IVORY - IVORY 1968 WEST COAST STYLE PSYCH w/ FEMME VOCALS 180g LTD EDT SEALED LP

$

28

IVORY – Ivory. Out-Sider OSR005 (a subsidiary of Guerssen Records). Spanish release. FACTORY SEALED NEW VINYL RECORD ALBUM. Originally issued in 1968 on Tetragrammaton Records. This edition issued in 2013. Pressed on 180g vinyl. This edition notes “remastered” sound, but read my side bar further down in the description for more information. MEMBERS:  Chris Christman, Mike McCauley, and Kenny Thomure. TRACKS:  Silver Rains, Free And Easy, Losin’ Hold, Laugh, A Thought, I Of The Garden, All In My Mind, A Light, Last Laugh, and Grey November. DESCRIPTION:  Ivory’s self- titled album was originally released in 1968 on the Tetragrammaton label and it sank without trace. West Coast psychedelic sound (NOT the embarassing [mis-information] classification of hard rock as provided in eBay's required Product Details) much in the vein of Jefferson Airplane (in fact it was produced by the Airplane's great genius himself, Al Schmitt) fuelled by ultra-loud fuzz guitar, organ, and beautiful femme vocals. File next to other obscure psych classics such like Yankee Dollar, Peanut Butter Conspiracy, Neighb’rhood Children. First time ever vinyl reissue.  Remastered sound, insert with liner notes, 180gr vinyl. "If you're a fan of Yankee Dollar, Art Of Lovin', Genesis from L.A...you're sure to like this"  Aaron Milenski (Acid Archives). A personal favorite of mine since the early seventies when I picked up my copy in a cut-out bin; highly recommended.

For your further reading enjoyment and enlightenment I offer the following from an earlier description that I put together for Gear Fabs CD release:

Ivory, who were based in the LA area, may be the finest Jefferson Airplane album not by the Jefferson Airplane themselves. It is not quite a masterpiece on a par with Surrealistic Pillow, but it easily holds its own with many of the second-tier albums from the band's prime era. Ivory -- and producers Les Brown Jr. (yes, the son of jazz clarinetist and saxophonist and leader of Les Brown and his Band of Renown, which is now led by Jr.) and Al Schmitt (who also produced some of Jefferson Airplane’s recordings) -- definitely knew how to get the most out of their relatively minimalistic setup. It would be difficult to over-praise the abilities of Kenny Thomure and Mike McCauley, who exhibit a near-telepathic partnership on their instruments, while Chris Christman's full-bodied vocals are room-filling powerful -- all that plus a really first-rate studio drummer. Lyrically Ivory mostly dispensed with topics of amorousness, instead concentrating on far-out, cosmic concerns ranging from the stars to such nebulous ideas of the inner dimension as "infinite realms of peace" to more era-endemic principles like freedom. This does date the album, but the music is so often such a heady, enveloping thrill that it scarcely matters. The songs are mostly strong. The opening Silver Rains is perhaps the album's most potent track. A bit ominous and spooky, a bit chaotic and wired, it displays just how dynamic and forceful Christman's vocals could be. Nearly as stellar is the awesome garage psych of A Thought, complete with guitars so fuzzy you could get a buzz off them and intertwining organ and piano lines that lead into a brief but scintillating rave-up with some of the boogie funk looseness of Traffic. The album's most beautiful moment, however, is the tender Losin' Hold, a song with more than a slight resemblance to the give-and-take duets perfected by Marty Balin and Grace Slick. It is nearly up to the standards of the classic ballads on Surrealistic Pillow. There are a couple of dull spots during the album's second half, and Ivory wasn't really able to develop a distinctive personality of their own -- one can only bemoan the band's early demise and speculate how they might have gone on to develop -- but borrowed sound and style or not, the band's sole album stands up as menacing, tough-nosed psychedelia loaded with flashes of genuine brilliance. SIDE BAR:  The Tetragrammaton company went bust in 1971, though they ceased the record label division sometime in 1970. Warner Brothers Records, who had been the label’s distributor, is listed in various Internet sources, as having purchased the label, mainly to aquire the Deep Purple back catalog (which included their fourth album, Concerto For Group And Orchestra, quickly reissued by Warner Bros. as their label debut; I’ve never seen a copy of the Tetragrammaton release, though an initital press run was issued by the label and is quite rare). However, exactly what Warner Bros. ended up with is not clear (there were also some albums slated for release at the time of the Warners takeover that remain unissued), as the label never reissued the back catalog and later non-WB reissues do not credit Warner Bros. as the license holder. Most notably, Creative Sounds, Ltd., (and their sub-label Rock Classics) reissued many Tetragrammaton albums (including the Deep Purple LPs) on vinyl and CD in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but not from master tapes. Their CD reissues were loaded with vinyl surface noise and the vinyl reissues were noisy right out of the shrink wrap. Although the Creative Sounds issues claimed license from Tetragrammaton, it is not clear what the relationship was of Creative Sounds and Tetragrammaton to Warner Bros., since obviously master tapes were not involved in that relationship. I digress a bit here, but my enquiring collector mind digs the label histories and the point of all this is to share the excitement, or at least the information. I’ve been fortunate enough in my collecting to have began scouring cut-out bins in the late 60s, so by the time all the Warner/Elektra/Atlantic related catalog started hitting the cutout bins in early 1972 (due to their merging and warehouse purging) it was not unusual for me to come home with 10-20 albums of obscurities (cut-outs) in a single day (although I had the foresight, I wish I had the money to have picked up multiple copies of many of those albums. It was a case of:  Why should I buy two copies of the same album when I don’t have enough money to buy single copies of everything that looks interesting to me?) OK, I digress again, but what I’m getting at is Tetragrammaton issued a number of cool well worth owning albums (Elyse Weinberg [with backing by members of Touch, I think it may have been produced by Don Gallucci], Gene & Francesca Raskin [Gene wrote Those Were The Days, which you may remember Mary Hopkin for, their recording of which is on this album], Biff Rose, Tom Ghent, Summerhill, Steve Baron Quartet, Quatrain, and of course the Deep Purple catalog and Ivory) and if you can find them cheap pick them up.

