Record Digging Stories (Please Add On)
Rockadelic
Out Digging 13,993 Posts
I'd love to see a thread where people tell their digging stories......I know there are 100's of great ones here at SS so let's post them up and see how long we can keep it going.....I'll post one a week until I'm out of them or I'm asked to stop.
One of the things I used to do was call all the local radio stations in the areas my digging trip was planned for....sometimes they had records....somtimes they knew who did.
In the late 80's my partner and I were going to spend a few days in North Carolina and had a couple of decent leads and one wild goose chase. The latter was a result of me calling a radio station and the owner telling me that he had heard there was a guy a few towns over that had a barn filled with records that he sold to the public. He didn't know his name but suggested that if we went to the small town and asked around he would be easy to find.
We put it at the bottom of the list and kinda forgot about it. The trip started out pretty good with us scoring a box of Justice label Garage/Soul LP's at a Winston-Salem Flea Market for a buck a piece. A total of 27 LP's on the label with multiple copies of some of the better ones. A couple of our planned stops turned out to be busts so on our last day we decided to try to follow-up on the "barn filled with records" lead.
We pulled into the "town" that consisted of a Post Office, a Sears Catalog store and a Gas Station. I went into the P.O. and there was a cop inside. I asked if he knew about the record barn and he said he did....and that if we followed him he would take us to it. We followed out of town on a two lane highway and he stopped at a dirt road, got out of the car and told us to follow the dirt road for about a 1/2 mile.
We headed up the road and about a 1/2 mile later we saw a small nice looking house that had literally 100's of Glass Lawn Globes(see below) of every color imaginable in the front lawn. Across the road from the house was a large barn that was completely shingled with records. Every inch of it other than the roof was covered in records. The door to the barn was open and there were 3 cars parked outside of it....one with Virginia plates and one from Tennessee.
Inside was a maze of aisles with tables holding crates of LP's.....between 500 and-1,000 of them....and there were two customers piling them up. We introduced ourselves and asked if we could look through....he told us to dig in and that everything was priced. It just felt like a giant score about to happen.....3 hours later, without pulling out a single LP my partner Mark confirmed what I had found, that every friggin record in that Barn was a Country record....and even those had been well picked over. We left empy-handed. Somewhere around here I have a photo of the "record barn" as a souvenir.
One of the things I used to do was call all the local radio stations in the areas my digging trip was planned for....sometimes they had records....somtimes they knew who did.
In the late 80's my partner and I were going to spend a few days in North Carolina and had a couple of decent leads and one wild goose chase. The latter was a result of me calling a radio station and the owner telling me that he had heard there was a guy a few towns over that had a barn filled with records that he sold to the public. He didn't know his name but suggested that if we went to the small town and asked around he would be easy to find.
We put it at the bottom of the list and kinda forgot about it. The trip started out pretty good with us scoring a box of Justice label Garage/Soul LP's at a Winston-Salem Flea Market for a buck a piece. A total of 27 LP's on the label with multiple copies of some of the better ones. A couple of our planned stops turned out to be busts so on our last day we decided to try to follow-up on the "barn filled with records" lead.
We pulled into the "town" that consisted of a Post Office, a Sears Catalog store and a Gas Station. I went into the P.O. and there was a cop inside. I asked if he knew about the record barn and he said he did....and that if we followed him he would take us to it. We followed out of town on a two lane highway and he stopped at a dirt road, got out of the car and told us to follow the dirt road for about a 1/2 mile.
We headed up the road and about a 1/2 mile later we saw a small nice looking house that had literally 100's of Glass Lawn Globes(see below) of every color imaginable in the front lawn. Across the road from the house was a large barn that was completely shingled with records. Every inch of it other than the roof was covered in records. The door to the barn was open and there were 3 cars parked outside of it....one with Virginia plates and one from Tennessee.
