kentucky spots?
Dj_Coma_Toast
874 Posts
be traveling south from chicago this weekend to visit my aunt in lexington. know of any stores in or on the way or fleas on saturday/sunday to check out? appreciate the look!
Comments
sup GEORGES! we still need to connect...
yeah Pops Resale is worth a stop, and it is described perfectly above.
I dunno, I think "reasonably priced" and Pops are a thing of the past. It used to be reasonably priced back when I started going there 6 or 7 years ago, but over the past couple years the prices have crept up. I was just there on Friday and they were wanting like $7 and $8 on regular run of the mill KISS albums. Used to be I made fun of places for jacking up prices on things like KISS albums and now Pop's is one of those places. I made some serious finds at Pop's back in the day ("Welcome Home" by Clyde McPhatter for $4? Yes please. "Soul In The Horn" by Al Hirt for $3? Yessir.) but those days are long gone.
Anymore, if you find a record for under $5 and it's decent at all you can be pretty sure the condition is rough. They wanted $10 for a copy of the "Hook & Sling" 45 in there on Friday and it was beat to shit. Pop's was a lot better back in the day before people who really knew what shit was worth worked there, but now with the rise of eBay as an easy price checker and with a couple record nerds working there they generally know what things are worth, and they almost always price right around book value. Used to be you could find jazz records there relatively cheap but now pretty much anything decent at all is going to run you at least $7, and god forbid it's a Blue Note because then you're talking more $15-25 and up.
The other problem is that the guys working there scoop up the truly good stuff for themselves. You don't even get their sloppy seconds either because they pull out stuff their friends want too so if you're hitting the shelves you're getting what's filtered down to the third level. Pop's used to be a great spot but anymore if there's something good there you'll likely be paying for it, and frankly some of the stuff you can find cheaper on eBay.
I know, I'm not expecting them to take a loss. Thing is, back in the day Pop used to have a philosophy that he didn't care if other people were getting more for things on eBay, if he was making his money back on the collections he bought he was happy. Some records might've been worth $10 or so but if he bought a collection and it averaged 50 cents a piece he'd be happy putting the album out for $5 because he's still making a good return on his investment. Then he hired some collector nerds (not a disparaging description, I'm one myself) and those guys were in charge of pricing. Suddenly records you used to get a deal on crept up a few bucks, and then eventually you're talking straight up book price for things that never were before.
Hey, it's their prerogative, it's just not the same store it used to be and it's not the same vibe so I just don't buy much there anymore. Dudes that work there act like I should be lucky to be able to buy a copy of "Doin' It To Death" by the JBs for $25 when the truth is I can hop on eBay and get the record for less. I guess the main thing really is that it used to be a general resale shop that had a few records, and over time it's essentially turned into a record shop that happens to be a general resale shop also.
Let them hold on to records months longer than they need to - it'll all even out. They're clearly missing $400 James Brown records and I'm cool with it.
i have been going to pops for several years now, and obviously the dude is not an idiot. yeah, some bullshit is priced up, but you can still find shit in there far under what you would get it for reasonably on the bay. like georges said, its still all fair prices within the store (some shit up, some shit down) and i still try to make it over there on occassion to say whats up and get my fingers dirty.
i am not mad at all regarding the way the store has developed and grown over time. its far less drastic (and lame) than alot of stores i have heard about and seen. record shops are slim pickens in KY, so i always spread love to pops.
I'm not mad at 'em either, I got nothing but love for Pop, it's just that the way things have developed over there over the years I really don't have that burning desire to go buy records anymore. Used to be I got great deals, nowadays I know if anything worth half a shit is in there I'm going to pay for it. I can get that just about anywhere. I still go in from time to time just to shoot the shit with the people that work there, I'm just not buying a whole lot these days. I mean, I'm pretty well set on most of the relatively easy to find records I want so not a lot goes through Pop's that I need anymore. I used to be all about quantity but now I'm about quality, so occasionally I'll drop some decent loot on a good jazz record, but that's about it. The only thing that I still find in there that is worth my time is hiphop 12" singles since a lot of the people that hit up Pop's on Fridays are people looking more for rock stuff, so the hiphop doesn't get picked through before I get to it. Problem is, of course, that the truly good hiphop stuff has already been picked clean by the dudes that work there so it's just table scraps that hit the new stock. Occasionally I come across a few okay things but you know there damn sure ain't gonna be any hard to find old school gems hitting those shelves.
