DocMcCoy"Go and laugh in your own country!" 5,917 Posts
Reggieray69 said:
DocMcCoy said:
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.
Cheers mate
RR
I couldn't remember the name of the series, so thanks for the reminder (didn't you use the Marble Bar name for remixes at one point?). Assuming it's Steve we're talking about, I know that he kept hold of a few originals of those tapes, and I'm fairly sure he'll still have them - not certain which ones, though. I'll try and find out for you
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?????
Hey Triple,
It was "Out In The Country" by Three Dog Night, from the LP "It Ain't Easy" (1970). We used it for our track "Too Easy" (1995), which is taken from the 12" in my Profile Pic. Hope ya' get to dig it sometime
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?????
Hey Triple,
It was "Out In The Country" by Three Dog Night, from the LP "It Ain't Easy" (1970). We used it for our track "Too Easy" (1995), which is taken from the 12" in my Profile Pic. Hope ya' get to dig it sometime
RR
tripledub luvs that 3 dawg chune
+
so do i !
i love the north lil rock dig stories
as i was walking in there for the first time
my buddy kuppers was getting hollered at & thrown out of the joint
good times
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.
Cheers mate
RR
I couldn't remember the name of the series, so thanks for the reminder (didn't you use the Marble Bar name for remixes at one point?). Assuming it's Steve we're talking about, I know that he kept hold of a few originals of those tapes, and I'm fairly sure he'll still have them - not certain which ones, though. I'll try and find out for you
Cheers Doc, look forward to catching up with him.
(Re Marble Bar the name: It ended up being the short-lived record label I ran from '98-'01... another story
RR
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!???.
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.
A**on...when I was there they had covers for all the Phillips label LP's.....Ballard, Frank Frost and a couple of cocktail band titles.....but no discs.....both the Ballard and Frost would bring big bucks in 2011.
Just a "little dude" story to share here, but one from Japan and in fact from yesterday.
I always try and take the day off on my birthday and go digging somewhere I've never been before. This year I decided to do a loop from home east into Kichijoji, then south to Shimokitazawa and Meidaimae, before heading west on the Keio line to three shops I'd seen in the Record Map book, before bussing it home for dinner and a beer or three.
The first part of the trip was all familiar territory and I lucked out with a sale in Shimokitazawa Disk Union, picking up some half-price 45s. Meidaimae has one shop which is unmissable if you're into psych or anything a little out of the ordinary, as it's run by the guy who does the PSF label. Scored a couple of cool bits there and was feeling pretty good as I headed to the first new place, a store supposedly specialising in "Showa kayokyoku" (Japanese pops from the 40s to late 60s). I was hoping to find some Mayuzumi Jun heat, or at least some cheap commons for trades, but it turned out to not be that sort of spot at all.
The first inkling I had that this was not a run of the mill store was that as I left the station there very soon weren't any shops at all. It was all apartments and when I did find the place it was pretty nondescript. It did have a sign outside saying "Records" though, so up the stairs I went. The front door had a plate on it with a long company name in Japanese characters. Again, I just clocked the word "Records" at the end and rang the bell to get buzzed in. I walked into an apartment that had been converted into an office. There were two desks, one with a guy siting at it with a pile of 45s and a turntable, the other with two of his colleagues with laptops. Every other conceivable bit of space was taken up with boxes, light blue and about the size of shoeboxes. Great, I though ... 45 heaven.
A word about these guys. They looked like Judo players, short hair and thin moustaches. My first thought was Y*kuza. The guy with the turntable looked straight at me, and as if it was the most natural thing in the world asked me, "Did you come here to buy socks?". WTF ... was this a code word for drugs? Was I really in some kind of underworld den? I mean, what do you say to that, other than ... "No, I'm looking for records". Turntable man shrugged and started moving boxes to reveal four bins of LPs and about ten of 45s. All this time the other two guys were just staring at their computers. I started going through the vinyl and soon realised that there was going to be nothing there for me. All stuff I either already had or had no interest in, and at ridiculous prices. So, I made my apologies, and made to leave. At which point the dude got up, and gave me an extravagant bow, which he held until I was out of the door.
