Record Digging Stories (Please Add On)

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  • Just to keep this great thread going ... back in March last year me and Mrs P took a trip back to see the in-laws in central Japan. Usually we do this at New Year and either stay with them for a few days or meet halfway and stay at a hot spring. This year though, we jumped on the shinkansen and spent a good few days raiding their fridge and, in my case, the local record shops. I have a few spots that I always do well in whenever I???m in that part of Japan and this time was no exception. In fact it turned into by far the best haul ever. In three days of digging I hit eleven shops and ended up with so much on the first day I had to ship most of it back to Tokyo.

    When it came time to head home my wife had to go back early for a meeting, so I took my time and scored big in the last three shops I???d planned to hit. So it was that I got on the train at 2:40 on March 11th with two heavy bags of LPs and a bunch of 45s in my shoulder bag. Six minutes later the train stopped and over the next 8 hours I got to know those records pretty well as I had nothing else to read and all the mobile phone networks were down. No information was getting through as we were stuck on the tracks, other than what was obvious: that there had been a big earthquake and no one was going anywhere until it was safe. Eventually I got through to my father-in-law who let me know that my wife was OK and that it had been a bigger quake than any of us realised. All of this was of course before the tsunami hit.

    I stayed on the train because I knew there was no point in getting off to look for a hotel as I???d been advised, and besides the announcements were telling us that all trains on the tracks would get to their destinations eventually. It was only when we did get to Tokyo and I made it on foot to my wife???s office that the full horror of what had happened kicked in. We sat watching the news streamed online as aftershock upon aftershock rattled the 120-year old building.

    I made my VG+ mix last xmas out of tracks from those records. I had something completely different planned, but more than any vinyl record the events of March 11th and the aftermath, which we are still living with every day over here, are what defined the year for me. Here it is

    DivShare File - Plainstone VG+ 2011 .zip

    TRACKLIST
    Takeshi Inomata with Ichiro Masuda - The Dialog with Vibraphone
    Juanita Johnson & The Gospel Tones - I'm Willing to Run
    Burma Song and Dance Ensemble - Burmese Harp
    Uncredited Kurdish musician - Le Gule (Oh Rose!)
    The Tchikys - Oide
    Conjure - From the Files of Agent 22
    Tabata Sadao - Bao Bab
    Li'l Pit - Feeling Good
    Mama! Milk - One Car Passes
    Pram - Silver Nitrate
    Ryojiro Furusawa Group - Rainbow's Papa's Band's Song
    Hornets - Seibu keiji daimon keiji no tema
    Yuji Ohno - Gaigeki no tema
    Daniele Patucci - Minaccia del squalo
    The Chaquito Orchestra - The Anderson Tapes
    Monica Lassen & The Sounds - Time of Season
    Akiko Wada - Sunny

    If you enjoy the music, please consider donating a little to MSF Japan or Second Harvest Japan, the two charities I???ve been supporting personally and through the One Box Record Fair site.

  • I don't have anything that comes to mind to add on right now, I just wanted to give props to those who have shared & say how much I've enjoyed this thread. Just spent a while going back from the start - more of a page turner than any book I've read in a minute!

  • Anto99Anto99 244 Posts
    I'm new to this site. Joined a few days ago. I have to say, this thread is incredible. As a record nerd, this is like porn. Seriously. I've had a few ok experiences - more the place and people I've encountered than the records I've found - but these stories are great. I really think there might be a market for this kinda thing in book form. I've never really read the thrill we get over finding that elusive rare record described with such truth. Love it. Thanks.

  • Anto99Anto99 244 Posts
    I can't add a story that compares to these - I've had good luck, seeing as I'm from a small town in Ontario Canada. But a friend of mind, renowned DJ and collector A man called warwick, and the folks at Waxing Deep out of Montreal had this experience. Seems almost surreal the more I think about it. I only wish there were more details.

