If you’ve bid recently at eBay on an original 1960 Del-Fi pressing of Eden’s Island, then you probably noticed its final price-tag hovering right around two-hundred bucks.
And if that’s too rich for your blood, then here’s some good news: Captain High Records just reissued it to 180 gram vinyl.
One of the nice things about this pressing is that it is in the rarer stereo version, which pops up less on eBay and elsewhere, though I myself actually prefer the mono mix for sound, as the stereo is a bit wonky.
The Captain High LP also gives listeners a bonus track, “Surf Rider,” which was previously available only on the Eden’s Island CD reissue from the 1990s (and more recently, this).
Alas, Captain High isn’t the only company to reissue Eden’s Island in the past few years.
The Swiss label Moi J’Connais Records got in on the action in 2012, giving the album a totally different cover (see below). Why they changed the original, I can’t say. (It’s a bootleg, it seems.) But, with the Del-Fi version having sold less than 500 copies in 1960, and so few copies surviving today, these new reissues will hopefully keep Ahbez’s seminal solo album on the market for the foreseeable future.
EDEN’S ISLAND 