Inside was a maze of aisles with tables holding crates of LP's.....between 500 and-1,000 of them....and there were two customers piling them up. We introduced ourselves and asked if we could look through....he told us to dig in and that everything was priced. It just felt like a giant score about to happen.....3 hours later, without pulling out a single LP my partner Mark confirmed what I had found, that every friggin record in that Barn was a Country record....and even those had been well picked over. We left empy-handed. Somewhere around here I have a photo of the "record barn" as a souvenir.
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he was a super nice dude and told me he wouldn't be there til 11 the following Saturday but told me I could come up at 8 or 9 and go into the garage myself and start looking because he trusted me. he showed me how to get into through this secret door and said he would see me next Saturday.
the following Saturday i rolled up when the sun came up, let myself in, turned the lights on and started going at it. thousands of LPs. thousands of 45s. i was finding some really nice soul LPs, some nice 45s and tons of reggae and punk. a weird eclectic kind of thing going on...
i had a huge stack when the dude got to work and he priced everything at a quarter a piece and told me there was more...
the story goes there was this very popular (whether you can agree or not) white supremacist who did a local radio show. for someone who believes in shit like he believes in there was a ton of ethnic music. let's just say regardless of the race of the artist he had great taste. not only was there ska and punk, but great soul, reggae, funk 45s, psych rock and of course country.
they called him White Power Jim and he killed his wife and then took his own life. you can read about it here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=225x1818
then they just auctioned off the estate. my guy said there were over 20,000 more records and that i would be the first to see them. of course this lead to a years worth of phone calls and excuse after excuse. "she owes me money", "she changed her number", "i can't locate them"
finally a year and a half later i was given the phone number of his daughter who had all the records. i called up and it was actually his son who told me they were sold 4 days earlier to a "private collector". just for shits and giggles i asked how many there were and how much he paid. he said "oh about 40,000. he gave us 5 grand"
to this day i think what could have been and just try to be happy that i did get some nice shit....
later i found out another stash of his records turned up (must of been from a separate lot on the estate) in an antique store further south. i met the owner of the shop and looked through 20 boxes where i found about 70 mint titles on Strata East, 20 or so Dylan bootlegs (which he wouldnt sell me) and a couple really good psych LPs....
ahhhhhhh. life is weird
i got there and saw this frail man who looks like he is 90 but is actually 55 yrs old. he had the best stories. he was an aspiring DJ and always dreamt of working for WCBS and would just buy records. but he got sick and couldn't work anymore. he has a heart condition and is always coughing and having to sit down. he also told me his wife left him because she wanted children and he refused to have a child. apparently his heart condition is rare but very genetic and there was a 75% chance his baby would inherit it. he decided he would rather lose his wife than to have a kid born with a dreaded disease...
he showed me the records which was actually way more. in his living room (this guy was the definition of hoarder by the way) he had over 50 crates. in his bedroom about 40. and the hallway was just piles of them. i was finding amazing psych and soul stuff. Latin records. everything. it was all a dollar a piece. i went back around 5 times and still haven't made it to his bedroom to look through stuff....
he would offer me ginger ale and if i cant finish it he will just put it in the fridge for next time haha. what a character?
anyway. i have been calling him for months. just to see if he needs anything. ask him how he is feeling. no answer....
i think i am going to have to go check on him soon....
there are still a lot of records to go through but i am more concerned about his well being....
oh yea records with nude women on the cover were $2 because he says i am getting porn and music which are the 2 best things in the world haha
from what i have heard a lot of skinheads and such listen to reggae on a regular basis. hey man who am i to judge? dude had great music. maybe he was just getting a lot of it for free? either way he was holding onto the stuff....
This reminds me that some of the "original" UK skinheads were actually heavily into reggae and ska. But it still seems unusual for an avowed supremacist. Maybe he went through multiple phases.
He wouldn't be the first human, or the last, to hold onto conflicting interests/beliefs. It's a fascinating story either way and thanks for telling it.