Once I was outside I took a closer look at what was written on the door and saw it said something like "Martial Arts outfitters ... and records". Maybe I should have checked if they had any Bruce Lee soundtracks stashed in the back room! Oh, and all those boxes were actually full of ... socks.
Just a "little dude" story to share here, but one from Japan and in fact from yesterday.
I always try and take the day off on my birthday and go digging somewhere I've never been before. This year I decided to do a loop from home east into Kichijoji, then south to Shimokitazawa and Meidaimae, before heading west on the Keio line to three shops I'd seen in the Record Map book, before bussing it home for dinner and a beer or three.
nice! i think i know the place!
went to shimokita today and picked up some cool shit! ;)
When I first moved to Texas I heard about a place in Fort Worth called The Melody Shop that had apparently been around for a long time. I stopped in a few times but never had any luck. The place was in an old storefront in an old part of town and was run by two not so friendly women who back in the day would have been called "Old Maids". The store itself was small and never seemed to turn over their stock so after a few visits I just stopped going there.
During the 90's there were stories circulating about a well known dealer/collector who had a "secret spot" that just kept on producing one rare 45 after the next. Ridiculously rare local stuff that he was apparently getting for pennies on the dollar. He was mostly into Rockabilly so I tried my darndest to find out his spot as I was sure there were things there he was not hip to. Finally one day while talking to another collector he told me that the secret spot was The Melody Shop and that they had a back room that was 5x the size of the actual store and it was filled with raers, He also said that no one was EVER allowed back there and there was no way to talk these ladies into it.
Seeing that as a challenge my partner and I headed out there one Saturday and told the women we were very serious collectors and that we would like to go in the back....no dice, they weren't interested. They told us the ONLY way to get records out of the back was to give them a title and they would go look and see if they had it.....and that every 45 was $3.00 a piece. being unprepared we quickly made a list of 5 of the rarest local Fort Worth garage 45's and one of the women headed to the back room. About 10 minutes later she came back up front with 2 of the 45's. We asked if she had another copy as we each wanted one and sure enough she had quantity on one of the titles.
My partner was besides himself wanting to get back there so he pulls out 10 hundred dollar bills and lays them on the counter and says "We'll pay you $1,000 to go back there and the money will go towards our purchase at 3 bucks a piece....and if we find less than $1,000 worth the money is yours". Nope, they weren't interested. They repeated that we could give them a list and that was the only way they would do business.
We went home and spent the next week making a very detailed comprehensive list of about 800 rare 45's We drove back out there and gave them the list and asked them to call us when they were done. Weeks went by and we heard nothing.....we drive back out there and they say they just haven't had time to look and we ask if we can leave them a deposit towards our purchase as a way to motivate them....Nope, we have to do business they're way or the highway.
So another month goes by and we head back out there and it's the same thing.....they haven't looked and don't know when they will be able to. Now it's apparent that these ladies are NOT too busy to look for these 45's and we relaize they just are not going to do it.....we stopped back in a few times over the next year and they weren't even apologetic, just said they didn't have time....we gave up...these ladies were never going to sell us any more records and it was frustrating.
Years later after the shop closed down and I ran into the dealer/collector who supposedly had been scoring at The Melody Shop. He said that he had been going there just about every day for almost 10 years, giving them a list of 3 records a day to look for. He said they had about 25% of the titles he asked for and that he had used a Rockbilly Price Guide as his source for his requests. When I told him about my experience he said they had mentioned us to him and that our list was "too overwhelming" to tackle. The lesson learned was Patience > Greed.
I frequently thought about breaking into the Melody shop in total cat burglar style with a headlamp when I heard about that backroom...especially after they shut down...I heard those records sat in there for a bit after they closed but I dont know where they went.
I frequently thought about breaking into the Melody shop in total cat burglar style with a headlamp when I heard about that backroom...especially after they shut down...I heard those records sat in there for a bit after they closed but I dont know where they went.
I believe the records went to a local store where they immediately went into storage and will probably never see the light of day again.
