A buddy and I were digging at a low end Flea Market out in the sticks and he found a stack of metal acetates from the late 50???s/early 60???s with typed labels. They were all by someone named Jack Starr and had crazy titles like ???Bald Headed Woman & Long Haired Man???, ???Born Bad???, ???Rumble At Flagpole Hill??? and ???My Love For You Is Petrified???. When we got home and listened to them they were insane Rockabilly cuts on the same tip as Hasil Adkins. They were from a local Dallas studio and on one of the labels in very faint pencil was the name Jack Munsey.
I was pretty tapped in to the local Rockabilly scene as I had done a radio show in the early 80???s and got to meet many of the North Texas rockabilly artists. I started asking around but no one had ever heard of a Jack Starr, or Munsey for that matter. So I did what any insane obsessed lunatic would do, I started calling every Munsey in the phone book and after 50-60 calls I spoke to a woman who said I was looking for her son Jack. She passed on our number to him and he called me the next day. I told him I???d love to meet him and hear about these acetates and he told me he had made quite a few records over the years under a variety of names. We agreed to meet at a Denny???s that Saturday afternoon and my brother and I headed out to see what he was all about. Jack was a nice, quiet guy and said he wanted to meet us at Denny???s instead of his house in case ???we were weirdos???. He told us he was not only a singer but also a professional make-up artist who had worked on some low budget monster/horror movies in the 60???s. We spoke for about an hour and agreed to meet him at his house the following week so he could show us photos and play us some tapes.
Jack lived in the house he grew up in with his mother Gertrude. When we arrived Jack lead us to the kitchen where he had a small reel-to-reel tape machine set up. Jack went into his bedroom to get some photos and Gertrude came in and said ???I told you boys not to come here???!! and leaves. Jack comes back in with a big brown paper bag of photos and dumps them out on the table. We start looking through them and they look like 100???s of stills from a Twilight Zone episode???..photos of jack with various ventriloquist dummies, Jack made up as different ???monsters???..there was even one of a tombstone that had his name on it. When we commented on that photo Jack stood up and walked over to the window to show us that very tombstone was still set up in his backyard. He tells us that somewhere there are home made monster movies that many of these photos are from!!
After we sort through all the photos it???s time to listen to the tapes???.and they are crazy. After the 4th or 5th song I call my buddy Billy Miller of Norton Records fame and tell him he needs to come down to Dallas ASAP. We play him a song over the phone and he is blown away. Billy tells us he has some other business he can take care of down this way and that he???ll make plans and fill us in. We listen to the rest of the tapes including radio spots for two of Jack???s other stage names THE ASTONISHING SOTO and THE GREAT MUNZINI!. He also plays us records he released under the names Sebastion Starr and Sid Starr. As we are leaving we see Gertrude standing in the corner of her Living Room facing the corner like some Dunce would in an old cartoon??????weird.
A few weeks later Billy and his better half Miriam come down and we introduce them to Jack. They too are blown away by his music and offer him an LP deal. The LP eventually was released ( to reviews like ???A lobe-pummeling set of ultra primitive rockin??? that???s cruder than a black bark donut???a deep dig into a real twisted canyon??? ??? SPIN) as well as a 45 and Jack was even booked to play a gig in NYC which from all reports(my brother was there) was total insanity. While Billy & Miriam were in Dallas some of the locals decided to have a house party. We invited local legend Ronnie Dawson as well as some other local musicians and the newly discovered Jack Starr. Also at the party was UK label owner Barney Koumas and some of his friends who were in town digging for vinyl. The party was a blast and recently the hosts, randy & Donna Reeves put up a clip from it on Youtube. By the end of the night Jack had made his local debut, in full monster make-up and earned more WTF looks than anyone I have ever seen. RIP Jack Munsey.
Those of you who know Billy from WFMU and elsewhere may enjoy this....you can catch Jack in his make-up at the end.
Here is Jack performing in the very kitchen described above.
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys, I got a job working for Music & Video exchange in Notting Hill Gate - a mecca for the bargain bin freaks and so most of our finds from that basement and the 20p over-spill shop next door, found their way onto our debut album "Executive Suite" in 1996. We stumbled blind onto David Axelrod, buckets of Easy listening albums and The Blue Mink & Nat Stuckey breaks (seriously fuckin' happy about those!)...
Am still diggin' these days... Have found some great killer breaks recently again, so now I just need to decide what to do with them... any M.C.'s wanting some 'Golden Age' vibes, hit me up
Peace, RR.
Snatch CWS?!
Was Touche a mild-mannered janitor by day and the legendary Hong Kong Phooey by night??...
hmmm... ;)
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
REALLY.
Executive Suite. Wow, that album had such an influence on me. NZ, Switzerland, UK, Israel, Sweden, Australia... jammed in my backpack, I carted that CD around the world .
Thank you for many a hazy night and for rocking an impromtu dance party in the Swiss alps, and for sealing the deal with a cute English chick on Tel Aviv beach in '95 (but thats another story)
And yeah, this is BY FAR the best thread in a long while. Thanks to all who have posted.
Oh man, I loved the alps - we supported The Roots there onetime - was mad! (shit was crazy, especially Rahzel's beatbox down memory lane section) ... yeah good times back then man... but hey, screw the music! - I wanna know about your Tel Aviv moment! lol...
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
You're welcome man and thanks for the love in return... the mid-nineties was a crazy time of weekly breaks n loops finds, scouring for rare US 12" promo mixes of the latest Hip Hop tracks, creaming over the latest production battles of Pete Rock vs Wu vs Extra P vs Premier etc etc, going out on the road, crazy nights in Darmstadt (Top 3 gigs of all time), Touring Oz, blurry WOS nights at the Blue Note (big ups to Stealth too) and opening 333 in shoreditch... among many of the things we got up to back then... Good Times indeed
never heard any wizeguys stuff, but someone told me they sample my avorite Three Dog Night song...so i look forward to checking out the output.
Rock...i really thought that last story was gonna take a Blair Witch Project turn when the mom was sitting in the corner. what the fuck was that about?????
A buddy and I were digging at a low end Flea Market out in the sticks and he found a stack of metal acetates from the late 50???s/early 60???s with typed labels. They were all by someone named Jack Starr and had crazy titles like ???Bald Headed Woman & Long Haired Man???, ???Born Bad???, ???Rumble At Flagpole Hill??? and ???My Love For You Is Petrified???. When we got home and listened to them they were insane Rockabilly cuts on the same tip as Hasil Adkins. They were from a local Dallas studio and on one of the labels in very faint pencil was the name Jack Munsey.