THIS ITEM IS NEW AND UNPLAYED. Used items will include condition details for the cover, disc, inserts, etc.

If you have any questions or if you have additional information, especially corrections, to the description, please e-mail me. I particularly enjoy when an artist, band member, or someone who has personal background knowledge of a particular album/artist and offers their insight/information of that recording, which I will include with the description for future listings of that release. As a collector of many years, part of the hobby side for me is to learn about the background of the artists and music that I collect. Hopefully, sharing some of this information in my descriptions will help educate and enhance your listening experience.     

All LPs are removed from their jackets and placed outside of the jacket for shipping. If an album comes sealed (and will be noted as such in the above description), it will be shipped whole unless you request that I open it up to place the disc outside of the jacket for shipping. Both jacket and disc are placed inside of an outer plastic sleeve before packing for shipping. I use professional corrugated record mailers.

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TERMS AND ABBREVIATIONS:

SS or SLD:  Still Sealed or Sealed (or some variation of sealed depending on how many characters I have left in the title line). This item is new and unplayed. Also appears in the listing description as Sealed LP or Factory Sealed LP.

NEW LP:  This item is new and unplayed, but was received from a supplier without being shrink wrapped or cellophane wrapped; more common on imports but also many of the smaller independent US labels do not seal their LPs.

GFC:  Gate fold cover.

LTD EDT:  Limited, as in limited edition. If I know the press run number it will be included in the above description.

#'D:  Numbered edition. I will include the number of this item if it is visible to me.

CV:  Colored vinyl.

S/T:  Self-titled.

RE:  Reissue

OOP:  Out Of Print.

MIX:  This sometimes appears in my title line and refers to a group's/artist's music having a mix of styles such a rock track with jazz then followed by a straight rock track followed by a psych rock track, etc., as opposed to a blues album with the album's tracks having predominantly one style.

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Buyer pays for POSTAGE & HANDLING:

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