The Grail Hunt · France · Germany · Austria · Czechia

Central grails

Five cities where the pressing plant, the state and the studio all left their mark on the object: Blue Note recording in Paris, Berlin split into two sound systems by politics, the St. Pauli clubs where the Beatles served their apprenticeship, Vienna between the Decca Ring and the Mego laptop, and Prague, which pressed for the whole bloc while rationing its own.

5 cities · 15 records · companion to the book

Each card carries the story, how to spot the original, and where to hunt it (Discogs · eBay). The rust border marks the city's main grail; the rest are secondary targets.

Paris

The grail

Blue Note · 1963

Our Man in Paris

Dexter Gordon

The record where the expatriate dream came true. In 1963 Dexter Gordon — an American tenor who'd made Europe his home — cut this in Paris with Bud Powell and Kenny Clarke, two more exiles who'd fled the American grind for the Left Bank. It's the sound of Paris as jazz sanctuary, and the reason the city's diggers still hunt Blue Note in French sleeves.

How to spot the original

First pressing is MONO BLP 4146 on the original Blue Note label, with the Van Gelder stamp in the run-out (a label-variant to check). The French Blue Note pressing is the copy you'll actually find in Paris — the "one to take home." Not the stereo Classic Vinyl reissue (Kevin Gray).

Grail price · ~€39–1,200 (median ~€217.50).

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Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Read the full review In the book: Paris

Target

Blue Note · 1965

One Flight Up

Dexter Gordon

The Paris sequel. Thirteen months after Our Man in Paris, Dexter Gordon returned to the city's Barclay Studios with a new rhythm section — Kenny Drew, the teenage Danish bass prodigy Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen, Art Taylor on drums and Donald Byrd guesting on trumpet. Side A is a single eighteen-minute performance, "Tanya," still cited among the great extended solos on record: expatriate jazz stretching out with nowhere to be.

Tell

Blue Note BLP 4176 (matrices BNLP-4176-A/B), cut at Barclay Studios in Paris, June 1964. First-press tells: a deep groove on Side 1 only (never both, unlike Our Man in Paris), a New York address on both labels, the Plastylite "ear," and VAN GELDER stamped on both sides.

Price · ~€22–750 (median ~€153).

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Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Target

Saravah · 1969

Comme à la Radio

Brigitte Fontaine, Areski & The Art Ensemble of Chicago

The other expatriate meeting in Paris, a decade after Gordon. In 1969 members of the Art Ensemble of Chicago — Lester Bowie, Roscoe Mitchell, Joseph Jarman, Malachi Favors, with drummer-trumpeter Leo Smith — came to Paris, part of the wave of American free jazz using the city as its European base, and joined the provocative chanson of Brigitte Fontaine and her partner Areski Belkacem at Pierre Barouh's Saravah studio. The result: French sung poetry over free horns and hand percussion — the two exile scenes colliding.

Tell

Saravah SH 10006, France, 15 November 1969. A gatefold with a separate stapled 12" lyric sheet (often lost over the years); editions from 1992 on add two bonus tracks — their presence rules out an original.

Price · ~€20–99 (median ~€55).

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Berlin

The city where politics built the sound — twice

The grail

Inteam · 1984

E2-E4

Manuel Göttsching

The record that quietly invented techno, made in West Berlin. Göttsching recorded this hour-long pulse in a single 1981 sitting, almost as an afterthought before catching a flight; released in 1984, it became the secret blueprint for Detroit and the raves that followed. Fifty-nine minutes of hypnotic sequencer that turned out to be a starting gun.

How to spot the original

Inteam 20.004 — the first pressing lacks the "LC 8978" code on the label (later runs carry it). The Racket reissue was cut from the original metal parts and sounds identical, so with an original you're paying for the object, not the sound.

Grail price · ~€68–456 (median ~€300).

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Read the full review In the book: Berlin

Target

Basic Channel · 1993

Q 1.1

Basic Channel

Berlin dub-techno reduced to almost nothing. Moritz von Oswald and Mark Ernestus built a label with no names and no titles, just deep, hissing minimalism on plain vinyl — and Q 1.1 is a cornerstone of the sound that made 1990s Berlin the capital of techno's austere wing.

Tell

Basic Channel, 1993 — anonymous by design, so the tell is physical: one versus two stamper impressions at the centre distinguishes the pressings.

Price · Median ~€27.

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Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Target

Ohr · 1971

Ash Ra Tempel

Ash Ra Tempel

Kosmische Berlin at its most volcanic. The teenage Manuel Göttsching's first band made two side-long tracks — one all serene drift, one all fire — that defined the Berlin school before he ever touched a sequencer. An Ohr original is a cornerstone of German rock collecting.

Tell

Ohr label — check the catalogue-number format (5-digit vs 6-digit Ohr issues). As collectors say, "the value is in the sleeve": cover condition drives the price.

Price · Median ~€180 (up to ~€1,100).