    Excerpt from the site waxing deep.org:

    "The hunt for records in Quebec's Eastern Townships. In 1973, a too-heavy Ethiopian Airlines 737 en route to Addis Ababa jettisoned some freight, including a box of promo Mulatus. Miraculously, the boxes landed in a Quebec field and survived the impact. The owner, a farmer named Guillaume, stored the records he found. Below A Man Called Warwick, Jon Sikich, and Dino Leo after discovering the 'record' tree house".

    So what I gather from the site and the brief write up, is that a box of Mulatu records fell from the sky into a Quebec farmer's treehouse! Unreal. I mean, never mind Mulatu, this is strange regardless of what records fell. But for it to have happened and it's a bunch of Mulatu originals? Wow.

  • Anto99Anto99 244 Posts
    If any of the Waxing Deep dudes are on here, please expand. That story needs to be told.

  • pcmrpcmr 5,591 Posts
    paging danno if this is not an elaborate joke this story need to be told

  • PATXPATX 2,820 Posts
    The Boeing 737 is a midsize, short- to medium-range, twin-engine narrow-body jet airliner.... 1,540 nmi (2,850 km; 1,770 mi)

  • yuichiyuichi Urban sprawl 11,331 Posts
    I can't live with you.

  • nebbersnebbers 9 Posts
    Your digging in the US of A puts my little contribution to shame but here it is anyway:

    Now over here in the UK we dont get the rich soul and funk caches like America and even though i love and buy that stuff my first love is the breakbeat hardcore scene of early 90's. So when an online friend of when tells me he has discovered one third of the Great Asset distribution records (Foot Note: Great Asset were one of the largest distributors of the 12" dance scene in England before going bust in late 1992 / early 1993. The remaining stock was allegedly split 3 ways and sold to 3 separate dealers around the country. One lot turned up in the South of England in the mid 2000's but no one knew where the rest of the records had gone) and would i come up and help him go through them. He had been through maybe half the stock already a few times and had been pulling multiple records (sometimes boxes) of some rare and classic 12"'s. So i booked the train up to where he lived in Hull, 300 miles away and off i set. After checking out the local shops where i found an amazing collection of early 90's techno which the owner wanted a minimum of ??10 a record for regardless of what it was (i helped him by taking the 10 rarest things in the shop for that price!!) we were set the next morning to head the the Great Asset records. We arrived at the house in deepest rural East Yorkshire and were led into the garden of the property to a bulging garden shed filled top to bottom with boxes of unplayed records. There followed roughly 6 hours of digging through smelly, cobweb infested, rats piss covered boxes of pure HEAT. We'd find a record we knew we could sell for ??50 (prices were going mad at this point) and then there would be 15 more copies. Then a record going for ??150. 10 copies. Then a record going for ??200+. 4 copies. I don't think ive ever been so pleased to be so dirty and covered in crap in my life. The find of the day went to my friend as in the last box we checked in one far corner we found the only copy to my knowledge to surface so far of this http://www.discogs.com/Quality-Dope-Tracks-Ruff-N-Tuff-EP/release/997404 which came with a faxed copy of the centre label design.

  • LokoOneLokoOne 1,823 Posts
    Been a while since I posted or dug for that matter. had a nice digging moment a month ago thought I'd share.

    I go visit my mum one day and when I'm leaving she gives me a hand written note with a number and a name and 'discos' written on it. I ask what gives and she says 'oh i bumped into Vincente the other day and he says he has records to sell'.

    Vincente is an old Spaniard guy my dad used to know btid when they were in the gambling scene in Sydney in the 70s. Years later he became a regular at an RSL I worked at and one day chatting we connected the dots about who my dad was etc. He lived down the road from me and one day I saw him on the street and he asked for my dads number, so I walked to my house to get pen and paer to give him the details. It was in that minute or so he saw my record collection and we had a quick chat about that.

    fast forward almost 12 years and he bumps into my mum and gives her the previously mentioned note. Cool. So I call him and he says one of his flat mates has about 100 records he didn't want anymore and that he remembered I collected wax. I head over there one day, most of the collection is pretty crap dollar bin stuff I pull about a dozen Motown and assorted soul stuff and then in the last box I find a NM Hot City Bump Band LP... HCBB isnt a major holy grail but a nice raer Aussie funk LP and you dont see that many copies floating around...so that was a nice score but the randomness of it all is what I like. So dude my dad used to gamble with becomes a regular at my work 20 yrs later and a shitload later out of the blue hooks me up with a nice piece of wax....