I was pretty tapped in to the local Rockabilly scene as I had done a radio show in the early 80???s and got to meet many of the North Texas rockabilly artists. I started asking around but no one had ever heard of a Jack Starr, or Munsey for that matter. So I did what any insane obsessed lunatic would do, I started calling every Munsey in the phone book and after 50-60 calls I spoke to a woman who said I was looking for her son Jack. She passed on our number to him and he called me the next day. I told him I???d love to meet him and hear about these acetates and he told me he had made quite a few records over the years under a variety of names. We agreed to meet at a Denny???s that Saturday afternoon and my brother and I headed out to see what he was all about. Jack was a nice, quiet guy and said he wanted to meet us at Denny???s instead of his house in case ???we were weirdos???. He told us he was not only a singer but also a professional make-up artist who had worked on some low budget monster/horror movies in the 60???s. We spoke for about an hour and agreed to meet him at his house the following week so he could show us photos and play us some tapes.
Jack lived in the house he grew up in with his mother Gertrude. When we arrived Jack lead us to the kitchen where he had a small reel-to-reel tape machine set up. Jack went into his bedroom to get some photos and Gertrude came in and said ???I told you boys not to come here???!! and leaves. Jack comes back in with a big brown paper bag of photos and dumps them out on the table. We start looking through them and they look like 100???s of stills from a Twilight Zone episode???..photos of jack with various ventriloquist dummies, Jack made up as different ???monsters???..there was even one of a tombstone that had his name on it. When we commented on that photo Jack stood up and walked over to the window to show us that very tombstone was still set up in his backyard. He tells us that somewhere there are home made monster movies that many of these photos are from!!
After we sort through all the photos it???s time to listen to the tapes???.and they are crazy. After the 4th or 5th song I call my buddy Billy Miller of Norton Records fame and tell him he needs to come down to Dallas ASAP. We play him a song over the phone and he is blown away. Billy tells us he has some other business he can take care of down this way and that he???ll make plans and fill us in. We listen to the rest of the tapes including radio spots for two of Jack???s other stage names THE ASTONISHING SOTO and THE GREAT MUNZINI!. He also plays us records he released under the names Sebastion Starr and Sid Starr. As we are leaving we see Gertrude standing in the corner of her Living Room facing the corner like some Dunce would in an old cartoon??????weird.
A few weeks later Billy and his better half Miriam come down and we introduce them to Jack. They too are blown away by his music and offer him an LP deal. The LP eventually was released ( to reviews like ???A lobe-pummeling set of ultra primitive rockin??? that???s cruder than a black bark donut???a deep dig into a real twisted canyon??? ??? SPIN) as well as a 45 and Jack was even booked to play a gig in NYC which from all reports(my brother was there) was total insanity. While Billy & Miriam were in Dallas some of the locals decided to have a house party. We invited local legend Ronnie Dawson as well as some other local musicians and the newly discovered Jack Starr. Also at the party was UK label owner Barney Koumas and some of his friends who were in town digging for vinyl. The party was a blast and recently the hosts, randy & Donna Reeves put up a clip from it on Youtube. By the end of the night Jack had made his local debut, in full monster make-up and earned more WTF looks than anyone I have ever seen. RIP Jack Munsey.
Those of you who know Billy from WFMU and elsewhere may enjoy this....you can catch Jack in his make-up at the end.
Here is Jack performing in the very kitchen described above.
So at the above party we met these dudes from the UK that were looking for Rockabilly records. I told them I would take them to a few spots the following day and all of us were feeling kinda rough from the night before. Our first stop was at a local Flea Market where a dealer named James Brown had a booth. The antithesis of the Godfather of Soul, this JB looked like the nerdy brother of Flounder from Animal House. JB was holding some heat and the UK blokes were happy. Next up was a visit with Mr. Jimmy Fields who was the owner of a local label in the 50???s called Felco that had released some great 45???s. Jimmy was a gaziilion degree Mason secret handshake kinda dude who would only meet us in a parking lot and sell us 45???s out of the trunk of his Cadillac and we did well with him too. Our last stop of the afternoon was with dealer Fred Bernard who didn???t have anything for us but did invite us to watch him work that night as Professional Wrestling Manager ???Freddie Fargo???.
We met Fred in front of the legendary Sportatorium, an old metal building that had been around since the 50???s and had hosted the Big D Jamboree where Elvis had appeared a few times. By now the building was on its last legs and weekly wrestling was about the only thing it hosted anymore. So my brother and I and these dudes from the UK enter the arena with Fred and immediately start getting booed with stuff being tossed our way like half empty cups of beer. It???s obvious that every wrestling fan in this place recognizes and HATES Freddie Fargo. He leads us to our seats and goes off to do his thing. We???re sitting a couple of seats from Miss Texas who is a special guest and one of the UK dudes, who just happened to have a pair of handcuffs with him, offers to pay some little Bobby Hill looking kid $10.00 to handcuff himself to Miss Texas???.which he does and makes us some more enemies in the stands. The show begins and our boy Fred is in the ring with a microphone insulting every fan in the place???and he???s damn good at it too. ???What has 40 feet and 10 teeth?????????THE FRONT ROW??????..and so on and so forth.
After a few matches there is an intermission and Fred comes over to us and says ???Let???s go have some fun in the lobby???. We go out to the lobby and they have a big concession stand where they sell t-shirts, programs, photos, etc??????Standing in front of the stand is a very old hunched over woman that had to be at least 80 years old. Fred was managing a wrestler at the time named Terry ???The Rooster??? Taylor and he walked up to the old woman and said ???mama, you need to buy this photo right here??? pointing to one of ???The Rooster???....???He???s the best wrestler out here???. The old woman looked up at him and snapped ???I ain???t buying his photo and I???ll give you three reasons why???..he???s a cheat, he???s a faggot and he???s a motherfucker!???. Holy crap, we just busted out laughing at this seemingly sweet old woman, no doubt someone???s Grandma or even Great Grandma, cussing like a sailor! Pretty much summed up the entire evening and the crowd at the Sportatorium in general. Between this and the House Party the night before I know damn well those Brits had some stories to tell!
this is one of the best threads of all-time. thanks to everyone whos shared their stories. its made for some great reading during my downtime at work.