So i responded to an add about 600 records for sale. The guy selling the records said they were in excellent condition and that they were mostly mid 70's - early 80's soul/disco type stuff. He was asking 2 bucks a record or 1 dollar each if 50 or more were bought. I said cool and went over to check them out. I figured most would be crap but i was hoping to find a few things i could use....
So i responded to an add about 600 records for sale. The guy selling the records said they were in excellent condition and that they were mostly mid 70's - early 80's soul/disco type stuff. He was asking 2 bucks a record or 1 dollar each if 50 or more were bought. I said cool and went over to check them out. I figured most would be crap but i was hoping to find a few things i could use....
did i miss Part 2 of this story? :-)
highly unlikely, we were laughing our asses off over that whole scenario for days a year or so ago, one of the greatest threads of all time as far as "oh snap" is concerned.
I was told by a friend to check out a yard sale after buying some of the product from that yard sale from him. He said it was on the south side of Albany. Albany has a weird street orientation, running up hills away from the Hudson. South side was (and I would imagine always has been) fairly crappy. The area I was going to were houses built on an old garbage dump. They have intermittent piping to let out any buildups of methane in the area. Anyhoo, went to the south side, had trouble finding the house. The orientation on the South side doesn't follow the traditional grid plan going away from the river, it zigzags with a lotta one way streets and roads you can get to places one way, but not the other. Anyway, finally locate the yard sale. It's being held in what could barely be considered a road. It was like if a buncha 1 floor houses and trailers congregated around a parking lot (NOT a trailer park and in the middle of the city still). Records lying stacked on picnic benches in the sun on a summer midday.
I look through them all, which was no small feat. The ground was wet, so I had to have a system of stacking and unstacking using the picnic bench. I pulled some miscellaneous bullcrap, checked shape, and a lot got put back due to scratchtasticness. As I'm peeling thru things like Cyndi Lauper and Janet Jackson's first album where she's getting outta the pool, I spot a yellow labeled record by Spontaneous Overthrow. Underneath that, it said "All About the Money" on "New-Ark." I pull it and keep it aside. As I'm flipping thru the recs, I ask the white trash lady where she got them. They style themselves as storage grippeurs, ala "Storage Wars" that buy storage lockers, sight unseen. So I'm hemming and hawing at my stack. At this pt, I have no idea what "Spontaneous Overthrow" was. It was sleeveless. It was scuffed a bunch. The label had some hints of boogie, but also some hints of the dreaded genres of house or techno. Finally, I pull the trigger (for 50c, it was that scratchy and questionable a label) based on the fact it was
1) Multiple different songs on it, not just 1-3 tracks, implying an album, which house/techno bullcrap rarely did
2) One of the songs mentioned "groove"
3) I liked the sound of "New Ark"
So I took a chance and bought it, one of the raerest items I've ever owned/sold.
Quick vignette:
I was in NOLA and went across the Mississippi. Went to a shop with a folksy name to it, like "Two Ladies" or something. Get there, I'm the only customer they might have seen in years. Located right by a dirt levee by the river. It is two ladies only (and me). They're knitting and LAUGHING while intently watching an episode of the 700 Club. Store was the most bizarre collection of assorted odds and ends, dishes, board games, rims, essentially whatever they got their hands on. I finally locate records. Handful of LPs. All Swaggart-esque gabage. Check the 45s to salvage the trip. Find what is to this day the coolest oddball 45 I've ever encountered: a Cajun 45 by Camey Doucette. "Hold My False Teeth (And Let Me Show You How To Dance)." One of the funniest 45s I've bought ever, catchy funny song. Pay the ladies (they were SOOOOOOOOOO sweet, although laughing and having a good time watching (seriously mind you) the 700 Club). Leave this odd little shop.
I answered a Records For Sale ad in the paper in Denton, Texas in the early 90's. It was an older gentleman and he showed me about 1,000 LP's in his house that were mostly Jazz titles. The price was a buck a piece and I pulled a stack of about 75 Clef, Blue Note and Contemporary label LP's all in nice shape. He them lead me to a shed in the back yard where there were about 3,000 more LP's of all genres. I pulled another 200 or so, paid him and was loading them into my car when his wife came out of the house and asked "What about those records up in the attic?". He asked me if I was into 78's and I told him I was so we headed back into the house to go up in the attic. There were boxes of Jazz, Blues and R&B 78's in Mint- condition. I went through them and found some nice, but not amazing titles. Stuff on Gold Star, Macy's and other mostly southern labels. In the last box was the rarest 78 I have ever found....Robert Johnson "Love In Vain Blues" on Vocalion.....unplayed!!!