    The bonus beat is his other flat mate has a big collection of latin records in his garage which I have put dibs on... waiting for dude to sort out what he wants so im hoping to add another chapter to the tale...



  • nebbersnebbers 9 Posts
    I remembered another one.

    About four six years ago i went to the Camden Record Fair and it was pretty average until i went into the main room and there was a random bloke from essex selling multiple copies of hardcore and jungle 12"'s for ??1 each. I had a chat with him and he said he had a lock up in Essex and i should come up and have a look. So a couple of weeks later my mate drove me upto a train station in essex and along with another guy i knew we met the guy and followed him to a field about 10 mins away. It literally was a scene from Lock Stock as we pulled up to a metal container in the corner of this field next to a scrap metal dealer. He opened it up and in the middle of the container on the floor were about 30 boxes of records. As we started digging a load of the record were literally covered in bird shit as if they had been left outside but we as we cracked on we started finding multiples of some classic records. We had arrived at about 6pm so the light was fading fast so we were literally speed digging. I think i ended up taking 250 records at less than a pound each and my mate took about 150. As we were leaving though he mentioned that a dealer from the Camden Record Fair had visited last week and taken 1000 records. Doh!!!

  • tripledoubletripledouble 7,636 Posts
    ok i got a story from last week that isnt on some expansive ocean of holy grails for a quarter, or naked sex puppets, et etc but still touches on the sublime coincidences that happen in the world and especially in the world of record hunting.

    so a couple Fridays ago, i was in my house, doing some spring cleaning with my housemate, listening to tracks on youtube and kind of letting the youtube suggestions on the right side of the screen influence upcoming selections. Somehow we got to Lil Brown's "paint it black" , which i dont think i had ever listened to before. halfway through the song, my housemate and i looked at each other and both commented on how sick the track was. good lord, why hadnt i ever picked this record up before?!? i had intended to for over a decade, but never had. well, shouldnt be THAT hard to find for under twenty bucks and now it was on my mental list.

    next day, i was driving around the city doing morning errands and thinking about the rest of the day. I was slated to play records for a couple hours at a friends birthday party, so i mulled over what would go over well with his crowd of people. I also tried to think of good birthday songs, so my thoughts immediately latched on to Jimi and Curtis Knight's birthday monster. I would have to go to my folks' house and search around for the record, which would take some time, but would be well worth it. While driving and strategizing, I decided to swing by a past-its-prime flea market that i used to frequent regularly before it had entirely jumped the shark. it was a gorgeous spring day and i was happy to stretch my legs for twenty minutes. soon enough, at the flea, i found an uninspiring crate of records with cyndi lauper and such in it. what was interesting was the discovery of 3 silkscreened posters that highly resembled the art of my friends Tom and Andrew, from a particular Philly art collective. I bought all 3 for a buck from the old lady and continued walking. Less than a minute later, i hear "hey tone, you causing trouble?" I turn around and it is the aforementioned Tom, who I hadnt seen in months (and it had probably been years since i saw him at a flea market). So of course I show him the prints, which he immediately recognized as being from his colleague, the legendary Espo, who made them as album inserts for a philly group "Need New Body".

    so we walk and talk for little over 3 minutes before i spy with my squinty eyes a crate of records, slightly obscured by a boogie board. I stoop to look and Tom continues on his path, searching for hood ornaments for a piano installation he was putting together. half way through the box of chud, there it is, AFrica-music of Lil Brown. Ok Wow. as i pull it out, the reveal is even crazier...right behind it in the crate was the jimi and curtis knight Happy Birthday record. Boo ya!!! how the hell does shit like this happen??? the rest of the crate was populated by frank sinatra, dean martin and one I-threes record (which i copped).



    toms piano installation:

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Great story T......I can't count how many times shit like this has happened to me!

