Vulcan Meet Your Ghost Lyle Steece Spencer Iowa LP

$

200

Introduction:
Always remember: records are your best entertainment value, and Us Guys are happy to combine items from our auctions and our Store to achieve maximum postal savings. This record is from my former retail stock.

Description Of The Thing:
Fine sealed 33rpm Record Thingie (black) that I have accumulated and wish to transfer to your house. This is an incredibly rare, unsealed, never-played copy. We will get to all of that momentarily.

Vulcan, aka Lyle Steece, of Spencer, Iowa, US, recorded some stuff, made an album, and only sold it through one retail store. Guess whose retail store it was? Ok, there were actually two different guys who once owned the retail store, and I am the second one, but I can still authenticate the album by my personal association with the artist.

This album has been extensively bootlegged on the Internet (run a little Google search and see), but legitimate copies rarely made it much beyond Spencer, Iowa, and there aren't many of those.

How can you tell a boot from the original, I hear you asking? After all, if nobody's ever SEEN a copy, and the catalogs don't include anything about it, what's there to look for? Well, the first thing to look for is whether or not it's sealed. Lyle couldn't afford shrinkwrapping. The second thing to look at is the label, intentionally not produced here. Lyle also couldn't afford labels. He produced his own with a typewriter and a photocopier, and meticulously "whited-out" several spots on every label, having changed his mind about some wording after photocopying them. Then he pasted them to the records. Additionally, the original label lists a slightly different track list from the cover for side two (the cover is correct, except in referring to Meet Your Ghost as "Title Track").

Meet Your Ghost covers come in several states (ALL marked "a re-issue"-Lyle got a little mixed up over what "reissue" meant): the Original, the Pasteover Version (being offered here), and a later re-issued re-issue (that one's easy; it has a professionally printed label). Legitimate "second state" Meet Your Ghosts will feature a rubber hand-stamp at the bottom of the back graphic, which says "P.O. Box 5221". Boots incorporate that address (if they use it at all) as another line of printing rather than as a rubber handstamp. The paste-over portion of the cover (visible in the photo of the back) features a photo of Vulcan which he apparently prefers to the photo originally used. It carefully obscures an earlier photo of the artist, as well as two statements: "Dedicated to Jimi Hendrix", and "Produced By L.J. Silver".

So, if no legitimate copies of this album come shrinkwrapped, how do we know that the copy being offered here is unplayed? Well, due to the hand-produced nature of the label, Lyle forgot to punch out the spindle hole on this one; it appears as photocopied circle, right where the spindle hole belongs. The lucky winner of this item, should there be one, gets to punch out that hole if they want to play the record. Nobody's done that yet.

Am I suggesting that this is investment grade material? After all, I've priced it a lot higher than most of my other records....This little baby is full of mysteries....like why does it say copyrighted 1982 on the cover, and 1985 on the label? Who is the girl on the cover? Who else played on the record? What kind of record is it, anyway (it's Hendrix-like, in a sort of Iowa way)? How many copies of the record does the guy who owned the store before me have? Who knew anybody from Iowa ever recorded any psychedelic music?

No, I really wouldn't expect someone who is just reading about this artist for the first time to be awfully interested in this item. But if you are a bootlegger, you NEED this reference copy of this record. You might need a copy of it if you are from Iowa. If you happen to know a lot about privately produced psyche rock records from the Midwest, you should probably feel comfortable with the authenticity of this item. If you are Lyle himself, I am sorry, buddy-it's time for me to cash in and I'm afraid the price has risen a little.

Mostly, however, I am just trying to raise the profile of this recording a little so I can offer it next year at twice the price.

Thank you for your consideration.

Artist/Title: Vulcan/Meet Your Ghost
Label: North Star Productions ST 38456
Condition:
Cover: The cover of this album was made by pasting a wrap-around graphic over a white cover. The paste job is not perfect, and there is a notable amount of bubbling, although it does not detract. Slight amount of natural toning, properly rubber-stamped on back. Also features a paste-over graphic on the back, obscuring original photo and some wording. Record: Never played, unless someone has perfected a technique for playing records without placing them on a spindle; label has not been punched for spindle-hole (this can easily be accomplished with a pen or pencil or similar object). Label features "white-out" alterations by the artist which are easily discernable from their texture and slight smudging of photocopier ink.

Tracks:

• Prelude
• High C'
• Lightning
• Noname
• Count On Us Next Time
• One Nighter
• Untitled Instrumental (2.b. Continued)
• Title Track
• The End

Buyer pays postage according to destination:

$2.00 U.S (Media Rate)
$4.50 Canada (Airmail)
$9.50 Western Europe, UK (Airmail)
$10.00 South America (Airmail)
$10.50 Australia (Airmail)
$10.50 Japan (Airmail)

Please inquire for rates to other destinations.

Rainy Day Music
Box 246
Royal, Iowa 51357 US