J5 Timeline

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Japanese Tour Programs 1973

When it comes to quality, no one surpasses the Japanese. The program from their 1973 tour of Japan is a ting of beauty. It measures 14 x 10" and has a brilliant full-color cover.


Inside it's filled with rare photos, and enough text to make me wish I could read Japanese to see what it says.







My friend Annalisa (an amazing collector from Italy) had sent me a color scan of the cover and a photocopy of the interior many years ago and for a long time I sought out my own copy in vain. Finally I found an ad for a Jackson 5 1973 Japanese tour program in a record collectors' magazine. I sent away for it, but when it arrived in the mail, it was something else:



It was an elegant program printed in brown tone, also 14 x 10" in size. It had more white space inside overall, but still lots of lovely photos and mysterious (to me) text. Since they used Arabic numerals on the front cover, however, I can at least ascertain that this program was printed specifically for the concert the Jackson 5 gave in Tokyo on April 27, 1973, at the Imperial Theater.




This second program is definitely the rarer of the two, which makes sense since it would have had a more limited distribution. I don't know if the Tokyo venue was unusual in this regard, or if any of the other Japanese venues printed their own programs, too. I suspect the former is true, but I'll keep an eye out, just in case. And if there are any Japanese fans out there who would be willing to translate the text, please let me know.

5 comments:

  1. I see it looks like they officially called them J5+1. I know they sometimes said in interviews that J5 and a half of J5+1 would be nice but I don't think I've ever seen them being refered to 'officially' as the j5+1 before.
    Nice blog!

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  2. This blog is read in Japan.
    Because it was a topic of the visit to Japan concert of 73 years, today, it is very glad.
    It managed to read Michael's profile.
    However, because the character was hard to see, the profile of the merlon was not able to be read.
    Because I am a big fan in the merlon, it is sad.

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  3. Anon @ 10:35, if you send me an email message at j5collector @ att.net I will send you a larger scan later this week. Thank you!

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  4. I was there at the concert, though I don't remember much, except that it was a good show!

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  5. The opening act on this J-5 show was a glam rock band called Vodka Collins. Anyone have any photos?

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