  • behemothbehemoth 2,189 Posts
    Rockadelic said:
    Great story T......I can't count how many times shit like this has happened to me!

    this kind of reminds me of this one time....

    i received a call from Middletown,NY. a guy had saved my ad from the paper for almost a year. i arrive at his house. he tells me he worked for a distributor called Handleman and Co. every week he used to bring LPs and 45s home. he was half Puerto Rican/half Italian. really nice guy. pointed out the boxes. 6 of Latin stuff. one of disco. a box or 2 of 45s and on the shelf was soul and jazz. he didn't collect rock stuff...

    for about a year my friend was asking me to find him the Ambassadors LP on Arctic. i always would tell him i found it and then told him i was kidding. this was about to be the boy who cried wolf. because the previous night i had a dream that i pulled that LP. and when i got to the alphabetized shelf the first LP was a WLP copy of the record. i knew it was going to be a great day. i pulled about 2 boxes of minty soul and jazz titles and then bought all 6 boxes of Latin stuff...

    it would be my biggest and best Latin haul of all time. i am talking 6 boxes of gold label Fania's in shrink, full runs of Cotique titles, Rey Davila on Orc, Orlando Marin, Sabu Martinez, King Nando, Earl Coleman, just amazing stuff. most in the shrink. most minty. all first pressings.

    i told my friend about the Ambassadors and he didn't believe me. so i just showed up with it at the house one day and he was extremely appreciative.

  • Options
    I had a great time at a garage set this Saturday.

    I arrives early and started through the dollar bins for clean Lp's. I am browsing and this tri-colored cat with a bright orange collar moseys out of the backyard. I can tell he is a young tomboy and, from the bright orange collar, I take caution. Sure enough the cat takes to a tree and starts climbing. Then the seller says to his wife, "the cat is in the tree." I am expecting the wife to freak out, however; she say that it's ok.

    Just a little later the wife says, "oh, there is that familiar 45 buyer who you like to wrangle with, why don't you go inside and get some 45's that he hasn't seen yet."??

    So those two, the seller and the buyer, start negotiating and being noisy. The cat comes to see what all the fuss is about. Finally the two settle down and as a gesture of kindness the seller picks up the cat asks the buyer if he wants to hold it...

    The buyer politely declines, but the seller insisted the cat is soft and friendly. Well, the buyer must not have seen that bright orange collar because he agrees to hold that cat and as soon as he did the thing got ferocious and fur got all over the place.

  • LaserWolfLaserWolf Portland Oregon 11,517 Posts
    :face_melt:

  • DB_CooperDB_Cooper Manhatin' 7,823 Posts
    BearClaw said:
    I had a great time at a garage set this Saturday.

    I arrives early and started through the dollar bins for clean Lp's. I am browsing and this tri-colored cat with a bright orange collar moseys out of the backyard. I can tell he is a young tomboy and, from the bright orange collar, I take caution. Sure enough the cat takes to a tree and starts climbing. Then the seller says to his wife, "the cat is in the tree." I am expecting the wife to freak out, however; she say that it's ok.

    Just a little later the wife says, "oh, there is that familiar 45 buyer who you like to wrangle with, why don't you go inside and get some 45's that he hasn't seen yet."??

    So those two, the seller and the buyer, start negotiating and being noisy. The cat comes to see what all the fuss is about. Finally the two settle down and as a gesture of kindness the seller picks up the cat asks the buyer if he wants to hold it...

    The buyer politely declines, but the seller insisted the cat is soft and friendly. Well, the buyer must not have seen that bright orange collar because he agrees to hold that cat and as soon as he did the thing got ferocious and fur got all over the place.


