Remember flexi discs?

Remember flexi discs? They were a great way of introducing a new recording to listeners. Because I was quite poor, I thought of them as free music. In the UK Lyntone was the company that produced them. I still have many by the likes of The Faces and Alice Cooper and even Monty Python.
This is an especially lavish one housed in a small version of the album and has highlights from the record, so you knew what it was really like before you bought it. Prior to the album becoming available, British music newspaper New Musical Express released an issue with an attached free promotional flexi disc on 10 November 1973.
Packaged in a miniature facsimile of the original album sleeve, the one-sided flexi disc, playing at 33 1⁄3 rpm, contained the song "Brain Salad Surgery", along with excerpts from all five tracks of the forthcoming album. Being a late-recorded track, the title song had not been intended for Brain Salad Surgery and was not included in its track listing. However, it was later used as the B-side to the UK number two hit single "Fanfare for the Common Man" and ended up on the compilation of studio outtakes Works Volume 2 (1977).
The version of First Impression which includes Karn Evil 9 is different from the album, and is the one on the ‘By Invitation’ compilation album. As a promo tool, it worked because it got to #2 in the UK and #11 in America. Though they were huge at the time with the previous two albums going to #1 and #2.
It isn’t rare, obviously but I think it’s a nice artefact and a reminder of how records were promoted.

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