Oh well. I'm not hating Pop's...too bad, anyhow. I got more than my share of things there over the years. I guess I'm just kind of bummed that it used to be kind of my secret squirrel spot and now it's blown up and it's hard to find things there like I used to. I wouldn't care except that, like you say, good record shops in Kentucky are hard to find so I was really big on Pop's for a long time and now I almost feel like it's not worth my effort to go there.
On the other hand, I did buy a bitchin' white tuxedo from the 1970's that I used as part of a Halloween costume where I went as a pimp one year. I might not find a bunch of records there anymore but they sure have the oddball other things.
As far as KISS records... I'm not personally needing them, I was just mentioning that as sort of a commentary on the state of Pop's these days. Once upon a time a run-of-the-mill KISS record went for the $3 it should have since they sold millions of copies and they aren't hard to come by. These days, I see it as kind of an indictment on how things operate at Pop's now that some common-ass bullshit like a KISS record goes for $7 when I can find that shit at Goodwill for 50 cents a pop.
And as far as "Doin' It To Death" and similar records... My digging skills aren't necessarily suspect, I just live in Kentucky and don't travel a whole lot. Ain't a whole lot of options for digging records around here, and certainly not when the only place that generally comes up with stuff like that has people working there that pick through the good stuff before it even hits shelves. A record like "Doin' It To Death" only hits the shelves because dudes working there decide that having 3 copies is probably enough for them.
And really, aside from Pop's in this town there ain't a whole lot of choices anymore. A decade ago there were still a couple other spots to find vinyl at but these days they're all gone. A decade ago there was some little shop in the ghetto around here that had a few racks of vinyl but mostly sold beepers and CDs and other shit like that. I came up on sealed copies of the "La-Di-Da-Di" 12" and got a couple of them there for $4 a piece. That place has been gone for 8-9 years now. There used to be a store here called Cut Corner Records which was the first place I ever went to buy vinyl from. Back in the day I used to buy Led Zeppelin bootlegs on vinyl there. That place has been gone for damn near a decade now. There's a place here called CD Central, but as the name indicates they're mostly a CD store. They have a little vinyl section at the back and I've come up on some nice things there before, but most of the time it's pretty sparse. I mean, I came up on an original copy of the ESG EP with "UFO" on it for $4, a copy of "What Colour Is Love" by Terry Callier for $4, etc...but it's been quite a while since I've found anything like that in there. People became hip to that place, and the people working there also got a bit more savvy. Used to be a place on the North side of town called Record Warehouse or something and they had all kinds of oddball vinyl there, including a bunch of old 12" singles. I came across both the "West Coast Poplock" and "East Coast Poplock" singles there for a couple bucks each. Again, that place went out of business around the turn of the 2000's. Things are slim around here.
So no, I don't think my digging skills are all that suspect, I just don't get out of town much and there's not a lot of options here in Lexington. When I do travel I've come up on good things in places like Cincinnati and Atlanta, and when I lived in Nashville I had a couple spots I found decent things at, but Pop's just held a special place in my heart because for a long time I was one of the few that knew about it, and I came up on some really good stuff there for cheap. These days you end up paying $6 for some common piece that's not even in good condition and that's really a pisser. It's hardly worth the drive across town to find the new stock bins filled with common stuff by KISS that's going for $7, or a bunch of Willie Nelson albums, or the complete ELO collection, etc. Used to be there were 3 or 4 people waiting at the door for Pop's to open on Fridays when new stuff goes out, and now there's like 7 or 8 people there and it's like a mosh pit around new stock trying to check out the records. Just not worth the effort anymore.
PM me I'll give you more if interested.
Well, it's all relative. Pop's prices have kind of started to suck *to me*, but I've been going there consistently for almost a decade and remember when it was literally a rare occasion to see a record priced above $4. I'm sure compared to a lot of vinyl places in bigger cities Pop's prices aren't all that outrageous at all. It's certainly worth checking the place out, they do have a lot of stuff and it's quite possible you'll find some things there you want.
I sort of made reference to this but never explicitly stated it, but if you hit up Pop's the day to do it is a Friday when they open at 11am. Actually, get there at about 10:50. There'll be a group of people waiting at the door to get in as soon as they open, and they'll usually open the door around 10:55. Fridays are when they put out the new records and that's your best shot at actually finding something decent. By this point most of the backstock in the racks has been pretty picked through.