If you got an invitation to the release party for “The Gilded Palace of Sin,” you also got a package of hay. It was a publicity stunt, designed to signal “country” but it was tested to see if it might be marijuana, at the suggestion of the US Postal Service. But nope. No pot, just hay -- but the publicity and the image that it created -- Bob Proehl, the author of a book on “The Gilded Palace,” wrote, “the media buzz the seizure created was better than anything the A&M marketing department could have dreamed up. Before anyone had heard a note of the album, the Burrito Brothers had the exact image A&M wanted: psychedelic cow-punks, drug-addled.”

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