Purely Made in Indonesia

When you're a collector, you have to be willing to take a risk with eBay items. Every once in a while, an item comes up that you've never heard of and you're perhaps even 95% sure is a fake, but you have to take a leap of faith for that 5% possibility.

That's what happened to me about ten years ago when I saw an eBay auction for this Indonesian cassette of the Jackson 5's Christmas Album that oddly had an Off the Wall-era photo of Michael superimposed over his 1970 self.

But it wasn't the strange photo choice that made me leap -- it was the track listing. As you'll see from the scan of the back, it includes six songs that were not on the original LP.


For years there have been rumors swirling around that there are unreleased J5 Christmas songs floating around out there among European collectors. One fellow in France even posted a list of his bootleg J5 Christmas songs for a few months before constant haranguing from fellow collectors drove him to take the list down. And those of us who are Motown fans in general know that there were more than likely outtakes from the Christmas Album sessions -- other songs recorded that didn't make the cut, or different versions of the songs that did. (A complete list of Christmas Album outtakes that are rumored to exist can be found in For the Record by Chris Cadman and Craig Halstead.)

This cassette, with a sticker on the box that reads "Purely Made in Indonesia," has all the hallmarks of a bootleg, so I had to bid on it, on the off-chance the six additional songs were recorded by the Jackson 5.

Sadly enough, they weren't. They were all songs by other artists, most of whom didn't even sound like the Jackson 5. But it was worth a shot, and I'd do it all over again if another opportunity were to present itself because there are just so many Christmas songs I'd love to hear the Jackson 5 sing.