Smiths Solid Center 7" Discussion

All mine, missing sandie shaw (which I had and let go, stupidly) and gf in a coma. And need the solid glad hips TCM's.

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Yet more solids...I'll stick with UK issues for now, thanks for the heads up though.

In a manner of speaking, they are UK issues. Made in the UK for export to Sweden (and Scandinavia). Much like the "Irish pressings" are generally thought to be pressed in the UK for export to the Republic of Ireland.
 
In a manner of speaking, they are UK issues. Made in the UK for export to Sweden (and Scandinavia). Much like the "Irish pressings" are generally thought to be pressed in the UK for export to the Republic of Ireland.
Yeah but unlike the uk pressings they don't have the "made in uk/England" line under the credits, they also have ncb on the label and labels are diff colour to the uk's. all in all they're quite different.
 
Yeah but unlike the uk pressings they don't have the "made in uk/England" line under the credits, they also have ncb on the label and labels are diff colour to the uk's. all in all they're quite different.

Au contraire, the Swedish 'Ask' does say 'Made in England' but as you say there are marked differences too. 'Ask' has a white label with black print. 'William....' has 'ncb' on the label and that textured paper sleeve etc.

Personally, I think that this is what makes collecting The Smiths records so enjoyable. Even though the "holy grails" are ultra-rare and beyond my wallet, there are so many variations, even amongst the most common UK pressings. Rough Trade in the eighties wasn't much more than a cottage industry and appeared to make up a lot of what they did, as they went along. Aside from The Smiths US recording contract with Sire, Rough Trade just licensed their records in most countries. This has what has led to even now 30+ years on from the first releases, collectors discovering previously "unknown" discoveries. In its own way, Smiths collecting has become almost as idiosyncratic as Beatles collecting!
 
Not sure which ones were on ebay. Here are two I have. They are nice items. The Sheila one has a nice glossy sleeve, the text on the back of the sleeve is identical to the UK one. The William sleeve has a unique textured look and feel, but the text I think is also identical. The catalogue numbers on the sleeves are the regular RT ones, same as UK. The labels have the ncb logo on them.
 

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Not sure which ones were on ebay. Here are two I have. They are nice items. The Sheila one has a nice glossy sleeve, the text on the back of the sleeve is identical to the UK one. The William sleeve has a unique textured look and feel, but the text I think is also identical. The catalogue numbers on the sleeves are the regular RT ones, same as UK. The labels have the ncb logo one them.

Yeah theyre both swedish, still no bigmouth solid either irish, swedish, uk or anything. And so far only the one know Last night i dreamt solid, why is that? Why these two so rare, Could understand Last night i dreamt being the last single released, most likely didnt go overboard at the pressing plant on these but why bigmouth?, Queen is dead album, smiths at their peak, other singles around at the time, That Joke, Boy with thorn, and then Panic, all have plenty of solid centres, seems strange that bigmouth was left out.
 
Yeah theyre both swedish, still no bigmouth solid either irish, swedish, uk or anything. And so far only the one know Last night i dreamt solid, why is that? Why these two so rare, Could understand Last night i dreamt being the last single released, most likely didnt go overboard at the pressing plant on these but why bigmouth?, Queen is dead album, smiths at their peak, other singles around at the time, That Joke, Boy with thorn, and then Panic, all have plenty of solid centres, seems strange that bigmouth was left out.

I'll give my thoughts on it. The previous release, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side was released in Sep 85. From the release of HIG to that point (around two and a half years) there had been 9 singles and 3 lp's. With extra songs on 12" singles etc. that was a huge output. The earlier singles all spent years on the independent charts (though I don't know what that means saleswise) and were still being repressed up until 1986 I think, so potentially a lot of solid-centre ones there. There were contractual disputes then delaying the release of QID and Bigmouth didn't come out until 9 months after Thorn (usually around 5 months between releases up until then) and so maybe there was some intention to make a big push on this single and lots of initial pressings were made. Bigmouth was supposed to be a big return single (preferred to There Is A Light) but didn't quite do as well as expected (or was a disappointment at any rate chartwise) so maybe no need for repressings? After that perhaps they went back to fewer initial pressings?
 
I'll give my thoughts on it. The previous release, The Boy With The Thorn In His Side was released in Sep 85. From the release of HIG to that point (around two and a half years) there had been 9 singles and 3 lp's. With extra songs on 12" singles etc. that was a huge output. The earlier singles all spent years on the independent charts (though I don't know what that means saleswise) and were still being repressed up until 1986 I think, so potentially a lot of solid-centre ones there. There were contractual disputes then delaying the release of QID and Bigmouth didn't come out until 9 months after Thorn (usually around 5 months between releases up until then) and so maybe there was some intention to make a big push on this single and lots of initial pressings were made. Bigmouth was supposed to be a big return single (preferred to There Is A Light) but didn't quite do as well as expected (or was a disappointment at any rate chartwise) so maybe no need for repressings? After that perhaps they went back to fewer initial pressings?

That sounds as good as anything I've heard, in which case, there will be no solid centre bigmouths out there, not a single one, which is a shame for hardcore collectors. Saying that, it's not as if bigmouth 7" push outs flood the market and it did chart ok, nearly 20 places higher than That joke & on par with boy with thorn, which are much more common. And that still doesn't explain the scarcity of Last night I dreamt, what's the minimum amount they're likely to press? More or less than 50? 100? They can't have pressed a whole batch of solid centres to go on public sale otherwise a few more would have turned up over the years.
 
That sounds as good as anything I've heard, in which case, there will be no solid centre bigmouths out there, not a single one, which is a shame for hardcore collectors. Saying that, it's not as if bigmouth 7" push outs flood the market and it did chart ok, nearly 20 places higher than That joke & on par with boy with thorn, which are much more common. And that still doesn't explain the scarcity of Last night I dreamt, what's the minimum amount they're likely to press? More or less than 50? 100? They can't have pressed a whole batch of solid centres to go on public sale otherwise a few more would have turned up over the years.

You're right in the sense that, they wouldn't go ahead with a repress until demand reached a certain figure, weather it be in the tens (which seems low to me), or in the hundreds (which seems more plausible) or thousand/s (which seems very unlikely due to the scarcity)
 
Well one thing seems certain...these solid centres are going to catch the eye a bit more now.I only started to try and fill a UK set recently and didn't realize there were such tough cookies as Girlfriend and Last night solid centres.I only need 6 records now but judging by the postings I may never get at least 2 of them!!
 
Well one thing seems certain...these solid centres are going to catch the eye a bit more now.I only started to try and fill a UK set recently and didn't realize there were such tough cookies as Girlfriend and Last night solid centres.I only need 6 records now but judging by the postings I may never get at least 2 of them!!

But, the known copy of LNIDTSLM has anti-slip serrations. So, that's an Irish (export) issue, isn't it, not a UK issue? Whereas, GIAC exists as a solid centre with and without serrations - therefore as a UK, Irish and even a Scandanavian issue. I'd say there must be more solids in existence (including Bigmouth), somewhere.
 
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