Obscure
band's albums much in demand
continued
Why the fuss?
So, what's led to the sudden interest in this obscure and
long-defunct Indianapolis rock group? It's a passion among
collectors for "private-press recordings"—vinyl
albums that bands like McKay issued in quantities of 50 to
500 copies in the '60s and '70s, mostly as personal keepsakes
and gifts for family and friends. (The Indiana bands Zerfas,
Primevil, Yezda Urfa and Hickory Wind also fall into this category.)
"It's nice to get all this attention,"
says the soft-spoken Pierle, who spent $568 to press the original
300 copies of Into You. "At the time, we were just jamming
for fun. We were just partying with the tape machine on. Some
of the songs came out of the jams, some of the songs are two
jams put together. There was a lot of splicing, editing that
we did from the time it started until the time it was done."
Pierle (pronounced Pearly) had put Into You
into the back of his mind and hadn't listened to it for years.
But about three years ago, he received a call from a Wheaton,
Ill., collector.
The collector found Mckay's first record (the
band made two more before splitting up) in a warehouse cut-out
bin. It turned out to be copies that Pierle had left for sale
in an Indianapolis record store called Obidiah's Possibles.
When the store closed, its inventory wound up in Chicago.
The collector offered $20 each for as many copies
of Into You as Pierle could get.
"I had four," Pierle says, "and
I said 'No, I'd rather give them to the band members than
sell them since it's the last four.'"
A year or so later, Pierle found out the true
value of his records when Stan
Denski, an IUPUI professor of media studies, called him.
Pierle is sitting in Denski's house and still
seems mystified as he tells the story of how Denski had tipped
him off to the international interest in the McKay record.
Denski became interested in private-press recordings
3 1/2 years ago, when a friend sent him a collectors' catalog
listing thousands of bands and albums—none of which he'd
ever heard of.
About two years later, Denski spoke to a New
Hampshire-based collector named Paul Major, who told him about
McKay.
"There's an element of archeology to this,"
says Denski, who's researching articles and perhaps a book
about the private-press recordings. "If you're a baseball
card collector, you can't go out and somehow discover a center
fielder who played in the '50s who was incredible but no one
has ever heard of. But in music, that's happening all the
time."
Denski's first contact with Pierle was to try
to convince him to sell him copies of Into You. Pierle finally
did—$500 for two copies.
"I didn't believe it," Pierle says.
"Everybody who called was offering $10, $20. I was turning
them down. When I finally saw the catalogs, I thought, I haven't
even listened to it in years and years. When I finally listened
to it, I thought, this could be new again to someone who hasn't
heard it."
'Into You' revisited
And that's what led to the reissue of Into You. About three
months ago, Denski, along with Jade Hubretz and Rick Wilkerson
of Missing Link Records, 4022 Shelby Street, released 300
new copies of the 1978 record. The cover is identical, but
this time Into You has liner notes and a lyric sheet. Pierle
signed and numbered each copy.
The new batch sold out in two months, which
will lead them to reissue additional records on their label,
Or.
The next reissue will be from a Louisiana band called Rayne,
which recorded in 1978. And, by mid-1995, Into You and some
of Pierle's many unreleased songs from the McKay era should
be available on compact disc.
While the CD format might not appeal to collectors,
the other musicians who played on Into You—Norm Preston,
Lynn Steffen and Ray's brothers, Glen and Ken—will be
pleased. "When we got the 300 copies of the reissue," Pierle
says, "I called the guys in the band who played on it and
wanted to mail them one. Nobody had a turntable.
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