So, What’s the Deal with Taiwanese Vinyl?
Maybe you’ve seen it before, in an antique store, or the occasional record shop. Maybe it caught your eye at a flea market or vinyl show, or on this very site. It’s definitely a record, maybe an album you’re very familiar with. But something about it just isn’t, quite, right. Let’s dive into the fascinating history of Taiwanese vinyl pressings.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan was experiencing huge economic expansion often referred to as the “Taiwan Miracle”. At the same time, the country began receiving an influx of American G.I.’s due to the Vietnam War. Eager to attract their business and bolster their economy, the country sought to supply them with all they were looking for. One of the major things they wanted, was the latest music. However, vinyl masters were expensive, and hard to come by those days in the Eastern hemisphere. But a theory was put forth, that cassette junkies and 00’s Napster aficionados would repeat generations later: You only need one copy of an album to press a record.
Taiwanese pressing plants would invest money in a single U.S. or U.K. pressing of the latest and greatest albums: folk-rock troubadors like Donovan, Soul legends like Dionne Warwick, Pop superstars The Beatles, and European favorites like Claudine Longet. That would become the master recording for all the Taiwanese outputs that would come forth. As a result, no Taiwanese vinyl is going to be an audiophile’s dream. In fact, probably the opposite. The labels would be transcribed as best they could and also translated into Mandarin, often with some charming spelling errors. The vinyl itself was often black but failing that, a common fall-back were clear vinyls in bright colors of red and orange, that are often prized among collectors. The covers were also interesting works of art in themselves. Xeroxed or photocopied from the “master pressing”, and pressed onto very thin paper sleeves, there are often wild color variations and alignment issues that can be noticed on these. If you take a peek inside some of them, you’ll even notice that they were often resourcefully recycled. It’s not uncommon to open up a jacket of a Taiwanese record and find the cover art for a completely different album lining in the inside. The end product is a fascinating work of art, a unique testament to vinyl’s hold the world over, and just a fun story to tell. We’ve collected some of our favorite album arts from our inventory below, but if you’d like to take a look at our entire collection, head on over to the Taiwan tag in our store!
