It has been an intensive few months on my Warhol front. I have added almost a dozen titles to my collection.

It started in July, when I finally managed to find an original copy of Aretha Franklin’s 1986 CD “Aretha”. This was the only CD with Andy Warhol’s art released in his lifetime, The CD was reissued with extra tracks as a double CD in 2014, but I wanted an original 1986 copy. They seem to be quite rare and it has taken me a long time to find one though it didn’t turn out to be too expensive.

The next records I found were by Diana Ross. First a rather battered copy of her 1983 single “Who / Anywhere You Run to” and a poster cover copy of “So Close / Fool for Your Love”, which was way more expensive than I really wanted to pay.

Then I found a copy of Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops’ “Latin Rhythms by the Boston Pops”, which I got reasonably cheap. I already had a nice copy that with the “A High Fidelity Recording” text below the RCA logo at top right. The copy I now got hold of didn’t have that text, but instead a gold sticker with the same text. My guess is that this was an earlier printing.

Then I was pleased to find a reasonably priced copy of the original Skyline bootleg album on the Four Stars label that I wrote about in a previous blog post.

Next up was an Austrian bootleg of The Rolling Stones “Sticky Fingers” album with alternate takes and that used the photo of the Stones that had previously been used on the 1971 “Brown Sugar / Bitch / Let It Rock” EP and again on the numbered RSD reissue in 2011.

I was in London for a few days in August and popped into HMV on Oxford Street where I found two copies of “The Velvet Underground & Nico” 50th anniversary edition, with a large black label on the shrink wrapper on the rear of the cover covering Eric Emerson’s “torso”  emulating the sticker used to cover his photo on the original 1967 release. I bought two copies in the hope that they might be the limited pink vinyl edition. Needless to say, they weren’t! However, I did manage to find a pink vinyl copy not long after. Apparently these were made in America in a limited edition of 1000 copies. The copies I bought at HMV were both pressed in Europe.

There are loads of interesting bootlegs with Andy Warhol art. I have been looking for a couple for quite some time. I have already mentioned the Skyline album with Warhol’s photo of Suzanne de Maria on the cover, another was another The Rolling Stones bootleg called “Live in Laxington” [sic] — a live recording from the Rupp Arena in Lexington, Kentucky, recorded on 29th June 1978. The front cover is a typical bootleg cover picture, but the rear cover shows one of Warhol’s “biting” photos from 1975. This version has a green spatter vinyl. There is another black vinyl version with a plain cover á la Beggars Banquet.

The purchase that has given me the greatest thrill arrived at the end of September. I knew that there was a limited edition promotional folder of Miguel Bosé’s 1983 album “Made in Spain”. I had never seen one for sale until a copy appeared on Ebay in mid September. I put in a bid was was outbid. “Oh, Well…” I thought. It wasn’t meant to be. However, the following day I received a “second chance” as the high bidder couldn’t afford his final bid. So I got the set. The folder should contain white label versions of the full “Made in Spain” LP, a promo 12″ single “Fuego / Panama Connection” and a single-sided, white label 7″ single “Fuego” and an A4 booklet with a fold-out version of Warhol’s Bosé portraits. When the folder arrived, the singles were missing. The seller had another copy that also lacked the singles and couldn’t help provide them. But Discogs had a single copy of the white label 12″, which I snapped up and several copies of the single-sided, white label 7″ single, so that was easy to get and a little over a week later my foleder was complete with the LP, 12″ and 7″ and the booklet. What a great (and rare) addition to my collection. I laid out my /several) copies of “Made in Spain”, the Fuego 12″ and made a composite of Warhol’s Bosé portraits!

Another cover appeared on Ebay that was a pastiche of the “Velvet Underground & Nico” cover with a banana-shaped chocolate ice cream with “Peel Slowly and See” beside it. Peel the chocolate off to reveal the naked banana. The record is a 12″, three-track single “Family” by the Cru-el Grand Orchestra — a 1999 Japanese recording, whose cover was designed by Ukawa Naohiro (Mom’n’DaD Productions 222). Even the rear cover had a photo that I recognise from a record cover, but can’t place — perhaps a reader can help identify it.

There are several other coloured vinyl versions of “The Velvet Underground & Nico”, yellow, red and blue vinyl plus the Newbury Comics yellow/black vinyl. Now that I have the pink copy, do I have to get hold of the other colours too?