The end of my 3rd day there I was calling a final contact from a street corner Llamadas stand (vendors who let you pay to use their cell phone). The contact turned out to be yet another dead end lead. I was seconds away from giving up and heading out to the beach resort I had reservations at (thus ending my digging opportunities), when the teenage girl working the Llamadas stand overheard my phone conversation and said she used to clean someone's house that had thousands of old records. She gave him a call for me and within 15 minutes he picked me up from that same corner and drove me to his house (he also happened to be a taxi driver).
Turns out this dude was a champion local salsa dancer and collectionista, and did in fact have around 2,000 records. Pulled around 50 choice titles from him and had a great time smoking cigs, drinking beers and jamming out to descarga tunes on his loud sound system. At one point he pulled out a bag of percussion instruments and handed them out to his brothers and me and we played along to Kako's Tribute to Noro Morales LP (which I copped from him that day as well). Thank you Pepe Salsa!
Not to derail what's shaping up to be a fascinating thread, but the o.g. British skinheads were largely anti-racist. They more or less grew out of that section of the mod movement that didn't grow its hair and get into dope and acid, and continued to take inspiration from black music and style, the skinhead look being derived from that of Jamaican rudeboys. It wasn't until the 70s that the look began to be appropriated by the extreme right.
Now, back to your regularly scheduled programmes.
i ask the owner if he has any records
i get first crack to mine an entire basement filled ceiling to floor with banana crates
all of which came from a local radio station that the previous building owner left behind
it took me 3 years to totally go thru it from end to end going 2-3 times a month
flashlite and dust mask were essential
tons of insane lps and 45s from the early 50s to 1980 in every genre including concrete/electronic psych and weirdo major label stuff
2 copies of sexy coffee pot/philly horse / in an envelope addressed to the radio station unopened buried under the stairs in a melted box of water damaged dross
the soul board game,action jackson in the box,a jj dynamite doll
tons of comics-marvel/ec/vintage porn mags from the 60s / baseball cards
once in a lifetime score
i did not rip dude off,i helped him sell all of the really valuable comics and baseball card on ebay
There is a record store Mississippi about an hour outside of Memphis in a small poor town. It was the black record store during segregation and they mostly have soul music. It is run by an old man named Mr. Caldwell who sells junk and records, and ether sells drugs or runs numbers out of an apartment next door. The store is filled with stuff, with only a narrow path carved through. There are tons of records inside, but getting in is a bit of a challenge as there are no set hours, and the door inside is usually blocked by boxes. On previous trips my friends have wandered around the town looking for Mr. Caldwell to open up so they could shop. On multiple occasions after locating him they were told that they couldn???t he couldn???t open for one reason or another, and sent home empty handed.
After a late lunch we piled into the car and headed to Mississippi to roll the dice.
Pulling off the interstate and driving around the center of town looking for the store, we finally found it tucked next to a seedy looking yellow motel. We pulled up to park in front of the store and saw a shady exchange take place that ended with a man leaving with a paper slip and the famed Mr. Caldwell in front of the store next to a pile of rusting bikes. Brandon, who knew him went over to say high, and ask if we could shop for records. After a warm, ???I don???t see why not??? and some introductions, we were set to go.
The actual getting into the store took about 45 minuets, as Mr. Caldwell had to remove some crates from the entrance and things in Mississippi just take a while. While he worked we talked about the blues, the changes in Memphis, Juke Joints and Soul music. You don???t live to your 80???s without learning a thing or two and Mr. Caldwell is still razor sharp.
When the path was cleared we wriggled our way into the store single file. True to Brandon???s description it was packed with stuff. Forty Five???s lined the wall with a three foot path cutting close. Shelves lined the other side stacked with random boxes and knick-knacks. Old posters hung from the rafters, and there was an entire section of the store cut off by precariously stacked shelving. The path was so narrow that navigating, passing, and leaving the store we???re almost impossible. Once you we???re in, you we???re in for the dig. The inside was sweltering, and there was a layer of fine dust all over everything. Clip lights illuminated sections of the wall, and baked the shelves. This could be heaven in Mississippi. We each began to sift through sections of the wall, pulling records, and sharing finds. Leon Fulsome, James Brown, Slave, and Jimmy Castor. The records we???re surprisingly well organized, and interjected with bits of Mr. Caldwell's mail from throughout the years.
