THE HOLLIES DEAR ELOISE/KING MIDAS ULTRA-RARE ORIGINAL 1967 EPIC MONO LP NR MINT

$

145

WE CURRENTLY HAVE  NEARLY 200  LISTED ITEMS

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·      THE HOLLIES - DEAR ELOISE / KING MIDAS IN REVERSE - ORIGINAL 1967 EPIC MONO LP LN-24344

·      ORIGINAL U.S. PRESSING

·      ORIGINAL YELLOW EPIC LABEL WITH BLACK PRINT

·      EXTREMELY RARE MONO PRESSING, MANY TIMES RARER THAN STEREO

·      THIS IS THE ORIGINAL, AUTHENTIC, FIRST U.S. PRESSING; THIS IS NOT A REISSUE, AN IMPORT, OR A COUNTERFEIT PRESSING.

·      ORIGINAL, THICK CARDBOARD COVER (AMERICAN STYLE)

·      THICK, HEAVY VINYL PRESSING

·      CLEAN, WEAR-FREE LABELS

·      MACHINE-STAMPED MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) OF THE RECORD

·      MATRIX NUMBER IN TRAIL-OFF VINYL (DEAD WAX) ENDS WITH '-1B/-1D'.  ON SOME LABELS,  SUFFIX '–1' DENOTES THE VERY FIRST, ORIGINAL PRESSING)

·      MONO version of this album has NEVER been available on legitimate Compact Disc or in any other digital format.

 (►PLEASE SEE THE IMAGE OF THE COVER, LABEL OR BOTH, SHOWN BELOW)

(Note: this is a REAL image of the ACTUAL item you are bidding on. This is NOT a "recycled" image from our previous auction. What you see is what you'll get.  GUARANTEED!)

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This gorgeous 1967 "psychedelic" album is one of  the finest in the entire Hollies output, but easily the single finest work by the original lineup of the band, with Graham Nash. Some of the songs on this album are our all-time Hollies favo(u)rites, and we are sure they will be yours, too. A chockfull of harmonies which will send you traveling back in time in no time at all. Track listing: Dear Eloise - Wishyouawish - Charlie & Fred - Butterfly - Leave me - Postcard - King Midas in Reverse - Would you believe - Away, away, away - Maker - Step Inside.

***

With Graham Nash chafing at the bit for pop respectability, the Hollies started getting "heavy" and "relevant" on this 1967 outing, their second full-blown psychedelic album of the year. It was already clear, if not stated overtly, that Nash would be on his way out of the lineup sooner rather than later, and the irony was that the group generated some of its strongest album tracks during this period, representing some of the most inventive original compositions in its history. Their take on psychedelic music remained rooted within a pop context, especially in America, where the Butterfly album was stripped of three of its spacier songs -- "Pegasus," "Try It," and "Elevated Observations" -- and gained the contemporary single "King Midas in Reverse"; the latter represented perhaps their best work in a psychedelic vein, and it was nowhere near as ambitious as the Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever," much less, say, "Tomorrow Never Knows." "Dear Eloise" opened the U.K. and U.S. versions of the album, all glowing harmonies and a few tape tricks and tempo shifts around Moon/June lyrics, with the flute- and trumpet-accompanied pop ballad "Away Away Away" nudging listeners into a more upbeat mode. "Maker" opens with the drone of sitars and a gently played tabla, veering into low-keyed raga-rock until the end of the verses, which suddenly shift into a pop-waltz tempo for a few bars, return to the raga, and repeat the process once; it wasn't Top 40 material, but it was vastly inventive and daring for a group that, until 18 months before, had hardly been known for its original songs or its invention. "Would You Believe" offers a beat and texture that paralleled Donovan's "Atlantis," with the added effect of lots of reverb-soaked bells. "Wishyouawish" was roughly the Manchester equivalent to "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," about a lazy afternoon amid the Summer of Love, while "Post Card" was a briskly paced guitar-and-drums driven track that might've been a holdover from For Certain Because and which might've been a single if it only had an ending. "Charlie & Fred" -- the favorite song off the album by teen pop columnist Gloria Stavers, according to the original notes -- is one of those uniquely English character study songs, about a perennially displaced, downtrodden member of society; it's closer to Ginger Baker's "Pressed Rat and Warthog" from Cream's Wheels of Fire, than, say, to Pink Floyd's "Arnold Layne" -- the hooks are mostly in the middle eight and the bridge, which also gets an alto trumpet embellishment, and the piece ultimately falls close to "Penny Lane" amid its blooming harmonies; it also ends on a gorgeous a cappella verse. "Step Inside" is a trippy invitation to tea and crumpets from an illicit companion, carrying the glow of the Summer of Love with a beautifully written and sung chorus. "Butterfly" was an overt art song, complete with full orchestral accompaniment and a hauntingly subdued mood, and "King Midas in Reverse" closed the record on a radiant upbeat note. The 1997 Sundazed reissue -- amazingly, the first reissue of the album in America since the original LP disappeared in 1969 -- restores "Pegasus," "Try It," and "Elevated Observations" and adds the July 1968 single "Do the Best You Can," which is actually almost a post-psychedelic track, heavy on banjo and harmonica (and, thus, more of a piece with the instrumentation on the Hollies Sing Dylan album) with some lingering trippiness in its mood; but it's also obvious hearing it why Nash was so eager to exit, its pop sensibilities seeming very lightweight -- like the lighter side of the Tremeloes or the Marmalade -- in the spring of 1968. The mastering is good enough, with a clean sound and warm textures, though the more recent reissues from England and Japan have an edge in that department; the annotation is a bit frustrating, as it is made up primarily of an interview with Allan Clarke -- the author tries to get him to address the album, its content, and recording, but they keep turning back to the subject of Nash's friendship with Stephen Stills and David Crosby and his eagerness to leave the Hollies, and the result is precious little about the music or the album.