About 6 months later I sold the Johnson 78 to a dealer in Fort Worth. He told me he knew a guy that would give him $750 so we agreed on a price of $400 which I was very happy with. About 10 years later the guy who had bought it for $750 was having financial issues and consigned a bunch of stuff with the Good Rockin' Tonight Auction folks. The "Love In Vain Blues" disc went for $10K.
OK. I told this story on here about seven years ago when I was an exchange student in China. Due to the crashes or lazy search skills I was unable to dig up the thread and just re-post, but I figured I have a minute, work is slow, so I'll just tell it again.
So there I was, young, freshfaced and craving East-Asian breakbeatraer, but disappointed to hear (on this board among other places) that no, no records in China. I decided this was completely impossible. In a city with 20+ million people where buying fresh duck's blood or live turtles from street-vendors proved no problem there HAD to be vinyl somewhere.
Of course there are two major things I had to take into consideration whether I liked it or not; the Chinese people's utter disdain for dated technology and the Cultural revolution.
These two factors were easily defeated (in my mind at least) by two counterpoints; junk-retail and ex-pats.
So I pulled some strings through my host-family. My absolute sweetheart of a host-mother exhausted her entire social network to find some records over the course of a couple of months and finally a lead came through. We hopped in a car and travelled to a suburb (forget about PMs, I've completely forgotten the names and/or general location of where the place might be), way beyond anywhere I'd ever been. We arrive at a sort of combined junkyard/second-hand place; a huge jumble of shaky buildings filled to the brim with torn-apart computer-components, busted stereos, internet-cafe's and street-food vendors. The smell of rotting carcasses, frying oil, cigarette smoke and sweaty teenagers (yes, Chinese people DO sweat), is stronger (if possible) than anywhere I'd previously been in the city. The place is a maze of small open-ended shops filled with shifty looking characters staring at us, shouting at each other, smokingl, playing chinese poker (with a minimum of three decks of course).
After a while we find the place we are looking for, occupied by a single extremely bored guy selling and repairing turntables. Every surface of the shop is covered with a thin layer of grime. My hands were completely black by the end of our visit. My host-mother, an upper class middleaged lady who was VERY cleanly was stressing me about the dirtiness of the place, so I had to hurry flipping through the two crates of records he's got standing against the back.
The collection reeks of visiting trans-european club DJ who couldn't fit the stuff in his carry-on. Lots of heavily palmed and fingerprinted generic r'n'b and forgettable BPM-tagged white-labels. But whats this in the back? Hmm, Japanese stuff, some movie-sountracks a couple of interesting looking things with not a roman letter in sight. I had no clue what any of it was. I can't even remember what I paid for the stuff, but he was obviously happy to be making money on something as utterly useless as second hand records.
I had a small setup for playing records and spent a very happy afternoon with many a musical surprise.
Included in the finds were that Japanese record with the funky covers of "Superstition" etc, a copy of the New Topnotes album, two Tiao Su Rong records (some of my absolute favourite records ever, really) and various other interesting things.
When I came back I made a short mix with some of the stuff I found, which I recently unearthed in the digital archives, I'll post it later, DivShare is fucking up.
I spent last week with 20 associates from Beijing and was invited to visit this Fall....when I asked if there were records I was met with blank stares.
The_non's story just reminded me of a similar experience. ??So, around a year and a half ago I hit up an estate sale in North Oakland in which a 50+ year old single woman was liquidating a bunch of her possessions after defaulting on her home loan. It was one of those beautiful old dilapidated Victorian homes near bushrod park.??
Anyway, she had about 2000 lp's leaning up against the wall in her living room, plus about three uhaul boxes in her kitchen. Took me about 45 minutes to go through everything, but most of it was beat to shit unfortunately. I pulled a few blue notes and a Black Merda lp, and some strange looking yellow label 12" called Imani.
