Saturday afternoon. All the world is outdoors throwing baseballs, walking hand in hand in some park, kicking up snow or sliding downhill on a piece of battered cardboard. Maybe the world's just hanging out by the fire escape smoking one cigarette after another and watching the city pass by. Maybe they're at the beach or in some mountain range contemplating belly buttons like Leonard Cohen.

Yeah, but there are a few of us, alone and furtive, who kneel in the dust and chaos of a bookstore flipping through some quaint and curious volumes of forgotten lore. We curl into ourselves against the cold or sweat with the heat 'cause these places never have a controlled environment. We're vampires who come out in the day. Misfits who like to read.

And what are we looking for in these Olde Bookstores? First editions, of course. They're so beautiful. Everything the author and publisher hoped for is there in the first edition -- full-color illustrations, remarkable typeset, numbered or signed copies, stitched binding, hologram dust jackets, photos and bios. The tricks go on and on. First editions are worth the extra money to us bookstore creeps. And we pay and pay and pay.

Cousin to the bookstore vampire is the vinyl junkie. Music is his or her fix. And first pressings are the uncut drug of the music lover sure as first editions are a bookstore vampire's blood. Like a first edition, original pressings have all the goodies -- lyric sheets, posters, cardboard cut-outs, banned covers, any number of goofy and artistic inserts. And sound. First pressings sound so sweet. The junkie knows it's better to have a first pressing of a Coltrane LP than all the digitized, remastered, remixed and repackaged CDs that Kenny G could make. How does the junkie know an LP is a first? Glad you asked.

The "white label promo" is the first edition of the vinyl world. It's easy to spot because, oddly enough, the label is white. To understand why a wlp is so desirable we must look at the process of making an LP.

From the final tape, a lathe cuts the "reference lacquer" or "acetate" which is used by the artist and engineer to judge sound quality, mix, and song sequencing. When the reference lacquer is approved, a master is cut. This master lacquer can be compared to a photo in that its "image" of the sound is "positive" -- it has grooves. Next the master is coated with a thin film of silver and electroplated with a nickel solution. From the plated master, a "negative" master is made by peeling the nickel plating from the original. We might call this a "negative" because the sound is now represented by ridges instead of grooves. The "mother" is created from the "negative" master, so she is "positive." The mother is actually a second metal mold which is thicker near the label to allow the finished records to be stacked on top of each other without damage to the grooves. Metal "stampers" are produced from the mother and, as you've already guessed, the stampers are "negative." Now we make the records -- an injection process for 45's and a pressing method (like making a waffle) for LP's.

Since the sound is transferred from tape and gets passed down from master to master and reversed from grooves to ridges and back to grooves again, its quality is diminished ever so slightly by the time it arrives at the final injection or pressing. In addition, both stampers and mothers can show real physical wear which means the sound quality suffers even more as record after record is pressed. A stamper can turn out only about 1500 to 2000 LP's. It is not unusual for more than one stamper to be produced. If the record becomes a hit, more than one mother might be made.

White label promos are desirable because they represent the first stamper created from the first mother, and therefore give superior sound. Combine this higher quality sound with a limited run and a hit artist, and you have the makings of a real collector's item.

White label promos, alas, were mostly a 50s and 60s phenomenon. When Ronald Reagan's 1980s rolled around, everyone knew the LP was doomed (along with the Bill Of Rights). Fewer and fewer LP's were made, finally to become extinct (in the good ol' USA, anyway). And the white label promo was the first to vanish.