Eventually I'm gonna run out of stories......
Here???s a couple of quick hits???..
I contacted a member of the Sub-Zero Band which is a rare west coast psych LP. He told me he had put an addition on to his home some years earlier and had used a 25 count box to measure the distance between each wall stud and left the box inside the wall when they put up the sheetrock. I told him I would make it worth his effort if he cut a hole in the wall to get them out but he had no idea where the box was and wasn???t willing to start tearing down walls to find out.
Hit the Sun Records warehouse in the early 80???s and the floors were covered with broken pieces of 78???s. When we asked where the 78???s were we were told they had recently sold them to a traveling carnival to be used in a game where you throw baseballs to break the 78???s.
One Sunday afternoon my wife asked me to go the Mall with her to shop for curtains or somesuch. On the way there we passed a sign for a Garage Sale and I of course had to stop. It was late afternoon Sunday and I didn???t expect much. I asked the woman running the sale if she had any records and she pointed to a large cardboard barrel with a metal lid about the size of a 55 gallon drum. I opened the barrel and it was filled to the brim with 45???s from the 50???s and 60???s. I asked how much they were and she said how about a dollar? That sounded fair to me so I started digging in and quickly saw that there were 2 copies of every record. I asked her why there were two copies and she explained they had two daughters and bought them each their own copies so they wouldn't fight over them. As I started to pile some nice titles up the woman said ???Is a dollar too much???? to which I answered ???No, a dollar a piece is cool???. She replied ???No, I meant a dollar for the whole barrel???!! I couldn???t believe it, there were about 1,000 45???s or more. So I put the lid back on, paid her a buck, put the barrel in my car and drove to the Mall. My wife went in to shop and I stayed in the car going through the records. Best trip to the Mall ever!!
DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Reggieray, I think we may have a few mutual acquaintances. Do you remember a couple of guys who used to sell records on Camden Market in the early 90s, Steve and Ralph? They used to sell a few of your tapes too. It's been a few years since I last saw Ralph, but I still see Steve quite regularly.
Hit the Sun Records warehouse in the early 80???s and the floors were covered with broken pieces of 78???s. When we asked where the 78???s were we were told they had recently sold them to a traveling carnival to be used in a game where you throw baseballs to break the 78???s.
My Pops told me about that. Heartbreaking.
more so.... he told me there were about 1000 copies of the Frank Ballard there at the time for $1 each. He bought 3 (he knew no one who wanted it, but tried it anyway) and it took him years to sell them for $5 a piece.
Was Touche a mild-mannered janitor by day and the legendary Hong Kong Phooey by night??...
hmmm... ;)
well I don't know which one you are but Snatch is one of my favourite writers of all time. I was 11 and remember going to Farringdon and bugging out on the Sunkist and Ice cold burners
One day at the flea market (timelines are lost to me but lets say 10 years ago at least) i was diggin through some photos and came across a record by Pi-R Square. I knew it was a local record and hard to get but had never seen a copy. So i go to the dealer and ask how much and if he had any more records. He tells me that the lady across the street from him has tons of records and this is where he got the Pi-R Square. He refuses to take my number or give me his, just to check back next week for more.
This back and forth for more records goes on for months. I finally give up with him and around this same time i start going through my local records looking for addresses to knock on doors looking for artists and records. So I know the label is run by Lonnie Hewitt and am hoping someone at the house knows about the record. My pal Matt and I get up to the door and have to knock on the window because there is no doorbell. A woman comes to the door whos in her late 30s im assuming and answers "who the fuck are you?!" I hold up the 45 and ask if she knows anything about the record or Lonnie Hewitt. Told her i was a fan of his stuff on Wee and was hoping to talk to him. She laughs and opens the door telling me that she hadn't talked to anyone about her dad's music in ages. Good sign!
We get in and there are tons of pictures of her dad all over. She tells me that Lonnie died about 7years earlier and now her Grandma (whos in the back bedroom) is real sick and on her way out too. We get some stories out of the way and we ask if she has any more records. She goes to the bedroom and brings back a small box of 45s. There are some other cool local records in there but most importantly there are 18 copies of the Pi-R Square. This blows our mind because this is supposed to be a rare record. We scoop up the records and make our way out promising to return if she finds any more records.
Some time goes by and she calls me back to say she has stuff in the basement. So once again we make the trip out to Oakland and get access to the basement. There is TONS OF JUNK down there. We're moving stuff around just to get to this room down there where he kept his music stuff. There are trunks of LPs and a shelf with half a dozen boxes of 45s. There are also dozens of jackets from his LP but only a few of the photo one with him and the lady. There is also a huge bin of sheet music he was writing for Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader with love letters from some woman he used to mess with. So we buy a 40 count box of Ernie Marbray and bring out a box of the Pi-R Square leaving... well... lets just say there were a lot of copies there. Most likely the whole run.
I end up making two more trips out there. One trip, after her Grandmother dies, the daughter tells me there are records in the attic. She leads me to a closet and i have to stand on a chair that has three legs and wobbly as hell to pull myself up into the attic. There are acetates of local records, LPs like the Summer of 73 from Marvin Holmes, and more. The last trip brings is all back to the beginning.
On our way out of the house with the last of the Pi-R Square 45s were walking to the car and run into the guy who originally had the 45 at the flea market. He accuses us of following him to his house and trying to rip him off by buying records from the mother directly. I laugh and tell him that she dies a few months back and that I had been clearing out the house of records for a year because the address is on the record. This fires him up and he starts cursing at us while we drive off. Years go by and he has not let me buy records from him since. We've actually had face to face words at the flea in the past.
i've told it before, and i also dont think it holds a candle to the stories being told in this thread, but i feel compelled to keep the thread going
one day in the late 90s, i was running through my circuit of local shops and not turning up too much. I popped into the Philly Record Exchange, came up empty, shot the shit at the counter for a minute and walked out into the Fall sunshine. ten feet from the shop entrance was a guy with a couple big paper bags (i think they actually said BIG PAPER BAG on them) full of records. He beckoned me over on some "hey! do you like records" enticement and i proceeded to leaf through a varied assortment that looked like your typical philly collection...some kool and the gang, harold melvin, steve miller, a vince montana 12, bette midler, billy paul. i apologize for not being too interested in any particular piece but that it was the kindof thing that i was into and the guy says, "well i got a basement full if you want to see that." Ok, now we're talking. Where at? "Broad and Lehigh. you got a car?"