The label on this 12 was a rattlesnake coiled up and "Imani" written on it's back in an almost heavy-metal looking font. But, the song titles such as "Someone's Love" and "Birds home" made me think that wasn't punk or metal, and that I had possibly found something cool. After cashing the lady out proper since her story made me feel generous, I went home to assess the haul. Needle drops on "birds home" - holy schitt this is some insane modern funk instrumental with a total bay area sound! Next to get played was "Someone's love" - facemelting mellow modern soul rainy day shit.??
Google yielded nada, so, confident in my assessment that this was a local thing (no label or address on label), I hit up all the usual suspects for any scraps of info. No one had heard of it except for Cool Chris, who owns a copy. It turns out I had ??found a coverless copy of one of the rarest east bay modern soul lps out there. CC put a track off the four song ep on one of his waxi swap mixes.
As for the original lady's house with the records, I later dubbed it the "Record Mansion" because she ended up calling me back a total five times as she kept finding more records in the basement and other rooms for storage. Each time it was all totally new shit I hadn't seen. Though I scoured all the records in there again, I never found the cover to the Imani lp. I did find other cool stuff, but to me the house itself was the amazing part of this story. There were like 4 or 5 separate collections in there, between the basement and the unoccupied rooms upstairs.??
Comments
I couldn't remember the name of the series, so thanks for the reminder (didn't you use the Marble Bar name for remixes at one point?). Assuming it's Steve we're talking about, I know that he kept hold of a few originals of those tapes, and I'm fairly sure he'll still have them - not certain which ones, though. I'll try and find out for you
Hey Triple,
It was "Out In The Country" by Three Dog Night, from the LP "It Ain't Easy" (1970). We used it for our track "Too Easy" (1995), which is taken from the 12" in my Profile Pic. Hope ya' get to dig it sometime
RR
tripledub luvs that 3 dawg chune
+
so do i !
i love the north lil rock dig stories
as i was walking in there for the first time
my buddy kuppers was getting hollered at & thrown out of the joint
good times
I believe he used to post here a bit back. Went by the name of 200 Crates, I think?
Yeah, that's right, I believe he used it for other sites, so very likely he used it for here.
RR
Cheers Doc, look forward to catching up with him.
(Re Marble Bar the name: It ended up being the short-lived record label I ran from '98-'01... another story
RR
http://bayoucitysoul.wordpress.com/2011/02/15/chasing-moby-dick-in-east-texas/
YES!
yeah. i also dont want any more of my ranting to be viewable on google. ive said enough dumb shit for a lifetime! all on soulstrut too...
!
BEST. THREAD. EVER.
A**on...when I was there they had covers for all the Phillips label LP's.....Ballard, Frank Frost and a couple of cocktail band titles.....but no discs.....both the Ballard and Frost would bring big bucks in 2011.
I always try and take the day off on my birthday and go digging somewhere I've never been before. This year I decided to do a loop from home east into Kichijoji, then south to Shimokitazawa and Meidaimae, before heading west on the Keio line to three shops I'd seen in the Record Map book, before bussing it home for dinner and a beer or three.
The first part of the trip was all familiar territory and I lucked out with a sale in Shimokitazawa Disk Union, picking up some half-price 45s. Meidaimae has one shop which is unmissable if you're into psych or anything a little out of the ordinary, as it's run by the guy who does the PSF label. Scored a couple of cool bits there and was feeling pretty good as I headed to the first new place, a store supposedly specialising in "Showa kayokyoku" (Japanese pops from the 40s to late 60s). I was hoping to find some Mayuzumi Jun heat, or at least some cheap commons for trades, but it turned out to not be that sort of spot at all.
The first inkling I had that this was not a run of the mill store was that as I left the station there very soon weren't any shops at all. It was all apartments and when I did find the place it was pretty nondescript. It did have a sign outside saying "Records" though, so up the stairs I went. The front door had a plate on it with a long company name in Japanese characters. Again, I just clocked the word "Records" at the end and rang the bell to get buzzed in. I walked into an apartment that had been converted into an office. There were two desks, one with a guy siting at it with a pile of 45s and a turntable, the other with two of his colleagues with laptops. Every other conceivable bit of space was taken up with boxes, light blue and about the size of shoeboxes. Great, I though ... 45 heaven.