At one point Casey found a hand gun wrapped in a plastic shopping bag, and taped with duct tape. Nick found a box of old condoms and open packs of cigarettes. Someone could be heard outside asking if Mr. Caldwell had any car radios for sale, or asking what we were doing in there. Mr. Caldwell was playing the blues and gospel on a radio out front and would pop in from time to time to make comments about the artists and records we we???re stacking. At some point it sounded like there was a block party going on out front.
By the time we made our final selections and stepped into the fresh air, there was a small crowd of folks outside. People we???re lounging on cars, hanging in the street, and playing checkers in front of the store. We must have looked crazy coming out of this store holding stacks of records, drenched in sweat, and covered in dust. The sweet breeze of an impending rain storm hung in the air. We stood around for a bit paying for our records and talking. ???I know what yall are lookin for??? a woman by the apartment door said to Nick. ???Yall are lookin for them blues???. ???Yeah we like the blues???. After we realized she wasn???t talking about records, but in fact crack vials, and we witnessed what could have been a scene from the Wire, we headed for the car, and hit the long road to Memphis, sharing our finds, and thinking of slow smoked ribs.
When I was a Music student at College back in the late 90s, one day for no real reason I decided to walk home a different route. This took me past the local radio station & as I walked by there was a bunch of inorganic rubbish on the sidewalk, fittings, broken furniture etc. In amongst it were 2 long boxes of around 500 45s in total. I pulled them to one side & walked into the station to see what was going on. The guy said that they were clearing out & all the rubbish had been getting put on the pavement all day (this was about 4.30pm) & they had been trucking it all to the local dump in loads, but were almost done. I asked what was up with the records & he said that it was the very last box & since they hadn't played records on air for years they had decided to take them to the dump. I was mortified. So as soon as the truck returned for the last trip I asked the guys doing the loading & unloading & they said they had dumped what seemed like to them thousands of 45s for most of the day, but they were pretty sure they would still be just sitting in the landfill as they'd just come from there & they were scattered around where they had been unloading all day. So I helped them load up the last lot & left the boxes I had found inside the station to collect later with the car. I jumped in & off we drove to the dump. We got there just in time............... to see the biggest bulldozer/front end loader I had ever seen driving over, crushing stuff & filling in/covering the pit for the day just finished & we were directed to unload at the newly opened spot for the next day. Fuck. I drove to the station the next day & gathered my 2 boxes: the complete "R" section of their 45 library. I will always wonder what I missed, although there was nothing really fire/rare in amongst what I got. Why I chose to walk home that route on that day, I just don't know.
http://www.soul-source.co.uk/soulforum/topic/147396-record-digging-stories-book/
some great ones on here http://www.soul-source.co.uk/soulforum/topic/68839-the-greatest-record-finds-of-all-time/page__st__200__p__739328__hl__record+hunting__fromsearch__1#entry739328
and some funny shit here
http://www.soul-source.co.uk/soulforum/topic/69272-will-the-real-simon-soussan-stand-up/page__st__100__p__740997__hl__record+hunting__fromsearch__1#entry740997
In almost every town there are records that the locals have tried to get into with no success. Then some dude from the UK or Japan pull into town and get instant access to rape, pillage and head back home with their scores. I???m not sure why this phenomenon exists???.are they mesmerized by their foreign accents or the fact that they traveled 1,000???s of miles to see their records?? Whatever the reason, we have seen a great number of our vinyl treasures shipped overseas by knowledgeable and hard working foreign dealers who use geography to their advantage. I was once with the owner of a famous UK Record Shop on a dig and he was asked ???What part of Australia are you from??? to which he immediately replied ???Sydney?????????..at the end of the day we were laughing about it as he said ???I???d tell him I was from friggin??? Mars if it meant he???d show me his records. I have always envied this seemingly unfair advantage???..and have used it to my advantage on occasion.
