VA El Rodeo LP USC 1970-71 weird audio montage/yearbook Psych, Folk mp3 private

$

30

 •Artist: Various

 •Album Title: El Rodeo (aka Montage/Songfest ’71)

 •Format: LP

 •Label: BSH & B Productions

 •Country and Year of Release: USA, 1971?

 •Cover/Record Grade: G+++/Ex

 •Other Info: Here’s a review of this strange gem by Douglas McGowen, writing for Waxidermy: “Here’s a cool record. Side one consists of an audio collage covering a year in the life at the University of Southern California.  Some of it is predictable — marching bands, football games, stuff like that.  But then you’ve got clashes between student protesters and administrators, a glee club type song (“we will have these moments to remember…”) that gets the experimental tape treatment and comes off as quite sarcastic in this context, and best of all, the record, rather inexplicably starts off with this eerie beauty…  [When he wrote the review McGowen didn’t know who it was but later discovered that it comes from the beginning of Joan Baez’s Baptism record, but “the low-fi dubbing and slightly slowed down pitch gives it a little more gravity”]  Side two is forgettable stage band / songfest junk, save for a cute ditty about “pornographic filth / X-rated trash,” but I do like this record quite a bit.  The front is all white with very small printed text at the top and bottom that reads: “This recording, alas, will never have its chance to compete on the open market; therefore, as one of the chosen few to receive its glad tidings of recorded joy, it is your responsibility, both as a Trojan and as an American, to play it for every other human being that will take time out (like in football...you know) to lend it to a responsive ear.  This is a recording...electronically rechanneled to simulate sound. Produced and engineered by Steve Barker with the discerning ear of Marilyn Smith (humbly assisted by the Audio-Engineering Division of Finnagain's 'Wake, a subsidiary of Sound-O-Rama Corporation); narration and public service announcements by Flagle Millwood; food and drink enough to keep several birds alive by Wilbur and Earth Mother(not to mention Mother Earth, without whom very little of this would have been possible); graphics by Finnagain's 'Wake and Royal Typewriter(assisted by Steve Barker); metaphysical inspiration by John Braun, somewhere in the Owens River Valley; canine and piscean inspiration by Boogie and So-So; with spatial thanks to Phineas Purswell Durgley III, president of the Durg Broadcasting Corporation, a subsidiary of BSH&B Productions; recorded deep within the bowels of the Dungeon. Produced exclusively for El Rodeo and the students of Our Dear University. Suitable (I was requested to say this) for Greeks and Freaks alike! Mommy, Ren did it again.””  

For other school and band LPs, see my other listings.

Payment and Shipping Information

U.S. Customers: Click on the Shipping and Payments tab above to find the correct price.  Package insured upon request.  Yes, I do combine shipping so if you purchase more than one item, you WILL save on postage!  I do not gouge on postage and packaging costs.  I send your records to you carefully packaged in a strong, OVERSIZED LP mailer (to avoid damage to the LP cover) with sturdy cardboard squares (to protect the record and the cover), but I make sure to only charge the amount needed to cover my actual costs.  If you have any questions about this item, feel free to contact me. 

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Grading Information

With very few exceptions, I play grade the records that I list.  (This means that I don't go by the way a record looks, only by how it plays.)  Sometimes when I have a group (or a “lot”) of LPs within a single listing, I will not play all the records, but this is fairly rare.

I use Mint (M), Excellent (Ex), Very Good (VG), Good (G), Fair (F), and (heaven help us) Poor (P), and I take each of these words at their literal meaning.  In other words, if I assign an LP a grade of “G,” that means to me that it really is in good playing condition, not fair or worse—for many dealers, a G (or even VG) grade is often really nothing more than a euphemism for a record that is in fair or poor condition.

I also use up to three plus signs (+) and up to three minus signs (-) to indicate varying degrees within a specific grade.  So, a grade letter followed by a “+” means the condition is slightly better than the grade letter by itself, and a grade letter followed by “++” indicates that the condition is yet another small step higher.  For example, a grade of Ex+++ means that the record is very close to being in the Mint range, but still just shy of it.

This may seem like a strange system at first glance but I use it because I feel that the standard grading systems are inadequate, as they simply don't allow for enough grades or degrees within those grades.  Many don't use Excellent, for example, which means that there is a jump from Mint down to Very Good—and there are a whole lot of grading possibilities in between those two, the way I see it.