A word about these guys. They looked like Judo players, short hair and thin moustaches. My first thought was Y*kuza. The guy with the turntable looked straight at me, and as if it was the most natural thing in the world asked me, "Did you come here to buy socks?". WTF ... was this a code word for drugs? Was I really in some kind of underworld den? I mean, what do you say to that, other than ... "No, I'm looking for records". Turntable man shrugged and started moving boxes to reveal four bins of LPs and about ten of 45s. All this time the other two guys were just staring at their computers. I started going through the vinyl and soon realised that there was going to be nothing there for me. All stuff I either already had or had no interest in, and at ridiculous prices. So, I made my apologies, and made to leave. At which point the dude got up, and gave me an extravagant bow, which he held until I was out of the door.
Once I was outside I took a closer look at what was written on the door and saw it said something like "Martial Arts outfitters ... and records". Maybe I should have checked if they had any Bruce Lee soundtracks stashed in the back room! Oh, and all those boxes were actually full of ... socks.
During the 90's there were stories circulating about a well known dealer/collector who had a "secret spot" that just kept on producing one rare 45 after the next. Ridiculously rare local stuff that he was apparently getting for pennies on the dollar. He was mostly into Rockabilly so I tried my darndest to find out his spot as I was sure there were things there he was not hip to. Finally one day while talking to another collector he told me that the secret spot was The Melody Shop and that they had a back room that was 5x the size of the actual store and it was filled with raers, He also said that no one was EVER allowed back there and there was no way to talk these ladies into it.
Seeing that as a challenge my partner and I headed out there one Saturday and told the women we were very serious collectors and that we would like to go in the back....no dice, they weren't interested. They told us the ONLY way to get records out of the back was to give them a title and they would go look and see if they had it.....and that every 45 was $3.00 a piece. being unprepared we quickly made a list of 5 of the rarest local Fort Worth garage 45's and one of the women headed to the back room. About 10 minutes later she came back up front with 2 of the 45's. We asked if she had another copy as we each wanted one and sure enough she had quantity on one of the titles.
My partner was besides himself wanting to get back there so he pulls out 10 hundred dollar bills and lays them on the counter and says "We'll pay you $1,000 to go back there and the money will go towards our purchase at 3 bucks a piece....and if we find less than $1,000 worth the money is yours". Nope, they weren't interested. They repeated that we could give them a list and that was the only way they would do business.
We went home and spent the next week making a very detailed comprehensive list of about 800 rare 45's We drove back out there and gave them the list and asked them to call us when they were done. Weeks went by and we heard nothing.....we drive back out there and they say they just haven't had time to look and we ask if we can leave them a deposit towards our purchase as a way to motivate them....Nope, we have to do business they're way or the highway.
So another month goes by and we head back out there and it's the same thing.....they haven't looked and don't know when they will be able to. Now it's apparent that these ladies are NOT too busy to look for these 45's and we relaize they just are not going to do it.....we stopped back in a few times over the next year and they weren't even apologetic, just said they didn't have time....we gave up...these ladies were never going to sell us any more records and it was frustrating.
Years later after the shop closed down and I ran into the dealer/collector who supposedly had been scoring at The Melody Shop. He said that he had been going there just about every day for almost 10 years, giving them a list of 3 records a day to look for. He said they had about 25% of the titles he asked for and that he had used a Rockbilly Price Guide as his source for his requests. When I told him about my experience he said they had mentioned us to him and that our list was "too overwhelming" to tackle. The lesson learned was Patience > Greed.
and that money isn't a big motivator for alot of peeps!
Do you have any clue what happened to their records after the place closed down?
I believe the records went to a local store where they immediately went into storage and will probably never see the light of day again.