In the early 90???s my brother was living on Long Island and I went up to visit for the holidays. He told me that the stores there were barren of good records and that he hit them regularly. We decided to head out to a spot called Just Kids Nostalgia in Suffolk County. They dealt in toys, comics, records and other baby boomer memorabilia. They had tables with about 40 crates and about the same amount below on the floor that were covered with ???Do Not Touch??? signs attached. I went through the crates and within a few minutes found a sealed Spirit & Worm LP on A&M for $8.00??????by the time I was done with the 40 crates I had pulled out about 25 LP???s???..all solid rarities??????2 copies of Buch & The Snakestretchers with the burlap bag cover???.Bubble Puppy, Bermuda Triangle, etc. ???a very nice day.
As I was paying I asked about the LP???s under the tables and was told they weren???t "ready??? to be sold yet. I hit them with the ???Well I???m from Texas and won???t likely be back anytime soon. You can see I???m a serious buyer???can I take a quick look? He didn???t even hesitate and told me to have at it???.I pulled another 40-50 LP???s???.all really nice stuff and all seemingly from the same collection???.I spent about $600 on a beautiful stack of LP???s and my brother is cussing under his breath about why HE was never allowed to look at the stuff below. As I???m paying the owner asks if I want to see even more LP???s and invites me to his home that night. He has a garage filled with vinyl and I buy about 50-60 more LP???s???.Gandalf on Capitol, Cathedral, July, The Koala, Common People, Food??????.all solid psych LP???s???.when I was done I had about 120 LP???s that had to be shipped home and I know it would have never happened if not for my ???out-of-towner??? angle??????.my Texas accent has never sounded stronger.
I moved into a new apartment and was getting settled in. I had some things that needed to be stored, so I decided to check out the basement. It was unused, with only bits of wood, some piping, and a section of rolled-up chain-link fence down there. I went around a little corner with the oil lamp I was using to light the way (the electric bulb sockets that hung from the ceiling didn't work) and found an area by the boilers that looked like it was continuously dry, unlike some areas down there that had standing puddles.
I piled my stuff on the dry spot and had turned to go upstairs after the last load when I realized that the little corner I'd had to walk around had been created when someone had built a little sub-room off one of the corners of the basement. In the lamp light, I just caught a glimpse of some boxes in there. My heart gave that pitter pat of recognizing record-sized boxes. I rolled into that little room with a distinctly surreal "I must be dreaming/this is some Indiana Jones shit with this lamp" feeling. There were about two dozen boxes in there.
Turns out a prior tenant of that apartment had run the Beautiful Sounds label, a small independent label specializing in hip hop during the mid- to late-eighties. Apparently the six releases produced and distributed by Beautiful Sounds didn't sell too well, because all told there were over a thousand sealed copies of five random rap records and one rock EP. Dude had just left them behind when he moved, and my landlord, being a complete deadbeat, didn't even know they were down there 20+ years later, and didn't care what I did with them. I took reasonable quantities of the mediocre ones, and all of the copies of the pretty good ones. If anyone wants the address, I can tell you where you can still find a bunch of sealed copies of a couple of mediocre Boston random rap records. Not the better ones though.
I took the better ones.
;-)
Whooo-ha Frank! Where the fusk you at!?!? Can you beat THAT one? Huh? Huh? Didn't think so dude.
These neighbours had a big dog. It was a German Sheppard that they only fed Heinz baked-beans. He was friendly enough if you stayed on your side of the fence, but his breath would stop a rhino at 30 yards and the sound of bicycles gave it a hard-on.
DEAL.
In the early-80???s we took a trip to Jackson, Mississippi to meet with Johnny Vincent the owner of Ace Records. Johnny was a real character claiming to have mob ties (his real name was John Vincent Imbragulio) which might have been legit. Johnny had been a producer for Specialty Records and started the Champion label in the late 40???s recording various blues artists. He had many hits with Guitar Slim, Huey ???Piano??? Smith, Frankie Ford and teen idol Jimmy Clanton on his Ace label. We met him on a Saturday morning at the greasy spoon restaurant he ran right down the block from the state capitol. He served us breakfast while telling us some wild stories about Art Rupe and his life in the music biz. He claimed to have ???discovered??? Little Richard amongst others. When breakfast was over he lead us upstairs to the attic of this very old and very run down building. I was filled with records, mostly LP???s and they were just piled up in no particular order.