  • ROD1ROD1 26 Posts
    Indi_Lbl_HE@T said:
    I was in Colombia last summer for work but had about a week of vacation time to dig around a little bit, party, and put in some quality time on the beach. The city where I spent 3 days of that week (Santa Marta) is not known for its abundance of records, but I tried my best to find some stuff nonetheless. After hitting up all the antique stores in town, going through a closed shop's stock (mostly mid to late 80s turds, but I did find the first Son Palenque LP in there), hitting up the local radio station (only to find out they had sold all their vinyl 6 years earlier to a famous DJ from Barranquilla), & numerous other dead-end local leads, I was just about to throw in the towel.

    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!


    damn...I would give an important body organ up for a trip to Colombia to dig....one day. Great story!

  • ROD1ROD1 26 Posts
    behemoth said:
    Rockadelic said:
    Great story T......I can't count how many times shit like this has happened to me!

    this kind of reminds me of this one time....

    i received a call from Middletown,NY. a guy had saved my ad from the paper for almost a year. i arrive at his house. he tells me he worked for a distributor called Handleman and Co. every week he used to bring LPs and 45s home. he was half Puerto Rican/half Italian. really nice guy. pointed out the boxes. 6 of Latin stuff. one of disco. a box or 2 of 45s and on the shelf was soul and jazz. he didn't collect rock stuff...

    for about a year my friend was asking me to find him the Ambassadors LP on Arctic. i always would tell him i found it and then told him i was kidding. this was about to be the boy who cried wolf. because the previous night i had a dream that i pulled that LP. and when i got to the alphabetized shelf the first LP was a WLP copy of the record. i knew it was going to be a great day. i pulled about 2 boxes of minty soul and jazz titles and then bought all 6 boxes of Latin stuff...

    it would be my biggest and best Latin haul of all time. i am talking 6 boxes of gold label Fania's in shrink, full runs of Cotique titles, Rey Davila on Orc, Orlando Marin, Sabu Martinez, King Nando, Earl Coleman, just amazing stuff. most in the shrink. most minty. all first pressings.

    i told my friend about the Ambassadors and he didn't believe me. so i just showed up with it at the house one day and he was extremely appreciative.

    great story as well....full fania and cotique titles, holy cow.

  • Anto99Anto99 244 Posts
    I think I've asked or mentioned this before, but is anyone thinking of compiling these into a book of some sort? If so, I would love to contribute with any resources I can offer. I really think there could be a market for this kinda thing.

  • thanks so much for all these


  • BearClaw said:
    I had a great time at a garage set this Saturday.

    I arrives early and started through the dollar bins for clean Lp's. I am browsing and this tri-colored cat with a bright orange collar moseys out of the backyard. I can tell he is a young tomboy and, from the bright orange collar, I take caution. Sure enough the cat takes to a tree and starts climbing. Then the seller says to his wife, "the cat is in the tree." I am expecting the wife to freak out, however; she say that it's ok.

    Just a little later the wife says, "oh, there is that familiar 45 buyer who you like to wrangle with, why don't you go inside and get some 45's that he hasn't seen yet."??

    So those two, the seller and the buyer, start negotiating and being noisy. The cat comes to see what all the fuss is about. Finally the two settle down and as a gesture of kindness the seller picks up the cat asks the buyer if he wants to hold it...

    The buyer politely declines, but the seller insisted the cat is soft and friendly. Well, the buyer must not have seen that bright orange collar because he agrees to hold that cat and as soon as he did the thing got ferocious and fur got all over the place.


    :face_melt:

  • nm

  • I randomly ended up at the house of Money Mark's brother to dig, completely by chance. This was earlier this year, but still a cool story. In the middle of the week, I went out to a yard sale on impulse, to a small house in Gardena, CA. When I got there at the exact time the sale was supposed to start, I found an old Hispanic dude who had purchased all the records already (thousands) at a dirt cheap price for his flea market. As the old guy was slowly loading his truck, the seller allowed me to pull records out behind the old guy's back to hide. The cover-up to justify me digging through the records still was that I was looking for records to purchase from HIM (not the seller - since they were now technically the old guy's property). At the end, I "bought" one record from the guy for $2... and in reality had probably 70-80 stashed in the seller's garage.