YEs i did have a car...a beat up ol slant 6 Dodge VAn that used to belong to the gas company. But despite my excitement at the thought of a basement full of records, i did have an inkling of sense that i shouldnt just set off into the deep recesses of North Philly without leaving a trace. So i call my homie Krystoff never Pissed Off, who lived near by and was a frequent digging partner of mine. Luckily, he picked up the phone and was easily coerced into accompanying me. In retrospect, I'm not sure what good it was to have two youngsters trooping off into the hood without a trace, but at least i wouldnt meet some horrible fate by myself. So me and the record guy swing by Krystoff's place and pick him up and head toward Broad street, due north.
The ride up defintely got our spider senses tingling...the conversation went from "so you like music?" to "yeah, you know ive been trying to get my shit together, times are tough" to "man i got drug problems and im just happy i have a place to stay at the moment." Uh oh. "Look, my girl might be there at the house, but its cool, you guys can look around and yall wil definitely find records down there. theres everything down there." The more he talked, the more I was doubtful about what we were getting into and if there would even be any records at the final destination. The dude didnt come off as very threatning, althogh maybe a bit shifty. He was small in build and probably wasnt going to be pushing me around...still, when it comes to a 5'6" junkie leading you into his world, its not really his muscles that you start worrying about. Once we get to Broad and Lehigh, he motions to turn left, off Broad and into the windy neighborhoods. For some reason I was actually somewhat familiar with the neighborhood to the right on Lehigh, but as we started to snake throuhg the little residential sidestreets on the left side, i got increasingly disoriented and annoyed.
"Yo you said that you were at BRoad and Lehigh...thats like ten blocks back. where is this spot?"
"we're there man. we're there. turn down this little street." and on it went. Even if there was no funny business, i wasnt sure i was even finding my way back to Broad. Krys, meanwhile is dead quiet.
So i pull the car over and tell dude we were going to walk the rest of the way. Im not sure why that seemed like a good idea, but it turned out we were a block away anyway. Tiny residential street, bars on all the porches, little kids staring at the two out of place white kids with their hood tour guide...a scenario that theyd probably seen various times played out during search parties for other products. So the sun is setting, i wouldnt even be able to even describe my location and the brown bag record man is reassuring me continually that everything is cool as his eyes dart all over the place and over his shoulders. He seemed even more ill at ease than I was...i feel like i was trying to keep calm, but i must have, at the very least, looked aprehensive as all hell.
The door of the house is open and we enter. Looked okay. A coach, dingy carpet, TV set. I breathed a little easier. Our host calls upstairs, but no one seemed to be home. "all right, the records are in the basement, " he says as he opens the door to a descending flight of steps "let me know what you find."
Whoa...hold up. You lead the way buddy. There was no way i was gonna take the lead going down a dimly lit staircase. I wsa making it pretty clear to dude that i wasnt comfortable with his hospitality. He continued to reassure us and went down the stairs and flicked on a light to brighten the mood...which picked up a bit once we saw that the basement was indeed filled with vinyl and was not a complete shithole. So we did what we came there to do and started going throgh stacks and stacks.
I wish i could say we has stumbled onto a treasure trove of deep funk, CArl Sherlock Holme, virtue 45s, or something of the sort. everything was pretty run of the mill, maybe even picked over. But there was so much there, that we kept flipping though, pulling decent titles here and there.
still, there was a palpable tension to the whole situation. At one point we hear the front door open and heavy footsteps come in. Sounds were muffled, which was strange, but i realized later that the basement door had been closed, so everything we heard was through the floor. It was obvious pretty quickly that someone wasnt happy that someone was in the house. "What the fuck are you doing in here? I thought i told you not to come back around my girl." Someone was answering...i wasnt sure who was saying what...the new arrival or my junkie record dude. Fuck it, i kept flipping through records."naww its not like that." "well what the fuck is it like then. you getting me heated." and back and forth like that. I look over at Krystoff, who at this point is barely looking through records and is crouched down,not looking too happy at all. upstairs: "man you make me want to bust a cap in somebodys ass. you make me want to bust a cap in someones ass RIGHT NOW!"
Krystoff stands up, "lets go." and there wasnt really room to argue. i grabbed a half dozen inconsequential things that i had pulled out and we head upstairs, bidding a last farewell to the unfruitful but still promising basement. We head up the stairs and open the door onto the kitchen where a young black chick was washing dishes. She turned around quickly and let out a "WHAAAAT the FUUUUUCK??" It never occurred to either of us that they didnt know we were down there. I held the records up real high and made sure my hands were very very visible as we slowly walked toward the front room.. apologizing profusely the whole way. In the front room, our host was having a standoff with a big linebacker sized dude in timbs and a parka , who by comparison made our buddy look like a helpless little mouse. The big dude never opened his mouth, but kept a steeady and very threatning glare going. Little dude to me, "thats all you got?" I explained that it seemed like we werent there at the best time and we really had to be going anyway. Our friend tried to convince us to stay but eventually accepted a ten dollar bill as we thankfully slid out the door. The big dude didnt utter a word in our presence, which im not mad at. We found the van pretty quickly and were pretty silent until we were headed south bound on Broad Street.
Never quite came to terms with the whole event...whether we left good records down there, whose house it was, whether some violence was about to jump off or not. But I did feel bad for getting my buddy involved in a mission with so many red flags.
yo j, you ever tell the flea market dude what the records was worth?
i probably got one of those from your find in my collection, years before ever meeting you.
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
and must say i have all your early 12's .....the real vibes, the sound you hear, casino.........was the shit in AUS! pure respect all the way
same here! Great to see you around here. Now I am really curious about this Darmstadt story ;) maybe it is even record related in a way so it is not a threadjack...
My first real digging success started with garage sales. In the early 80's I could hit the newspaper ads and line up 5-10 sales a week that advertised records. I'd plan out a route to most efficiently hit them all and I'd usually buy records at 2-3 spots a week. Early on I had a few ridiculous scores hitting the home where a member of a very raer garage 45 w/sleeve lived and scored a pile of them.....hit a guy who worked for Warner Brothers for 30 years and got sick records but even better promotional stuff (faves were my Rick James church fan and a ZZ Top burlap sack filled with fake weed.) I scored an acetate of the ultra rare Kenny & The Kasuals LP and a box of 25 or so 4-5 star Texax garage 45's like Kempy & The Guardians, The Heard, The Gentlemen and more. For about a year I was pulling sick shit and word was out on the street about it.
