A couple days ago, my copy of Shogo Hamada's album 愛の世代の前に (Ai-No Sedai-No Mae-Ni, aka I Was Born In 1952) came in the mail. To get my opinion of it out of the way, I'll just say this-- it's a damn rocking album. However, the focus of this post will be a potential guide to helping other collectors find the nicest releases of the J-rock legend's music.
When Hamada's album 誰がために鐘は鳴る (For Whom The Bell Tolls) was released on June 21st, 1990, CBS/Sony decided to reissue almost all of his previous albums up to that time. Many of his earlier albums, those released before CDs entered the Japanese market, seem to have been originally issued on CD on December 1st, 1985 (more on that wave later on in this post), but this wave of reissues feature what I would consider more aesthetically pleasing and consistent obi art than what I've seen of that first wave.
Many of his earlier were then remastered and reissued again in 1999, but based what I've heard from them, they seem to be victims of the loudness war, and a few of them were subject to revisionist tinkering from Hamada, most notably his double-album opus J.Boy, and to a lesser extent, this album-- its original subtitle, I Was Born In 1952, was shortened to Born In 1952, and then adopted as the album's new official title, for the 1999 remastered version. These changes have more or less scared me off from sticking my toes into that wave of reissues, and instead I'm after the 1990 versions, which as far as I know is just those earlier CDs rebranded.
Disc-wise, the albums have taken on new labels-- for example, while the original double-CD release of J.Boy has each disc's song titles written down the whole disc, accompanied by yellow stripes typical of older Sony CDs, the 1990 reissues stamp the album name and Hamada's name according to the cover's corresponding fonts, which looks nicer to me.
All of the CDs in the 1990 wave have the "CSCL-11xx" set as their catalog number, instead of the less neat jumble of numbers and letters that the 1985 wave assigned to them. Of course, there's the obvious added 1990 copyright just under this album's original 1981 copyright. Older versions of J.Boy and the albums after it included a "DR" logo on the back indicating the album in question as a "digital recording". That logo is struck from this back cover strip on these reissues.
This release date box reads as June 21st, 1990, although I'm not sure what that L symbol is supposed to indicate; any comments or private messages about what exactly it means would be highly appreciated. You may notice, however, that instead of just saying "90", the release year reads as "C". This confused me for a while until I read Sanremo Co, Ltd's article on Japanese CD release dates-- basically, when CDs were first being introduced in Japan, the recording industry decided to have the release dates written to the phrase "NIHON RECORD", with each letter corresponding to a different year. This system was phased out by 1992, apparently due to a number of reasons: they were running out of letters in that phrase, some of the letters were already repeating, and it was overall a really confusing and unintuitive system to use. The "C" is easy, since it only corresponds to one year: 1990.
Here are all of the updated catalog numbers for the CD versions of Shogo Hamada's catalog up to June 21st, 1990-- which kicks off with the reissue of Aido's sole released album from 1975. You may notice that For Whom The Bell Tolls' catalog number comes before a lot of the older albums, indicating that this wave of catalog reissues was quickly put together in order to coincide with the album's release. You may also notice that Wasted Tears abides by the older, more jumbled style of catalog numbers; I guess Sony figured it would be superfluous to reissue the previous year's album with a new catalog number so quickly.
Finally, as a bonus, here's pictures from a currently active listing for a 1985 CD issue of Hamada's album Mind Screen. The catalog number here appears to the older, jumblier "32DH..." style, but it otherwise looks identical to the 1990 version's obi. This was my sign that the master used for both of these catalog waves could be identical, but at the same time, they're actually replicating the obi on the original LP, so I don't know. I'm not allowed to attempt to bid on this auction anyway, so I couldn't grab this copy of Mind Screen to check, and I've never even seen a 1985 copy of Ai-No Sedai-No Mae-Ni, so going for that is out of the question for the moment. (I almost scored a 1990 copy of J.Boy with the obi until someone bid it out of my hands... grumble...)
According to the back cover, these CDs were issued, as mentioned before, on December 1st, 1985 (hence the "I"), but the date to the left indicates that this copy is banned from being offered in CD rental shops until March 31st, 1986. On the obi, you can see all of the albums that Hamada had released up to the time: the Aido album is absent on this original wave, and J.Boy was only nine months from being released when this CD was issued. For all I know, these actually were released to coincide with something, but I haven't been able to figure out what, if anything.
Thank you for reading this guide on determining which version of an older Shogo Hamada album you could be getting on CD. If you have any additional information on the 1990 reissues, the original 1985 issues, or even the 1999 remasters, feel free to drop some input in the comments or as an email.
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