He told us to be careful, watch out for the rats and he left us alone to dig for the day. The place had been picked over and all the obvious rare pieces were gone. As we walked across the room the floor bowed so much I thought for sure one of us would fall through the ceiling. Piled in the middle of the room were about 1,000 copies of a double Jimmy Clanton LP called ???Jimmy???s Happy/Jimmy???s Blue???. My buddy picked up a copy, pulled the vinyl out and it was blue wax???..the other LP in the set was red wax!! We had heard of this pressing and at the time it was going for about $150 which was a big record back then. We decided to go through them all and pull out all the colored vinyl copies. Three hours later or so we had checked all 1,000 plus copies???finding rat nests???.2 dead snakes and a dead opossum???..nasty shit???...and we found a grand total of 4 copies that were red/blue vinyl!!
When we were done digging and were paying Johnny for our finds he says ???Too bad I have to leave now or else I???d take you to the warehouse that has all the Stax stuff I just bought???. We suggested we could come back the next day but it wasn???t happening???..I followed up a few times but could never make it happen???.my guess is that it was because we hadn???t found that much stuff or spent much money with him at the first spot..
I'm sure the place had already been gone through many times, but different tastes and many years later it still had a ton of amazing stuff in it. Records were stacked everywhere. Records at the bottom would be stuck to eachother from the weight and moisture. Sometimes you'd be sorting a pile and it would fall over, spillig records like an avalanche. Good shit always slid at you. A pile would fall and a gem would say hello. I pulled an Asitis and handed it over to my gracious hosts. I got a few good things for myself, but the experience was the best part. It was so fun.
We wore rubber gloves and I took mine off at one point and I heard this gagging/weezing sound. The cat that lived down there was trying to eat the glove. We had to pull it out of it's throat. The cat probably pissed on all of the records down there. That place probably took a little bit of my life away.
In the late 80???s I was finding little pockets of soul and funk 45???s at various Salvation Army stores around town and it was obvious they were all from the same source. For about a month I???d randomly find 25 at one location and then a week later 50 at another. They were all unplayed, mostly Chicago based labels but also had things like The Jackson Five on Steeltown(many) and lots of 60???s blues on labels like Bea & baby and Cobra. They were a quarter a piece and by the end of the month I had nearly 200 of them. I decided to call the main Salvation Army warehouse and see if there were a lot more. I was told that there were 2 pallets of them and that no one under any circumstance could get to see them before they went to the satellite stores.
This ate at me for about a week and I decided to just go to the main warehouse and see if I could talk my way in. I showed up in a suit and tie(9-5 related) and asked the receptionist who I would need to see about getting into the warehouse. She gave me a name but quickly followed up that no one was allowed back there and I was wasting my time???..so I left. The name she gave me did sound somewhat unusual and familiar and about halfway back to work I realized I had once worked with a guy by the same name. The next day I called the warehouse, asked for the manager by name and sure as shit, it was an ex-coworker of mine.
I explained why I was calling and said I would pay double the price if I could get back there and see what they had. He said it was against policy but that he could make it happen during a one hour window if I came that day. I left work and headed over there pronto. My guy meets me at the back door and says???.???You have one hour???not a minute more??? and he leads me to an area that has pallet upon pallet of records???..4-5 pallets alone of the Springsteen 3 LP set on cassette??????and 2 pallets of very neatly boxed up 45???s. Now at this point realize that I have very little knowledge in the soul and funk areas and I???m pulling stuff that I know or private presses that look cool. I pull out and box 1,000 45???s in my hour, pay $500.00 and thank the dude profusely???..still having only gone through less than half of what was there.
