This acetate from 1976 comes via the personal collection of Trevor Lawrence who produced and arranged “ … That’s The Way It Is”.

While this contains the same song versions as found on the album release, there are some minor title variations found on the labels e.g. “Thousand Miles Away” rather than “A Thousand Miles Away, “Day Light” rather than “Daylight Has Caught Me” and what appears to simply be a corrected typo to the title “Zombie Jamboreea”

Most of my Nilsson collecting these days focuses on acetates and test pressings but they certainly have become few and far between so I’m very pleased to be able to add this one to the archive.

This pressing has been on my radar for some time now and while the record itself would turn up occasionally, I was interested in acquiring both the record, the original sleeve and the original RCA “insert”.

This proved far more challenging but recently the opportunity presented itself. After lengthy negotiations, the item finally arrived and when it did, it came with another pamphlet I’d not encountered before. What a bonus!

This RCA promo features David Bowie’s Jean Genie on one side and Nilsson’s Remember on the other. Beyond this all I knew was that the 1/25 represented the date of release (not that there were only 25 pressings made as some have assumed). Curious as to what the rest said, I asked a former colleague to help out with translations (my thanks again Don). These can be found on the record’s page.

A curious point is that the pamphlet is dated 1973 but the events described all took place in 1972 as far as I can tell (and according to Alan Shipton’s book). Perhaps this “bulletin” was less news and more an ode to “Remember”.

Clearing out a backlog of records that required attention (mostly in need of serious cleaning before being placed onto their permanent shelves) and I stumbled across this Japanese compilation I’d purchased quite a while ago but forgotten about.

Three tracks are featured, Everybody’s Talkin’, One, and The Puppy Song. These are the standard releases of these tracks so nothing too special there but the sleeve itself is an incredibly thick gatefold which has an inner pocket. There wasn’t anything in that pocket but I wonder if once upon a time there may have been some kind of promotional sheet housed there. The record itself looks to be unplayed so who knows if this was in fact a promo pressing (it’s a white label, so perhaps). If it was, it doesn’t look like anyone cared to give it a spin. Shame for them, nice for me.

Tracking down Harry’s acetates is becoming trickier and trickier but every once in a while, patience pays off. I’ve been meaning to get this added to the archive for a while but my process involves inspecting, playing, cleaning and properly storing every new item I acquire and lately I’ve been battling a bad back which has slowed things way down. Happily, I seem to be on the mend (slowly) and was at last able to give this piece of history the attention it deserved.

This acetate of Nilsson Schmilsson is crackly to be sure, but it does nothing to take away from Harry’s dulcet tones. There aren’t any alternate takes or surprise tracks to be found here but then I wasn’t expecting any. This is just pure Nilsson goodness and that’s plenty for me.