One day a very well known, now deceased, nationally known dealer asked if he could come out to Garage Sales with me so I could teach him some supposed secret that was allowing me to score good records. I told him he could come out with me the upcoming Saturday and that I started at 7:30AM. I had a couple of good sounding spots lined up and the first one proved to be a score. A middle aged woman with a few boxes of 45's. She tells up front that there may be one or two that she won't sell due to personal attachment. I assured her that would not be a problem and she should hold back anything she wasn't comfortable selling.
As we dig in it's obvious she has some good records and me and my buddy have piled up about 50 a piece. Buddy Holly on Decca, various Sun label blues, stuff on thre Meteor and Flip labels.....just real top notch stuff. We pull our piles and hand them to her to review. I had a copy of Peanuts Wilson's "Cast Iron Arm" that she wanted to keep for sentimental reasons and I gladly handed it over. When she went through my buddy's pile she pulled out a copy of Smokey Joe "Signifyin Monkey" on Sun as one she wanted to keep too......considering we had pulled about 100 records, holding two back was not even a hiccup in my mind. I paid for my records and went outside.....my buddy pays and follows me out. As we approach my car he is behind the car where the folks at the garage sale can't see him and he digs into his pants and pulls out the Smokey Joe record....and while slipping it down into his pnats the idiot has broken the disc in half. Dude thinks it's funny.....until I told him we were done, that he could no longer dig with me and that he was walking back to his car which was about 4-5 miles away.
Dude died a few years ago or else I'd be naming names....stealing records is repaid in some very serious record karma.....believe that.
he digs into his pants and pulls out the Smokey Joe record....and while slipping it down into his pnats the idiot has broken the disc in half. Dude thinks it's funny......
:talib: holy crap thats low life moves right there!
When she went through my buddy's pile she pulled out a copy of Smokey Joe "Signifyin Monkey" on Sun as one she wanted to keep too......considering we had pulled about 100 records, holding two back was not even a hiccup in my mind. I paid for my records and went outside.....my buddy pays and follows me out. As we approach my car he is behind the car where the folks at the garage sale can't see him and he digs into his pants and pulls out the Smokey Joe record....and while slipping it down into his pnats the idiot has broken the disc in half. Dude thinks it's funny.....until I told him we were done, that he could no longer dig with me and that he was walking back to his car which was about 4-5 miles away.
Dude died a few years ago or else I'd be naming names....stealing records is repaid in some very serious record karma.....believe that.
I'll never understand that sort of fucking asshole. You should have taken his shoes.
Reggieray, I think we may have a few mutual acquaintances. Do you remember a couple of guys who used to sell records on Camden Market in the early 90s, Steve and Ralph? They used to sell a few of your tapes too. It's been a few years since I last saw Ralph, but I still see Steve quite regularly.
BTW, I still jam the fuck out of this.
Hey Doc,
Awesome info!! - It's been so long, but yes I know that my 'Marble Bar' tapes got sold at Camden Mkt circa '91-'92... funny enough I was just sitting here the other night compiling a 20th anniversary new batch for my diggers and thinkin hard about the names of the guys who sold them?!... Sweet!
So, to clarify from my memory (and maybe you can help me here) - a close writer buddy from the time, Dan Molunski, put me in touch with this kid (I always thought his name was Stu - ?) who came round one day and after much tune swapping and listening, he asked if he could sell my diggin' tapes at C.Mkt. It went really well from what I remember, but over the years I completely lost touch to the point of forgetting his name. I don't see Dan much either these days and not sure he'd remember anyway...
So, maybe it was Steve who came round? (I don't remember a Ralph - apologies if it was him!! ) ... One thing I did do was keep my tracklisting, but I've lost my original tapes and I would love to recover vol's 1-3 (I can tape to tape still, so if I could even borrow them to re-record again, that would be brilliant.)
Anyway Doc... thanks for getting in touch and yes, please put the guys in touch with me anytime.
It turned out alright in the end... After Touche and I began The Wiseguys
!!!!!!
Dude! Welcome to the board, and thanks for all the fun times in the nineties!
Co-sign and thanks for the fun times in 00's, those of us in Sydney still get to see dude play on the regular.
Hey Cosmo,
Sad to say but I've left Sydney now, a couple of years back... but what a decade there that was! brilliant
On the diggin' tip, Pete Pasqual had the craziest collection ever and Trevor Parkee & Gordon Watson also have unbelievable collections... I heard from Frenzie that he amassed some killer Brasilian beats on his travels and Gian Arpino always drops mad Disco Soul at Tonic... Of course not too many actors like Alex Dimitriades have ridiculous rare-groove 7" collections, but when he pulled them out at meet-ups, it was usually game over!! lol ... while the shops maybe sparse, Oz is always a definite destination spot for diggers.
People to talk to to: Johnny Idem, Ransom, Paz, Blaze, Frenzie, Katch, Trevor Parkee, Savage Gee, Toon, Gian, Pete Pasqual, Meem, Mark Walton, Fdel, Peter Glass, Simon Caldwell...
Comments
I was pretty tapped in to the local Rockabilly scene as I had done a radio show in the early 80???s and got to meet many of the North Texas rockabilly artists. I started asking around but no one had ever heard of a Jack Starr, or Munsey for that matter. So I did what any insane obsessed lunatic would do, I started calling every Munsey in the phone book and after 50-60 calls I spoke to a woman who said I was looking for her son Jack. She passed on our number to him and he called me the next day. I told him I???d love to meet him and hear about these acetates and he told me he had made quite a few records over the years under a variety of names. We agreed to meet at a Denny???s that Saturday afternoon and my brother and I headed out to see what he was all about. Jack was a nice, quiet guy and said he wanted to meet us at Denny???s instead of his house in case ???we were weirdos???. He told us he was not only a singer but also a professional make-up artist who had worked on some low budget monster/horror movies in the 60???s. We spoke for about an hour and agreed to meet him at his house the following week so he could show us photos and play us some tapes.