    Anyway, as I was digging, the seller and I got around to talking. He asked me if I had heard of Money Mark, and when I confirmed, he mentioned that he was Money Mark's brother... I saw the resemblance. The collection he was selling belonged to their father who had passed away (nothing crazy in the lot unfortunately). We got to talking about the music industry, and random things, and the guy gave me a sealed copy of "Change Is Coming" that they had a bunch of. In the end, after the old guy had left, he let me take all the records I had pulled for maybe $15. Cool guy, and memorable digging experience since it was so coincidental.

  • El PrezEl Prez NE Ohio 1,141 Posts
    DB_Cooper said:
    BearClaw said:
    I had a great time at a garage set this Saturday.

    I arrives early and started through the dollar bins for clean Lp's. I am browsing and this tri-colored cat with a bright orange collar moseys out of the backyard. I can tell he is a young tomboy and, from the bright orange collar, I take caution. Sure enough the cat takes to a tree and starts climbing. Then the seller says to his wife, "the cat is in the tree." I am expecting the wife to freak out, however; she say that it's ok.

    Just a little later the wife says, "oh, there is that familiar 45 buyer who you like to wrangle with, why don't you go inside and get some 45's that he hasn't seen yet."??

    So those two, the seller and the buyer, start negotiating and being noisy. The cat comes to see what all the fuss is about. Finally the two settle down and as a gesture of kindness the seller picks up the cat asks the buyer if he wants to hold it...

    The buyer politely declines, but the seller insisted the cat is soft and friendly. Well, the buyer must not have seen that bright orange collar because he agrees to hold that cat and as soon as he did the thing got ferocious and fur got all over the place.


    rlmao

  • FrankFrank 2,370 Posts
    nevermind

  • kalakala 3,358 Posts
    my son collect funk45

  • RockadelicRockadelic Out Digging 13,993 Posts
    Rockadelic said:

    Part III to come.......

    Three of us head out to the Gas Station....one member of this board and a young dude who owns a local store. Always good to share leads with folks who reciprocate and know a wide variety of genres, my philosophy is that there are enough records for everyone. On the way there we inevitably speculate that 100K might actually be 1,000 or maybe 5,000....seldom is 100K an accurate description.

    We get there about 9:00 and it's really 100K....maybe more. It's laid out in a variety of ways....all the Christmas, Soundtracks and Country were filed, alphabetically on shelves......the rest is piled up everywhere.....2-3 foot high piles and maybe 300 -500 of them. He tells us that most records will be $1.00....some $0.50......so we start digging. About an hour in I've seen enough white gospel to build a stairway to heaven but have found 20 or so solid records.....at hour #3 my young store owner buddy pulls a copy of Marvin Peterson & The Soul Masters. Our host takes us across the street for lunch at the only local restaurant and after lunch we dig for 4 more hours.

    When it was all said and done we left with about 4-500 records...cherry picked like a motherfucker........some rare titles.....and the three of us only got through about 75% of the stuff.......I've since sent another friend there who pulled a few hundred LP's and plans on returning.
    UPDATE:  Earlier this year one of the guys who went on this digging trip asked me if I still had the dude's phone # because he had just opened a store and was thinking about going there and buying everything he had. I told him I didn't but I remembered his name and it shouldn't be hard to find to find his #. I Googled his name and the small town he was in and up pops a bunch of news stories about the guy. Not long after we had been to his Watermelon Stand/Gas Station the dude was busted for child porn and he was serving 20 years. To top it off he had been making the porn with young boys in the gas station!  We found the # to the gas station and my buddy called....he was told the owner of the records was "on vacation" and they would pass the message to him.....that was months ago and as expected, no reply.

  • kalakala 3,358 Posts
    thats just some disgusting texas gas station record repugnancy man


  • is there a continuation of this thread somewhere else or did it simply stop 6 years ago?
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