Amazingly, within a day or 2 I get a call from a UK collector who just happens to be in the area and was given my name. There was no way he could have known about my Salvation Army score so it was pure coincidence. He was a pretty young dude and if I remember correctly his name was Adrian. He came by and bought a big stack of my S/A 45???s which I had priced at $2.00 - $5.00 each. A week later I get ANOTHER call from two UK collectors who had obviously heard about me from the Adrian dude. They come by and buy a bunch more. They asked where I had gotten them and I told them the Salvation Army story.
A month or so later I get word from a fellow dealer that word is out that some UK guys made a big 45 score in Dallas and I assume he???s talking about the guys that were at my house. I realize I must have sold stuff way too cheap and decide to give my buddy at the Salvation Army another call. This time I???m ready to tell him I???ll pay a buck or two a piece. He answers the phone, we say our hellos and I pop the question. His reply was ???I can???t, those two English guys you sent over here bought them all???
Lovin it
He knew a guy who worked at a local dump. One day he told me he was getting some records and asked if I would help him sell them. I found this strange as I had just given him his notice that I would be letting him go. Well, one day I come into work and there must be 10 crates. He told me to take anything I wanted and sell the rest. I start to flip thru it all....it's mindblowing, everything is sealed or unplayed, all promos from ABC, Blue Thumb, , Sire,etc. Multiple copies of the first 4 ramones records, a few copies of the RAMP records, lots of sealed blues and jazzz. I kept about 100, sold 500 or 600 for him at the flea market, and everyone was happy. I still remember the feeling of coming across the RAMP LP
Common knowledge/101 on here for most right, no? This makes me feel 14 again...Now, back to your regularly scheduled programmes.
It's too late now, but if he was that fazed by you guys not spending much $$$, I doubt if he would have led you on with the Stax story.
that is pretty messed up.
My buddy and I had been pointed to this place by a woman in a small neighborhood (somewhere in the east coast ( ;-) ). After I told her I was looking for record stores, etc, she said "oh you're looking for records? there's a guy who we work with a lot who's got a room full of em. a lot of DJ radio promo 12s". The woman who had told us was the puffy hair, gold glasses, type -- w/ the big red sweatshirt with a pic of a dog on it which, of course, was worn over a white turtle-neck. So I was a little surprised to hear something like "DJ radio promo 12s" come out of her mouth.
Anyway - we made it over to this location with very little hope of turning up anything major, but wanted to give it a shot to see. Pretty interesting in the store up front, the owner seemed very friendly and didn't seem to really know much about records (he was selling them for a friend). But in the back, sure enough, were stacks of crates. I got stoked, but didn't get TOO amped bc I'd been that situation before and certainly had it be a chud factory.
This, however, was kind of a craze. There was a lot of techno and house, but every now and again I'd hit a pocket of 12"s organized by label, and they'd all be white label promos --- and there were multiple copies, sometimes as many as four. This was some rare stuff that you never come across, a lot of WLPs from smaller groups on Epic, Arista, A&M, etc. This was rad --- I was getting stoked, and I would quietly tell my buddy that there was some pretty good stuff here. This, however, was getting him pissed bc he knew what this was turning into --- it was going to be one of those 2-3 hour spiels where he would just wait for me to finish (he ain't really a collectro). BC of this, he'd walk out a number of times for a smoke, etc.
While he was out on one of his breaks, I came across another one of these pockets of 12"s organized by labels. This one was a bunch of white jackets, the spines facing me, and the records inside em were all Heavenly Star, Sound of New York, etc. Nooooow I was getting amped. Got the super giddy feeling, yada yada.
So my buddy comes back in and gives me the "what the f*ck bro -- it's time to get the hell ouf of here" face. I had just hit quite patch of luck, and I wasn't even halfway through the collection yet. Nothing was priced, but I knew these were going to be cheap. So, quietly but not too quietly, I explained to my friend what was going on, how amazing some of the shit was, and how I was about to come up heavy for next to no dough. I was trying to explain the value of some of the pieces, telling him how this could be a gold mine, all that. He understood, wished me luck, and walked outside. I kept looking, and sure enough kept finding great stuff. The Carol Douglas 12" on New Image, random private boogie 12s, etc.