Jack lived in the house he grew up in with his mother Gertrude. When we arrived Jack lead us to the kitchen where he had a small reel-to-reel tape machine set up. Jack went into his bedroom to get some photos and Gertrude came in and said ???I told you boys not to come here???!! and leaves. Jack comes back in with a big brown paper bag of photos and dumps them out on the table. We start looking through them and they look like 100???s of stills from a Twilight Zone episode???..photos of jack with various ventriloquist dummies, Jack made up as different ???monsters???..there was even one of a tombstone that had his name on it. When we commented on that photo Jack stood up and walked over to the window to show us that very tombstone was still set up in his backyard. He tells us that somewhere there are home made monster movies that many of these photos are from!!
After we sort through all the photos it???s time to listen to the tapes???.and they are crazy. After the 4th or 5th song I call my buddy Billy Miller of Norton Records fame and tell him he needs to come down to Dallas ASAP. We play him a song over the phone and he is blown away. Billy tells us he has some other business he can take care of down this way and that he???ll make plans and fill us in. We listen to the rest of the tapes including radio spots for two of Jack???s other stage names THE ASTONISHING SOTO and THE GREAT MUNZINI!. He also plays us records he released under the names Sebastion Starr and Sid Starr. As we are leaving we see Gertrude standing in the corner of her Living Room facing the corner like some Dunce would in an old cartoon??????weird.
A few weeks later Billy and his better half Miriam come down and we introduce them to Jack. They too are blown away by his music and offer him an LP deal. The LP eventually was released ( to reviews like ???A lobe-pummeling set of ultra primitive rockin??? that???s cruder than a black bark donut???a deep dig into a real twisted canyon??? ??? SPIN) as well as a 45 and Jack was even booked to play a gig in NYC which from all reports(my brother was there) was total insanity. While Billy & Miriam were in Dallas some of the locals decided to have a house party. We invited local legend Ronnie Dawson as well as some other local musicians and the newly discovered Jack Starr. Also at the party was UK label owner Barney Koumas and some of his friends who were in town digging for vinyl. The party was a blast and recently the hosts, randy & Donna Reeves put up a clip from it on Youtube. By the end of the night Jack had made his local debut, in full monster make-up and earned more WTF looks than anyone I have ever seen. RIP Jack Munsey.
Those of you who know Billy from WFMU and elsewhere may enjoy this....you can catch Jack in his make-up at the end.
Here is Jack performing in the very kitchen described above.
Was Touche a mild-mannered janitor by day and the legendary Hong Kong Phooey by night??...
hmmm... ;)
Cool, I'll send you my bank details ;)
RR
Oh man, I loved the alps - we supported The Roots there onetime - was mad! (shit was crazy, especially Rahzel's beatbox down memory lane section) ... yeah good times back then man... but hey, screw the music! - I wanna know about your Tel Aviv moment! lol...
RR
You're welcome man and thanks for the love in return... the mid-nineties was a crazy time of weekly breaks n loops finds, scouring for rare US 12" promo mixes of the latest Hip Hop tracks, creaming over the latest production battles of Pete Rock vs Wu vs Extra P vs Premier etc etc, going out on the road, crazy nights in Darmstadt (Top 3 gigs of all time), Touring Oz, blurry WOS nights at the Blue Note (big ups to Stealth too) and opening 333 in shoreditch... among many of the things we got up to back then... Good Times indeed
+1
I really dig your production--very well-done stuff. You get props over here.
Rock...i really thought that last story was gonna take a Blair Witch Project turn when the mom was sitting in the corner. what the fuck was that about?????
Wow! That's my kind of house party!
We met Fred in front of the legendary Sportatorium, an old metal building that had been around since the 50???s and had hosted the Big D Jamboree where Elvis had appeared a few times. By now the building was on its last legs and weekly wrestling was about the only thing it hosted anymore. So my brother and I and these dudes from the UK enter the arena with Fred and immediately start getting booed with stuff being tossed our way like half empty cups of beer. It???s obvious that every wrestling fan in this place recognizes and HATES Freddie Fargo. He leads us to our seats and goes off to do his thing. We???re sitting a couple of seats from Miss Texas who is a special guest and one of the UK dudes, who just happened to have a pair of handcuffs with him, offers to pay some little Bobby Hill looking kid $10.00 to handcuff himself to Miss Texas???.which he does and makes us some more enemies in the stands. The show begins and our boy Fred is in the ring with a microphone insulting every fan in the place???and he???s damn good at it too. ???What has 40 feet and 10 teeth?????????THE FRONT ROW??????..and so on and so forth.
After a few matches there is an intermission and Fred comes over to us and says ???Let???s go have some fun in the lobby???. We go out to the lobby and they have a big concession stand where they sell t-shirts, programs, photos, etc??????Standing in front of the stand is a very old hunched over woman that had to be at least 80 years old. Fred was managing a wrestler at the time named Terry ???The Rooster??? Taylor and he walked up to the old woman and said ???mama, you need to buy this photo right here??? pointing to one of ???The Rooster???....???He???s the best wrestler out here???. The old woman looked up at him and snapped ???I ain???t buying his photo and I???ll give you three reasons why???..he???s a cheat, he???s a faggot and he???s a motherfucker!???. Holy crap, we just busted out laughing at this seemingly sweet old woman, no doubt someone???s Grandma or even Great Grandma, cussing like a sailor! Pretty much summed up the entire evening and the crowd at the Sportatorium in general. Between this and the House Party the night before I know damn well those Brits had some stories to tell!
Co-sign and thanks for the fun times in 00's, those of us in Sydney still get to see dude play on the regular.
Eventually I'm gonna run out of stories......
Here???s a couple of quick hits???..
I contacted a member of the Sub-Zero Band which is a rare west coast psych LP. He told me he had put an addition on to his home some years earlier and had used a 25 count box to measure the distance between each wall stud and left the box inside the wall when they put up the sheetrock. I told him I would make it worth his effort if he cut a hole in the wall to get them out but he had no idea where the box was and wasn???t willing to start tearing down walls to find out.
Hit the Sun Records warehouse in the early 80???s and the floors were covered with broken pieces of 78???s. When we asked where the 78???s were we were told they had recently sold them to a traveling carnival to be used in a game where you throw baseballs to break the 78???s.
