARDBOARD OR PAPER SLICK IS MISSING!) - Cover has a visible wrinkle (crease) in the cardboard base on the back panel, running parallel to the top seam (a minor cover construction flaw typical of all ABKCO publisher demo releases (Rolling Stones, Sam Cooke. Smokey Robinson & The Miracles) (nothing significant) - Cover shows some light yellowing on back side, apparently from aging  (nothing significant). - Cover has a few tiny wrinkles along the spine  (BARELY VISIBLE) - Cover has two corners slightly worn (nothing significant) NO OTHER VISIBLE FLAWS OR IMPERFECTIONS ON THE  COVER POSTAGE & SHIPPING: We offer THREE postage rates for both Domestic and International Mail: Media Mail, Priority Mail and Express Mail for domestic, and First Class, Priority International Mail, and Express International Mail for international orders. INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: WE RECOMMEND that you pay for USPS International Priority Mail OR International Express mail when making a payment in order to obtain tracking information, which is NOT available for First Class International shipments. INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE rates vary from country to country. For SPECIFIC international and domestic postage rates click here. While you can be rest assured that our packaging is careful, sturdy and impact-proof, please note that damage, loss or theft in transit is always possible, and in the case of some countries even PROBABLE. To discuss this potential problem and ensure flawless delivery, please contact us thru eBay BEFORE placing a bid. WANT A DISCOUNT ?!?  IT’S EASY: CLICK HERE TO see HOW! (please note recent changes in our policy) FOR OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION, CLICK ON THE LINKS BELOW: OUR VOLUME DISCOUNTS AND POSTAGE REBATES OUR GRADING POLICY ITEMS WE DO NOT GRADE HOW TO ACKNOWLEDGE WINNING BID OR RESOLVE A DISPUTE OUR PAYPAL 'CHARGEBACK' POLICY ACCEPTABLE PAYMENT METHODS OUR REFUND POLICY POSTAGE RATES AND DISCLOSURES PAYMENT DEADLINES FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS (FAQ) OUR REFUND POLICY : WE OFFER UNCONDITIONAL MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM THE RECEIPT OF THE MERCHANDISE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED (THE BUYER PAYS FOR THE RETURN POSTAGE); Still sealed items MUST be returned sealed in order to be eligible for a refund Some restrictions apply. Please read our complete refund policy before placing a bid. Click here  for the full text of our policy © 2001,2007 MDJ. All rights reserved.