About 20 mins later, he comes back in and is clearly baked with a big grin on his face. He says "hey did you get that email? someone just sent us a funny email". I take a break and check my phone. Few new messages, but one of them is from him. I open it up, and it reads "dude....the jig is up. they've been watching and listening to us via security camera the whole time we've been here."
I assume he's either just being an idiot or is being paranoid bc he's clearly lifted. I laugh. He looks at me dead serious and says "dude I'm not kidding".
So I put my stacks aside and walk to the front, acting like I'm catching a breath of fresh air. There is NO ONE else in the store beside the two owners up front, and surely enough, there's a large television displaying the backroom where I'd been killing it / audibly bragging about it with the volume BLARING from the tiny speakers. I'm mortified, and my stomach drops.
Owner looks at me and says "hey if you want to bring some of that stack up I'll start pricing it for you."
Pretty sure my voice cracked when I said "cool". I slink away, bummed out like crazy. Can't believe my idiocy, but at the same time was sort of creeped out that I was being monitored so intensely. So i figured I'd test my luck.
Anyway, to wrap it up, I did end up pretty much making out like somewhat of a bandit. Got the Paper Dolls 12, the La She Ba 12, a bunch of other Peter Brown joints and a ton of private weird boogie 12s for next to nothing. He priced all the known stuff super high, using Music Stack as his guide ("there's a copy of this online for $900, I'll sell it to you for $175"). I passed on some of the more valuable items bc he was charging too much for em, but anything that wasn't on a major he pretty much sold for under $16.00.
Never really knew if he picked up on everything I'd said -- but man that shit sucked for a minute.
This quote, and another quote on one of those links to Soulsource about "waking up and smelling vinyl" reminds me of my first visit to Bangkok. Not an amazing story, but more about following your nose.
This was in the summer of 2000 or 2001, and I was a green 22 year-old backpacker on my first visit to Thailand, and after a couple of weeks out there I started to look for records in earnest. Tuk-tuk drivers seemed like good people to ask as I figured they would know the city inside out, but whenever I mentioned vinyl, they would try and direct me to bootleg CD sellers. I had already found one spot that Mo Majid (sp?) mentioned to me on the Breaks list, and I had a title to look for thanks to John Stapleton, but I knew that in a city of 10 million, there had to be other record spots.
One night some Thai friends I'd met took me across Bangkok away from the Khoa Sarn locale that I was familiar with to get some Chinese street food at 3am. At some point on the journey, I spied something from the back of the taxi that set off alarm bells in my inebriated mind: grimey shops with piles of second-hand stainless steel, car rims, cooking pans and assorted junk outside them. Scrap merchants.
That night I dreamt about records, and the next day, I woke up and I could smell vinyl.
I don't know why a fleeting glimpse of stainless steel sinks piled-up outside some shops down an alleyway got my attention, but I had a gut instinct that this district would also have second-hand record shops. I bought myself a couple of bottles of water, and with a foul hangover I started walking in the direction that I thought we'd headed, through an alien city that looked completely different by day and on foot, following some kind of homing instinct. This wasn't a short walk. It took me about three hours in the midday sun and I couldn't ask for directions because I didn't know where I was going (and my Thai was crap), but my nose turned out to be impeccable. I eventually stumbled upon a district I learned was pronounced Sapan Lake, and there were three second-hand record shops there, and a guy selling portables. Unforunately for me, I don't think they'd ever seen a tourist in their neck of the woods; the guy with a shop full of portable turntables and records of 1950s American commercial jingles flat-out refused to sell me anything, one of the record shops ushered me out as soon as I walked in and said something about "closed for lunch", and the last spot was run by a little old Chinese woman who'd cost me three visits before she'd part with a copy of The Impossibles Hot Pepper.
I guess this just a "follow your instincts" story, or perhaps I should end this with the saying "Where there's muck, there's brass".