One Sunday afternoon my wife asked me to go the Mall with her to shop for curtains or somesuch. On the way there we passed a sign for a Garage Sale and I of course had to stop. It was late afternoon Sunday and I didn???t expect much. I asked the woman running the sale if she had any records and she pointed to a large cardboard barrel with a metal lid about the size of a 55 gallon drum. I opened the barrel and it was filled to the brim with 45???s from the 50???s and 60???s. I asked how much they were and she said how about a dollar? That sounded fair to me so I started digging in and quickly saw that there were 2 copies of every record. I asked her why there were two copies and she explained they had two daughters and bought them each their own copies so they wouldn't fight over them. As I started to pile some nice titles up the woman said ???Is a dollar too much???? to which I answered ???No, a dollar a piece is cool???. She replied ???No, I meant a dollar for the whole barrel???!! I couldn???t believe it, there were about 1,000 45???s or more. So I put the lid back on, paid her a buck, put the barrel in my car and drove to the Mall. My wife went in to shop and I stayed in the car going through the records. Best trip to the Mall ever!!
I agree! True Record Pron.
BTW, I still jam the fuck out of this.
More like Records "Letters to Penthouse"
haha
but I will co-co-co-co-sign on this being one of the illest threads in some time. I wish I had something interesting to add!
"I only read it for the articles."
and must say i have all your early 12's .....the real vibes, the sound you hear, casino.........was the shit in AUS! pure respect all the way
My Pops told me about that. Heartbreaking.
more so.... he told me there were about 1000 copies of the Frank Ballard there at the time for $1 each. He bought 3 (he knew no one who wanted it, but tried it anyway) and it took him years to sell them for $5 a piece.
well I don't know which one you are but Snatch is one of my favourite writers of all time. I was 11 and remember going to Farringdon and bugging out on the Sunkist and Ice cold burners
This back and forth for more records goes on for months. I finally give up with him and around this same time i start going through my local records looking for addresses to knock on doors looking for artists and records. So I know the label is run by Lonnie Hewitt and am hoping someone at the house knows about the record. My pal Matt and I get up to the door and have to knock on the window because there is no doorbell. A woman comes to the door whos in her late 30s im assuming and answers "who the fuck are you?!" I hold up the 45 and ask if she knows anything about the record or Lonnie Hewitt. Told her i was a fan of his stuff on Wee and was hoping to talk to him. She laughs and opens the door telling me that she hadn't talked to anyone about her dad's music in ages. Good sign!
We get in and there are tons of pictures of her dad all over. She tells me that Lonnie died about 7years earlier and now her Grandma (whos in the back bedroom) is real sick and on her way out too. We get some stories out of the way and we ask if she has any more records. She goes to the bedroom and brings back a small box of 45s. There are some other cool local records in there but most importantly there are 18 copies of the Pi-R Square. This blows our mind because this is supposed to be a rare record. We scoop up the records and make our way out promising to return if she finds any more records.
Some time goes by and she calls me back to say she has stuff in the basement. So once again we make the trip out to Oakland and get access to the basement. There is TONS OF JUNK down there. We're moving stuff around just to get to this room down there where he kept his music stuff. There are trunks of LPs and a shelf with half a dozen boxes of 45s. There are also dozens of jackets from his LP but only a few of the photo one with him and the lady. There is also a huge bin of sheet music he was writing for Mongo Santamaria and Cal Tjader with love letters from some woman he used to mess with. So we buy a 40 count box of Ernie Marbray and bring out a box of the Pi-R Square leaving... well... lets just say there were a lot of copies there. Most likely the whole run.
I end up making two more trips out there. One trip, after her Grandmother dies, the daughter tells me there are records in the attic. She leads me to a closet and i have to stand on a chair that has three legs and wobbly as hell to pull myself up into the attic. There are acetates of local records, LPs like the Summer of 73 from Marvin Holmes, and more. The last trip brings is all back to the beginning.
On our way out of the house with the last of the Pi-R Square 45s were walking to the car and run into the guy who originally had the 45 at the flea market. He accuses us of following him to his house and trying to rip him off by buying records from the mother directly. I laugh and tell him that she dies a few months back and that I had been clearing out the house of records for a year because the address is on the record. This fires him up and he starts cursing at us while we drive off. Years go by and he has not let me buy records from him since. We've actually had face to face words at the flea in the past.
one day in the late 90s, i was running through my circuit of local shops and not turning up too much. I popped into the Philly Record Exchange, came up empty, shot the shit at the counter for a minute and walked out into the Fall sunshine. ten feet from the shop entrance was a guy with a couple big paper bags (i think they actually said BIG PAPER BAG on them) full of records. He beckoned me over on some "hey! do you like records" enticement and i proceeded to leaf through a varied assortment that looked like your typical philly collection...some kool and the gang, harold melvin, steve miller, a vince montana 12, bette midler, billy paul. i apologize for not being too interested in any particular piece but that it was the kindof thing that i was into and the guy says, "well i got a basement full if you want to see that." Ok, now we're talking. Where at? "Broad and Lehigh. you got a car?"
YEs i did have a car...a beat up ol slant 6 Dodge VAn that used to belong to the gas company. But despite my excitement at the thought of a basement full of records, i did have an inkling of sense that i shouldnt just set off into the deep recesses of North Philly without leaving a trace. So i call my homie Krystoff never Pissed Off, who lived near by and was a frequent digging partner of mine. Luckily, he picked up the phone and was easily coerced into accompanying me. In retrospect, I'm not sure what good it was to have two youngsters trooping off into the hood without a trace, but at least i wouldnt meet some horrible fate by myself. So me and the record guy swing by Krystoff's place and pick him up and head toward Broad street, due north.
The ride up defintely got our spider senses tingling...the conversation went from "so you like music?" to "yeah, you know ive been trying to get my shit together, times are tough" to "man i got drug problems and im just happy i have a place to stay at the moment." Uh oh. "Look, my girl might be there at the house, but its cool, you guys can look around and yall wil definitely find records down there. theres everything down there." The more he talked, the more I was doubtful about what we were getting into and if there would even be any records at the final destination. The dude didnt come off as very threatning, althogh maybe a bit shifty. He was small in build and probably wasnt going to be pushing me around...still, when it comes to a 5'6" junkie leading you into his world, its not really his muscles that you start worrying about. Once we get to Broad and Lehigh, he motions to turn left, off Broad and into the windy neighborhoods. For some reason I was actually somewhat familiar with the neighborhood to the right on Lehigh, but as we started to snake throuhg the little residential sidestreets on the left side, i got increasingly disoriented and annoyed.
"Yo you said that you were at BRoad and Lehigh...thats like ten blocks back. where is this spot?"
