With the holiday season officially upon us, the wish lists for all the diehard music fans in your life are already starting to stack up. What better way to find them something rare and cool than an auction that helps a local school get some recording and film studio equipment in the process? You may remember earlier this year that we caught up with drummer/producer Scott Montoya, formerly of the Growlers, who started a non-profit called Studios For Schools.
The program, founded at Santiago High School, provided a full recording and film studio built with new, used and donated equipment for students looking to learn the craft of music, TV and film production. At the urging of his father Adrian Montoya, the treasurer of the Alumni Association for Santiago, and teacher Tina Ellingwood, Montoya began to design a program to teach students the craft of production using industry-standard tools. To get more equipment for the studio, Montoya took to eBay and began auctioning off rare and valuable sonic gems donated from bands big and small, including signed discographies from The Black Keys and variousGrowlers stuff he had in his archives.
Next Monday Dec. 5, Studios For Schools takes the auction to a new level, offering an enviable amount of donated rarities from icons like John Lennon, Elvis, Nirvana and Jack White LPs along with signed merch and test pressings from labels like Matador, Merge and of course Burger Records. The auction goes from Dec. 5-12.
As the Studios for Schools continues to grow, Montoya hopes to take this thriving program to other high schools in Southern California. You can get a first look at some items from the auction catalog below and for more info, visit the organization's website.