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Hamburg

Where the Reeperbahn made the Beatles

The grail

Polydor · 1961

My Bonnie

Tony Sheridan & The Beat Brothers

The first Beatles record — and it's a Hamburg record. Backing singer Tony Sheridan in the Reeperbahn clubs, a young band billed as "The Beat Brothers," a German label: this 1961 single is where the Beatles first reached wax, months before anyone in Liverpool was listening. Hamburg's claim on the biggest band in history.

How to spot the original

Polydor 24 673, October 1961. The original is the "Rock" version (not "Twist"), opens with a German-language spoken intro, comes with no picture sleeve, and carries a K1 matrix.

Grail price · Median ~€70.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Read the full review In the book: Hamburg

Target

Polydor · 1971

Faust

Faust

Krautrock as provocation, pressed as an object. Faust's debut came on clear vinyl in a clear sleeve printed with an X-ray of a fist — you could see straight through the whole thing. Made near Hamburg on the label's money and almost no rules, it's one of the most physically striking records German rock ever produced.

Tell

Polydor 2310 142, 1971 — clear vinyl and a clear "radiograph" sleeve (the fist). The track durations printed on the sleeve are wrong, a period tell.

Price · ~€33–203 (median ~€79).

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Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Target

What's So Funny About... · 1992

Ich-Maschine

Blumfeld

The birth of the "Hamburger Schule." Jochen Distelmeyer's Blumfeld put intellectual, German-language indie on the map, and this 1992 debut is its founding document — the sound of a Hamburg that took guitars and ideas equally seriously.

Tell

What's So Funny About... SF 115. First press carries a 4-digit postcode "D-2000 Hamburg 36" (post-1993 copies use the 5-digit code); distributed via EFA/Indigo.

Price · Median ~€35.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Vienna

Four lives of one room: a bathhouse, a Wagner ring, a discotheque, a ruin

The grail

Mego · 2001

Endless Summer

Fennesz

Vienna's electronic landmark. Christian Fennesz dissolved pop and guitar into shimmering digital haze, and the vinyl of Endless Summer became the defining document of the city's Mego label — glitch reimagined as beauty rather than error. Modern Vienna's most collected electronic record.

How to spot the original

The first vinyl pressing is MEGO 035v (the CD is 035) — distinct from the later Editions Mego reissue.

Grail price · Median ~€45.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Read the full review In the book: Vienna

Target

Decca · 1959

Das Rheingold

Wagner / Solti

The record that made stereo an art form — cut in Vienna. Producer John Culshaw and the Wiener Philharmoniker recorded the first studio Rheingold in the Sofiensaal, engineering it like cinema. It launched Solti's landmark Ring cycle and is still a benchmark of what a gramophone record could do.

Tell

Decca SXL 2101/2/3, 1959 — the ED1 "wide-band" label is the first-press tell; Sofiensaal / Wiener Philharmoniker / Culshaw production.

Price · Median ~€41.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Target

A&M · 1985

Falco 3

Falco

Vienna's global pop moment. Falco 3 carried "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Jeanny," and the Austrian in him is all over it — a Habsburg swagger, a nod to "Maria Theresia," a Viennese star singing about Mozart to the whole planet.

Tell

A&M 395 105-1, or the Austrian GIG pressing. Look for the "Maria Theresia" credit and "Jenny"/Jeanny; the Austrian GIG issue differs from the international A&M.

Price · Median ~€11.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Prague

The city that pressed the world's records — and rationed its own

The grail

LTM / Invisible / SCOPA · 1978

Egon Bondy's Happy Hearts Club Banned

The Plastic People of the Universe

A banned record smuggled out of a police state. The Plastic People were the underground band whose 1976 trial galvanised Charter 77 and the Czech dissident movement. This album — recorded clandestinely, pressed in France in 1978 — is the sound of art made under threat of prison. To own it is to own a piece of resistance.

How to spot the original

LTM/Invisible/SCOPA, France, 1978 — includes a 60-page book, a "B5" error, and mixes that differ from the CD; recorded in secret at Houska Castle.

Grail price · Median ~€67.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Read the full review In the book: Prague

Target

Supraphon · 1969

Songy a Balady

Marta Kubišová

The voice the regime tried to erase. Kubišová was a star silenced for backing the 1968 Prague Spring; this 1969 LP slipped out before the ban fully closed. The collector's target is the uncensored first issue — the record as it was before the state rewrote it.

Tell

Supraphon 1 13 0587 (1969) is the UNCENSORED version — distinct from the censored 1970 issue (1 13 0855); tracks A5/B4 are the originals.

Price · Median ~€20.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Target

Panton · 1988

Straka v hrsti

Pražský Výběr

New wave that got a band banned for four years. Pražský Výběr were too strange and too sharp for the late-communist authorities; when this finally appeared in 1988 it was a small act of thaw. A Czech record with the state's price stamped right into it.

Tell

Panton 81 0826-1311 — "Kčs 44" price impressed on it, code "88 2"; black and green variants exist (their hierarchy uncertain).

Price · Median ~€12.

🇬🇧 eBay UK

Which pressing? Check it on Discogs ↗

Written by

Sergio Sueri

Reviews & Editorial

20 cities · 58 records · back to the hunt

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