"we're there man. we're there. turn down this little street." and on it went. Even if there was no funny business, i wasnt sure i was even finding my way back to Broad. Krys, meanwhile is dead quiet.
So i pull the car over and tell dude we were going to walk the rest of the way. Im not sure why that seemed like a good idea, but it turned out we were a block away anyway. Tiny residential street, bars on all the porches, little kids staring at the two out of place white kids with their hood tour guide...a scenario that theyd probably seen various times played out during search parties for other products. So the sun is setting, i wouldnt even be able to even describe my location and the brown bag record man is reassuring me continually that everything is cool as his eyes dart all over the place and over his shoulders. He seemed even more ill at ease than I was...i feel like i was trying to keep calm, but i must have, at the very least, looked aprehensive as all hell.
The door of the house is open and we enter. Looked okay. A coach, dingy carpet, TV set. I breathed a little easier. Our host calls upstairs, but no one seemed to be home. "all right, the records are in the basement, " he says as he opens the door to a descending flight of steps "let me know what you find."
Whoa...hold up. You lead the way buddy. There was no way i was gonna take the lead going down a dimly lit staircase. I wsa making it pretty clear to dude that i wasnt comfortable with his hospitality. He continued to reassure us and went down the stairs and flicked on a light to brighten the mood...which picked up a bit once we saw that the basement was indeed filled with vinyl and was not a complete shithole. So we did what we came there to do and started going throgh stacks and stacks.
I wish i could say we has stumbled onto a treasure trove of deep funk, CArl Sherlock Holme, virtue 45s, or something of the sort. everything was pretty run of the mill, maybe even picked over. But there was so much there, that we kept flipping though, pulling decent titles here and there.
still, there was a palpable tension to the whole situation. At one point we hear the front door open and heavy footsteps come in. Sounds were muffled, which was strange, but i realized later that the basement door had been closed, so everything we heard was through the floor. It was obvious pretty quickly that someone wasnt happy that someone was in the house. "What the fuck are you doing in here? I thought i told you not to come back around my girl." Someone was answering...i wasnt sure who was saying what...the new arrival or my junkie record dude. Fuck it, i kept flipping through records."naww its not like that." "well what the fuck is it like then. you getting me heated." and back and forth like that. I look over at Krystoff, who at this point is barely looking through records and is crouched down,not looking too happy at all. upstairs: "man you make me want to bust a cap in somebodys ass. you make me want to bust a cap in someones ass RIGHT NOW!"
Krystoff stands up, "lets go." and there wasnt really room to argue. i grabbed a half dozen inconsequential things that i had pulled out and we head upstairs, bidding a last farewell to the unfruitful but still promising basement. We head up the stairs and open the door onto the kitchen where a young black chick was washing dishes. She turned around quickly and let out a "WHAAAAT the FUUUUUCK??" It never occurred to either of us that they didnt know we were down there. I held the records up real high and made sure my hands were very very visible as we slowly walked toward the front room.. apologizing profusely the whole way. In the front room, our host was having a standoff with a big linebacker sized dude in timbs and a parka , who by comparison made our buddy look like a helpless little mouse. The big dude never opened his mouth, but kept a steeady and very threatning glare going. Little dude to me, "thats all you got?" I explained that it seemed like we werent there at the best time and we really had to be going anyway. Our friend tried to convince us to stay but eventually accepted a ten dollar bill as we thankfully slid out the door. The big dude didnt utter a word in our presence, which im not mad at. We found the van pretty quickly and were pretty silent until we were headed south bound on Broad Street.
Never quite came to terms with the whole event...whether we left good records down there, whose house it was, whether some violence was about to jump off or not. But I did feel bad for getting my buddy involved in a mission with so many red flags.
i probably got one of those from your find in my collection, years before ever meeting you.
same here! Great to see you around here. Now I am really curious about this Darmstadt story ;) maybe it is even record related in a way so it is not a threadjack...
One day a very well known, now deceased, nationally known dealer asked if he could come out to Garage Sales with me so I could teach him some supposed secret that was allowing me to score good records. I told him he could come out with me the upcoming Saturday and that I started at 7:30AM. I had a couple of good sounding spots lined up and the first one proved to be a score. A middle aged woman with a few boxes of 45's. She tells up front that there may be one or two that she won't sell due to personal attachment. I assured her that would not be a problem and she should hold back anything she wasn't comfortable selling.
As we dig in it's obvious she has some good records and me and my buddy have piled up about 50 a piece. Buddy Holly on Decca, various Sun label blues, stuff on thre Meteor and Flip labels.....just real top notch stuff. We pull our piles and hand them to her to review. I had a copy of Peanuts Wilson's "Cast Iron Arm" that she wanted to keep for sentimental reasons and I gladly handed it over. When she went through my buddy's pile she pulled out a copy of Smokey Joe "Signifyin Monkey" on Sun as one she wanted to keep too......considering we had pulled about 100 records, holding two back was not even a hiccup in my mind. I paid for my records and went outside.....my buddy pays and follows me out. As we approach my car he is behind the car where the folks at the garage sale can't see him and he digs into his pants and pulls out the Smokey Joe record....and while slipping it down into his pnats the idiot has broken the disc in half. Dude thinks it's funny.....until I told him we were done, that he could no longer dig with me and that he was walking back to his car which was about 4-5 miles away.
Dude died a few years ago or else I'd be naming names....stealing records is repaid in some very serious record karma.....believe that.
:talib: holy crap thats low life moves right there!
I'll never understand that sort of fucking asshole. You should have taken his shoes.
Many thanks man
RR
Hey Cosmo,
Sad to say but I've left Sydney now, a couple of years back... but what a decade there that was! brilliant
On the diggin' tip, Pete Pasqual had the craziest collection ever and Trevor Parkee & Gordon Watson also have unbelievable collections... I heard from Frenzie that he amassed some killer Brasilian beats on his travels and Gian Arpino always drops mad Disco Soul at Tonic... Of course not too many actors like Alex Dimitriades have ridiculous rare-groove 7" collections, but when he pulled them out at meet-ups, it was usually game over!! lol ... while the shops maybe sparse, Oz is always a definite destination spot for diggers.
People to talk to to: Johnny Idem, Ransom, Paz, Blaze, Frenzie, Katch, Trevor Parkee, Savage Gee, Toon, Gian, Pete Pasqual, Meem, Mark Walton, Fdel, Peter Glass, Simon Caldwell...
RR