Giant Juke Box Storefront Related.
did i miss Part 2 of this story? :-)
I was told by a friend to check out a yard sale after buying some of the product from that yard sale from him. He said it was on the south side of Albany. Albany has a weird street orientation, running up hills away from the Hudson. South side was (and I would imagine always has been) fairly crappy. The area I was going to were houses built on an old garbage dump. They have intermittent piping to let out any buildups of methane in the area. Anyhoo, went to the south side, had trouble finding the house. The orientation on the South side doesn't follow the traditional grid plan going away from the river, it zigzags with a lotta one way streets and roads you can get to places one way, but not the other. Anyway, finally locate the yard sale. It's being held in what could barely be considered a road. It was like if a buncha 1 floor houses and trailers congregated around a parking lot (NOT a trailer park and in the middle of the city still). Records lying stacked on picnic benches in the sun on a summer midday.
I look through them all, which was no small feat. The ground was wet, so I had to have a system of stacking and unstacking using the picnic bench. I pulled some miscellaneous bullcrap, checked shape, and a lot got put back due to scratchtasticness. As I'm peeling thru things like Cyndi Lauper and Janet Jackson's first album where she's getting outta the pool, I spot a yellow labeled record by Spontaneous Overthrow. Underneath that, it said "All About the Money" on "New-Ark." I pull it and keep it aside. As I'm flipping thru the recs, I ask the white trash lady where she got them. They style themselves as storage grippeurs, ala "Storage Wars" that buy storage lockers, sight unseen. So I'm hemming and hawing at my stack. At this pt, I have no idea what "Spontaneous Overthrow" was. It was sleeveless. It was scuffed a bunch. The label had some hints of boogie, but also some hints of the dreaded genres of house or techno. Finally, I pull the trigger (for 50c, it was that scratchy and questionable a label) based on the fact it was
1) Multiple different songs on it, not just 1-3 tracks, implying an album, which house/techno bullcrap rarely did
2) One of the songs mentioned "groove"
3) I liked the sound of "New Ark"
So I took a chance and bought it, one of the raerest items I've ever owned/sold.
Quick vignette:
I was in NOLA and went across the Mississippi. Went to a shop with a folksy name to it, like "Two Ladies" or something. Get there, I'm the only customer they might have seen in years. Located right by a dirt levee by the river. It is two ladies only (and me). They're knitting and LAUGHING while intently watching an episode of the 700 Club. Store was the most bizarre collection of assorted odds and ends, dishes, board games, rims, essentially whatever they got their hands on. I finally locate records. Handful of LPs. All Swaggart-esque gabage. Check the 45s to salvage the trip. Find what is to this day the coolest oddball 45 I've ever encountered: a Cajun 45 by Camey Doucette. "Hold My False Teeth (And Let Me Show You How To Dance)." One of the funniest 45s I've bought ever, catchy funny song. Pay the ladies (they were SOOOOOOOOOO sweet, although laughing and having a good time watching (seriously mind you) the 700 Club). Leave this odd little shop.
b/w
Add on foos
I answered a Records For Sale ad in the paper in Denton, Texas in the early 90's. It was an older gentleman and he showed me about 1,000 LP's in his house that were mostly Jazz titles. The price was a buck a piece and I pulled a stack of about 75 Clef, Blue Note and Contemporary label LP's all in nice shape. He them lead me to a shed in the back yard where there were about 3,000 more LP's of all genres. I pulled another 200 or so, paid him and was loading them into my car when his wife came out of the house and asked "What about those records up in the attic?". He asked me if I was into 78's and I told him I was so we headed back into the house to go up in the attic. There were boxes of Jazz, Blues and R&B 78's in Mint- condition. I went through them and found some nice, but not amazing titles. Stuff on Gold Star, Macy's and other mostly southern labels. In the last box was the rarest 78 I have ever found....Robert Johnson "Love In Vain Blues" on Vocalion.....unplayed!!!
About 6 months later I sold the Johnson 78 to a dealer in Fort Worth. He told me he knew a guy that would give him $750 so we agreed on a price of $400 which I was very happy with. About 10 years later the guy who had bought it for $750 was having financial issues and consigned a bunch of stuff with the Good Rockin' Tonight Auction folks. The "Love In Vain Blues" disc went for $10K.