(REVIEW REPRINTED COURTESY OF BRUCE EDER, ALL MUSIC GUIDE  /ALLMUSIC.COM/)

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·                          CONDITION:

·                          THE RECORD

(IMPORTANT NOTE: unless otherwise noted, ALL records are graded visually, and NOT play-graded!; we  grade records under the strong, diffuse room light or discrete sunlight)

(a)         WE GRADE THE VINYL  AS  NEAR MINT. Some VERY LIGHT AND SUPERFICIAL abrasions – mostly sleeve scuffs -  are (barely) visible, but are probably inaudible,  and do not affect visual integrity or beauty of the vinyl. The original luster is very much intact, and the vinyl shines and sparkles almost like new.

(a)         The record is pressed on a beautiful, thick, inflexible vinyl, which was usually used for the first or very early pressings. Usually, the sound on such thick vinyl pressings is full-bodied, vivid, and even dramatic. Do not expect to obtain such a majestic analog sound from a digital recording!

(b)         Mono pressing of this title is much rarer, and by far more  preferable to its stereo counterpart. We think that the mix is more natural, humane, "organic" and that the mixes are somewhat different than on the stereo version. We estimate that stereo copies of this album outnumber mono pressings by a ratio of at least 20:1 (MONO PRESSING OF THIS ALBUM IS BY FAR THE HOLLIES’ RAREST COLUMBIA RELEASE)

(c)         Of course, this is a full-bodied ANALOG recording, and not an inferior, digital recording!!!

·      THE COVER

THE COVER IS NICE --- ABOUT EXCELLENT OR VERY GOOD++ (VG++).

The following flaws or imperfections are noted on the cover:

-       Cover has a neat, round (PROMO?) cutout hole in one of the corners

-       Cover has eight tiny, almost invisible, pinholes (or staple holes) in one corner. These tiny holes are NOT cutout holes.

-       Cover has JUST A HINT of ring wear (nothing significant); On the scale from 1 to 10 (1 being the least, and  10 being the most severe), we assess the severity of ring wear as 2.

-       Cover shows JUST A HINT of yellowing on both sides, apparently from aging.

-       Minor shelf wear noted on the top and bottom seams (nothing significant)

NO OTHER VISIBLE FLAWS OR IMPERFECTIONS ON THE  COVER

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POSTAGE & SHIPPING:

We offer three postage rates for domestic orders: USPS Media Mail, USPS Priority Mail and USPS Express Mail and three rates for international shipments:  USPS First Class, USPS Priority International Mail, and USPS Express International Mail (in a small number of cases, we will, at our discretion and for purely technical reasons, substitute First Class Mail with eBay's Global Shipping, which is fundamentally the same service at about the same cost). INTERNATIONAL CUSTOMERS PLEASE NOTE: WE RECOMMEND (BUT DO NOT INSIST) that you select USPS International Priority Mail when making a payment.

INTERNATIONAL POSTAGE rates vary from one region of  the world to another. For SPECIFIC international and domestic postage rates, please click on " Shipping, returns, and payments" tab in the header of our listing.

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CRITICALLY IMPORTANT INFORMATION:

(A) All orders valued at $50.00 or more will be shipped fully insured against loss, damage or theft by ShipCover, eBay's contracted insurer, at our expense (B) Yes, we do combine items into a single shipment; in order to enable this feature, the winning bidders should WAIT until their last item of interest ends and ONLY THEN make a payment. Doing otherwise will result in multiple shipments to the same customer and forfeiture of multiple shipping charges already paid. (C) Because we do not play-grade our items, we do not know how the purchased item will play on the buyer's equipment. We can only make reasonable inference on the record's playing condition based on its visual appearance. (D) This seller will NOT cancel erroneous, frivolous and prank bids. The bidders can do so on their own, by visiting eBay's Site Map, then clicking on Bid Retractions link. (E) This seller does not specifically grade or describe certain items, such as: shrink (cellophane) wrap and accompanying extras (inserts, booklets, etc.); however, the presence of these items WILL be noted and accompanied by the gallery photo(s). (F) Please do not submit any bids on our items if you have insufficient user history. (G) Other than in very rare justified cases, failure to pay for the item you won amounts to a fraud and will result in a permanent ban on bidding on our future listings. (H) We will NEVER deliberately, knowingly or willingly provide a false, deceitful or misleading information.

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OUR REFUND POLICY :

WE OFFER UNCONDITIONAL MONEY-BACK GUARANTEE (POSTAGE INCLUDED) WITHIN 30 DAYS FROM THE RECEIPT OF THE MERCHANDISE, NO QUESTIONS ASKED; STILL SEALED ITEMS MUST BE RETURNED SEALED IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE FOR A REFUND.   NO EXCEPTIONS!

FINE (BUT IMPORTANT!) PRINT

 (1) The year indicated in the title bar is the year of the original release,  NOT necessarily the year of the actual pressing; for the actual generation of the pressing, please see our item description (top section, the text in red letters). (2) Please do NOT bid based on the title bar, subtitle bar or item specifics box alone; instead, please read the entire description before bidding; (3) Absolutely NO order cancellations after the auction closes. ever, under any circumstances. We can ONLY cancel bids before the item closes. (4) We are unable to provide matrix-, stamper- or other pressing  information in the final 24 hours of the auction. (5) All disagreements and miscommunications can be - and will only be - solved in a civil and mutually respectful manner; please avoid puerile, offensive, abrasive or menacing language (6) This seller will accommodate all reasonable requests and - unless seriously molested - is generally a flexible, pragmatic and agreeable person.

Our love & appreciation for your trust, loyalty and business, always and forever;  Thank You & Good Night!

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