Pennyroyal 3 - Sliver

Most of the white label test pressings came in white inner sleeves. While most labels are blank, some sleeves and labels have handwritten titles, which may have been written by Tupelo, the distributor, radio station or journalist, or a collector. One copy came in an English and French Rough Trade promo sleeve, and another in a German Rough Trade promo sleeve, indicating that a few copies were used for promotion also outside of the UK. The German sleeve is identical on both sides, and had a sticker on the front. Another copy came in a retail picture sleeve.

A release sheet from the distributor, Revolver, a part of the Cartel, is included with several copies. There are two slight variants of the sheet, some include the text "PLAY LOUD!", while most don't.

The singles were pressed by MPO in France on subcontract from Mayking. The Mayking/ MPO test pressings usually came with Mayking test pressing labels, white labels were done only at request from the record label. Even so, they would usually make three test pressings with Mayking labels, though none such test pressing have turned up. [1] The lacquers were cut by Utopia, a mastering studio in London, UK, but the matrix codes, except for the mastering studio name, were written onto the lacquers by MPO prior to plating. The original matrix codes were written by the cutting engineer in the outer area of the lacquers to keep track of them during processing. This area is trimmed off of the stampers before pressing, and is obviously not transferred to the records. [2]

Tupelo test pressings were usually used by the distributor to gather advance orders for their releases. On-the-road representatives would bring the test pressings around to shops to convince them to stock the release. [3] The unusually high number of test pressings found so far, and the fact that Tupelo must have specifically requested white labels instead of company labels, suggests that they were also used for press and radio promotion. (At least one retail copy was also used for promotion, together with a press release different to the release sheet shown on this page [4].)

Usually 25 test pressings were made for a release they thought would sell well [1], but even more may have been made for this release. There seems to be less test pressings of the 7" edition, which is reasonable as they only used the 12" for gathering advance orders and promotion. At least ten copies have been found, seven with release sheets, but this count is probably outdated. They are hard to track, because most labels have no handwriting.