So there I was, young, freshfaced and craving East-Asian breakbeatraer, but disappointed to hear (on this board among other places) that no, no records in China. I decided this was completely impossible. In a city with 20+ million people where buying fresh duck's blood or live turtles from street-vendors proved no problem there HAD to be vinyl somewhere.
Of course there are two major things I had to take into consideration whether I liked it or not; the Chinese people's utter disdain for dated technology and the Cultural revolution.
These two factors were easily defeated (in my mind at least) by two counterpoints; junk-retail and ex-pats.
So I pulled some strings through my host-family. My absolute sweetheart of a host-mother exhausted her entire social network to find some records over the course of a couple of months and finally a lead came through. We hopped in a car and travelled to a suburb (forget about PMs, I've completely forgotten the names and/or general location of where the place might be), way beyond anywhere I'd ever been. We arrive at a sort of combined junkyard/second-hand place; a huge jumble of shaky buildings filled to the brim with torn-apart computer-components, busted stereos, internet-cafe's and street-food vendors. The smell of rotting carcasses, frying oil, cigarette smoke and sweaty teenagers (yes, Chinese people DO sweat), is stronger (if possible) than anywhere I'd previously been in the city. The place is a maze of small open-ended shops filled with shifty looking characters staring at us, shouting at each other, smokingl, playing chinese poker (with a minimum of three decks of course).
After a while we find the place we are looking for, occupied by a single extremely bored guy selling and repairing turntables. Every surface of the shop is covered with a thin layer of grime. My hands were completely black by the end of our visit. My host-mother, an upper class middleaged lady who was VERY cleanly was stressing me about the dirtiness of the place, so I had to hurry flipping through the two crates of records he's got standing against the back.
The collection reeks of visiting trans-european club DJ who couldn't fit the stuff in his carry-on. Lots of heavily palmed and fingerprinted generic r'n'b and forgettable BPM-tagged white-labels. But whats this in the back? Hmm, Japanese stuff, some movie-sountracks a couple of interesting looking things with not a roman letter in sight. I had no clue what any of it was. I can't even remember what I paid for the stuff, but he was obviously happy to be making money on something as utterly useless as second hand records.
I had a small setup for playing records and spent a very happy afternoon with many a musical surprise.
Included in the finds were that Japanese record with the funky covers of "Superstition" etc, a copy of the New Topnotes album, two Tiao Su Rong records (some of my absolute favourite records ever, really) and various other interesting things.
When I came back I made a short mix with some of the stuff I found, which I recently unearthed in the digital archives, I'll post it later, DivShare is fucking up.
and no, no records in Shanghai.
I spent last week with 20 associates from Beijing and was invited to visit this Fall....when I asked if there were records I was met with blank stares.
Anyway, she had about 2000 lp's leaning up against the wall in her living room, plus about three uhaul boxes in her kitchen. Took me about 45 minutes to go through everything, but most of it was beat to shit unfortunately. I pulled a few blue notes and a Black Merda lp, and some strange looking yellow label 12" called Imani.
The label on this 12 was a rattlesnake coiled up and "Imani" written on it's back in an almost heavy-metal looking font. But, the song titles such as "Someone's Love" and "Birds home" made me think that wasn't punk or metal, and that I had possibly found something cool. After cashing the lady out proper since her story made me feel generous, I went home to assess the haul. Needle drops on "birds home" - holy schitt this is some insane modern funk instrumental with a total bay area sound! Next to get played was "Someone's love" - facemelting mellow modern soul rainy day shit.??
Google yielded nada, so, confident in my assessment that this was a local thing (no label or address on label), I hit up all the usual suspects for any scraps of info. No one had heard of it except for Cool Chris, who owns a copy. It turns out I had ??found a coverless copy of one of the rarest east bay modern soul lps out there. CC put a track off the four song ep on one of his waxi swap mixes.
As for the original lady's house with the records, I later dubbed it the "Record Mansion" because she ended up calling me back a total five times as she kept finding more records in the basement and other rooms for storage. Each time it was all totally new shit I hadn't seen. Though I scoured all the records in there again, I never found the cover to the Imani lp. I did find other cool stuff, but to me the house itself was the amazing part of this story. There were like 4 or 5 separate collections in there, between the basement and the unoccupied rooms upstairs.??