Skip Bifferty - S/T, Black RCA Original,

	£		169
	$		224

The Item For Sale Is:

Artist: Skip Bifferty

Title: Skip Bifferty

Release info: RCA (SF 7941) 1968 Original UK Stereo Issue

Condition (Sleeve 1st) : EX/EX

Track List:      Money Man

Jeremy Carbine

When She Comes To Stay

Guru

Come Around

Time Track

Gas Board Under Dog

Inside The Secret

Orange Lace

Planting Bad Seeds

Yours For At Least 24

Follow The Path Of The Stars

Prince Germany The First

Clearway 51

Produced By: Vic Smith

Highly enjoyable late sixties pop with psychy touches. I’ll admit that I don’t have much time for a lot of UK psych albums, I think they’re just tarted up pop albums with a few effects thrown in to try and appeal to the new audience, albums like Apple and July just don‘t do it for me. Inevitably the bands look uncomfortable dressed in their brand new psychedelic clothes and you can’t help applying the emperors new clothes theory to the music.

This however is one of the better albums from that pop psych era, still rooted very much in pop with phasing and other effects thrown in but it’s well played and the songs are good, it’s the straighter pop songs which work better for me especially the excellent “Come Around” but the whole album is consistently good and irrespective of my feelings for this genre of music I know it’s very popular, every other spare copy I’ve had of this has been out of here faster than an olympic sprinter on steroids!

Unusually for an album of this type there are two separate pressings. The later second pressing is on the well known orange RCA Victor label but this is the much much rarer first pressing on the black RCA label with the red RCA logo at twelve o’clock.

Condition:

Sleeve: Very strong. It’s a typical late sixties RCA sleeve made of thinish card laminated on the front only and manufactured by Clout & Baker

The front sleeve (with, it has to said very attractive artwork) is lovely. It’s very clean with no tears, creases or writing anywhere. There is a little bit lamination bubbling near the spine but that’s nothing serious, there’s also the usual line down the open edge where the lamination has shrunk over the years, usually this is a dirty black line but on this copy it’s still white and hard to notice. There is just a hint of a circular indentation where the record sits inside the sleeve but again this is nothing serious and shouldn’t get any worse if stored properly, I’m currently storing the record and sleeve separately so this won’t get any worse.

The unlaminated rear sleeve is in equally nice condition, clean, with no writing, tears or creasing anywhere. There’s not much else to say about this, there’s always more to write about when there is some sort of damage but this is just really nice.

The top seam is totally unworn.

The bottom seam is also totally unworn.

The spine is totally unworn and is square and clean with all of the writing clearly readable, there’s a tiny amount of wear to the bottom corner but this really is very small.

Record: The disc is also very nice.. It’s made of thickish vinyl which is very clean. When viewed under normal light there are no marks at all to be seen, it just looks as nice as anything with a nice dark shine to the vinyl. When viewed under a harsh 100w lamp it’s equally as good with only some sporadic extremely light hairline marks visible these are caused by taking the record in and out of it’s sleeve and are totally inaudible. Obviously a record which has been played only lightly over the years and well cared for by it’s previous owner.

The two labels are in perfect condition. Both are very clean with no writing, stickers or tears and no visible spindle wear.

When played it’s every bit as good as you could hope for with a nice clear clean sound right across the full dynamic range. This is the stereo version (mono versions also exist) and the channel separation is good as is the phasing and other stereo effects which have been applied to good effect. There is no nasty surface noise or groove distortion to spoil your enjoyment and even between tracks there is only the very occasional minor crackle to be heard with no loud pops or click heard.

This is one of those records which has never been easy to find but has completely disappeared over the last five years or so, especially the rarer black label copies. It’ll be a real challenge to find a better copy than this so if interested then don’t miss it!

If you do decide to bid for this item I wish you luck and if not, well, thanks for looking and remember to look at my other items for sale you may find something more to your taste there.

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