August 2010 – Page 2 – Thingery Previews Postviews & Music

Realized $29.99 4/9/19

Some provenance:

Rainy Day Music, Spencer, Iowa, was established in November of 1987 at the same location as the former Merrie Melody, an Iowa store of not enough reknown today. According to the file card I still have, we accepted the first Vulcan LP into our inventory March 25, 1988.

My further records are a little incomplete as we switched our inventory over to computers in 1991 and a lot of our sales and inventory data wasn’t preserved when those computers wore out.

I estimate my entire career sales at well under 25 copies of this record, but I am unsure of how many my predecessor Terry sold (he’s still around, I should ask him shouldn’t I?).

As far as that goes, Lyle’s still easy to find, and maybe I should ask HIM………

Anyway, the years passed, we stashed a few copies and one day in 2001 Lyle asked me to buy a bootlegged copy of his record from a distributor in Germany over the Internet. That copy was twenty-five dollars, which inspired me to price the real McCoy at twenty-five dollars in my bins.

That copy went to Lyle at a price somewhat lower, as he needed one to give someone as a gift and he didn’t have any more copies of his own record.

Enter the modern era: My first eBay sale for a hundred dollars openly taunted bootleggers and dared them to obtain this nice fresh verifiable unplayed source material for their purposes and it didn’t take long before that deal was closed.

The two hundred dollar listing a year later didn’t take long either, and the three hundred dollar listing a year after that only waivered a little while.

I haven’t listed any since then.

It isn’t difficult to distinguish a real copy of this record from the numerous fifteen dollar bootlegs. Since it was only sold in one retail store, it isn’t difficult to establish its authenticity either, since that store was only owned by two individuals, the second of whom was this seller. If you ARE considering the purchase of this under-priced rarity and need further assurance of its provenance, further information about it is provided from links on my About Me page. I offer this record for sale once a year-this is the 2008 opportunity.

As you may research the record on the Internet, please bear in mind that nearly all of the information available about it originated with this seller, is republished without my permission, and I vigorously challenge the various statements about its pressing quantity as being overstated (most cut-and-pasters peg that at 200 copies, I think it was lower).

Earlier version of a listing which gets a lot of Internet cut-and-paste:

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.
So, 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: