YAMA & KARMA DUSTERS LP psych folk RARE CUSTOM COVER

$

515

Please see all my auctions this week, I’ve got a nice mix of some great stuff listed. LPs include: an incredibly rare copy of Yama and the Karma Dusters LP “Up From the Sewers” with the custom hand drawn cover, a white label promo London FFRR mono V/A LP featuring The Stones and The Yardbirds,  a stereo copy of the Blow-Up soundtrack LP and a nice Easybeats mono LP. 45s include 1950s white label promos by Gene Vincent and James Brown, an original garage classic of The Hysterics on Bing, the rare Ubans 45 on Radiant and even a cool Roky Erickson and the Aliens on the original UK CBS label.

This record:

Yama and the Karma Dusters “Up From the Sewers”, original Manhole Records private pressing, with an extremely rare, custom, hand drawn cover!

This cover is unique, literally one-of-a-kind!

Incredible VG++/NM condition—see details below.

This is quite literally, one of the best existing copies of this rare psych rock classic. Considering the rarity of the custom covers, this may the best copy you’ll ever see!

Any copy of the first private pressing of this LP is rare, as the run was only 500 copies to begin with. However, according to Howard Berkman, previously of the garage band The Knaves and one of the leaders of the group, for the “first couple dozen copies,” the band members got together and created covers by hand. The rest of the first run has a block print of the title and a picture of a fist rising from a sewer.

As you can see the cover of this particular copy is hand-lettered and designed like a mock news story, with the headline, “Local Band Makes Good.” The band was known for being involved in “radical activities” at the time, and throughout the text they are having fun with the rumor that the FBI(!) had a file on them. In case you can’t read it from the scans, here is the complete text:

     Chicago-UPS  Euphoria Blimpworks, a local sound company of dubious stature, allegedly announced this afternoon that they are presenting a record by Yama and the Karma Dusters, reportedly titled Up From The Sewers.

      An anonymous FBI spokesman here said that agents have information that Yama and Co. is merely a front for the “Blimpworks” and their questionable activities.

     The spokesman said the FBI has yet to find evidence of any blimp manufacture.

     However, numerous reports of blimps rising from sewer

In researching this record, I found front man Howard Berkman’s own, wonderful website. Follow this link to his memories of Yama and the Karma Dusters: http://www.howardberkman.com/newhoward/blimworks.html  I also sent him an email asking if he could shed any light on who “Liz Voss” was, as her name is written on the back cover and both labels, in the same marker as the front cover. He could not remember, but he suggested I contact Al Goldberg a co-founder of the group, and he included his phone number. I’ve never done anything like it before, but I couldn’t resist, and I called Al immediately!

My conversation with Al was fantastic! In fact, to show how rare this custom cover really is, Al told me that he has been “looking for a copy for years!” These custom, hand drawn covers are so rare, even the founder of the band doesn’t have one! I read Al the text of the cover over the phone, and he got a real kick out of it and laughed throughout. “We were real hippies,” he said, “and we were just having a lot of fun with it all.” Alas, he did not remember Liz Voss either. Here’s what he told me in an email about these specific custom covers: “What I remember is that when we produced this, we got the records pressed by an independent pressing plant.  We found a deal on these blank red, textured jackets.  The plan was that Howard was making a linoleum block print to do the covers with.  When the jackets came in, Howard was not ready to do the block print, so we had a party and whoever was in the house (Euphoria Blimpworks was at this time an urban commune with a bunch of people living next to the shop) took a magic marker and we drew a bunch of covers just to be able to hand some out.

 After the block print was ready, we made the remaining albums (total 500) with the fist cover and glued on liner notes.  When we ran out, we pressed another 500, this time a different cover (a rose coming out of a sewer being struck by lightening) was done by silk screen by the Womens Liberation Graphics Collective.”

Condition:

Cover: The cover is incredible VG++/NM-! The front cover shows rich, textured red, just as it should. Top two corners are nice and sharp like new. Slight ding and about 1/8” paper off on lower left corner and about 1/8” paper off at lower right near opening. All seams are nice and solid except for slight, hairline split in middle of bottom seam, about 2” long. (The black marks under the left hand column of text appear to be smudges of ink from the same pen that wrote the text—it appears that they started writing more text, but then changed their mind and tried to erase it or wipe it out and started the text at the top of the next column. It is not dirt or damage of any kind, the marks appear to 100% original to the making of the cover.) The back cover shows no additional defects at all, just the name “Liz Voss,” as previously discussed.

Vinyl: The vinyl is in absolutely unbelievable NM! Full, beautiful gloss and shine with no marks at all! The labels appear perfect, just like the day it was pressed, with no spindle marks what so ever. The slight, white specks that are visible near the center hole on side 1B are not from wear, the label is just slightly off center here and it seems to have caused tiny tears here when cut. The only defects are the name written on both labels, and that looks to have been written in the same pen as the cover art!

Note, because of the extreme rarity of this record I have set a reasonable reserve, well below what I consider to be market value.

SHIPPING FOR LPs

USA: $8 for First Class USPS, combine shipping, just +$1 for each additional record. Insurance optional, and extra charge.

Also, due to the extreme rarity of this album, international/overseas will be shipped Express Mail International for signature required, and will be charged $30 flat rate.