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.
BeiJing might actually be an OK place to start. Lots of people hungry for cultural imports from the "outside" in the late seventies/early eighties, but I'd expect you'd have to delve deep into a LOT of junk in order to find anything. I found records there at a small shop in the GuLou district, but nothing to write home about. Also the renewal of the city is taking its toll on ANYTHING considered old, so go sooner than later.
PS: All of my talk about Chinese people ditching old stuff relates to "newer" old stuff. They are extremely proud of having a 3000+ years old continuous civilization.
I tend to forget these funny little digging stories, so ima tell a recent one, actually just a couple weeks old, people who head out into the field after records experience these incidents all the time, for me, I love meeting different people, some a little out of the ordinary, like the house call at this elderly tight silk dressed pot smoking hippie chick last summer, who where out for some fast loving in her basement, while I tried to focus on the records, and had to clear out a little but totally stuffed cellar storage room to get to them, in the process, having to move all her boyfriends guns and amo out of the way, cause the wax where all the way in the back, funny little story, but I already forgot half of it, so ima tell this recent one..not that its really amazing, but here it goes:
So its been cold as fuck, all of february this year has been ice freezing, and def not the type of weather situation that screams for going out on a hunt.
However this lady tells me she has a soul collection, and when ever that happens (meeting people who says they have a soul collection) I immediately for some reason see syl johnsons is it because im black album floating in the air in front of me.. daamn haha, so high winds are blowing coldness in my face as I hit the bike fingers crossed.
About an hour later, frozen stiff, I arrive at the her place, she meets me in the door and asks if im afraid of birds, im like nope, thinking huge dogs are much worse ( a dog the size of a small car once bit a hole in my knee which bled for three weeks) Anyway, entering the apartment I notice the loud sounds of birds.. many birds, she says follow me, first thought that goes through my mind is, how can anyone live in this noise or sleep for that matter..whooa coming into the living room i have to duck, cause this big parrot comes flying right at me, dont mind oscar she says, turns out that the sweet lady has several bird cages in each room filled with budgies, in this other wise normal appartment, and has two large parrots flying free around the rooms, theres doodoo and feathers everywhere, and the lady tells me she hasnt been home yesterday, therefore the messy floor..
As we enter the next room i notice a small stack maybe 20 late 1980s/ 90s lps on the floor, thats the soul collection, common albums, dont even have to look at these, I do anyway, knee deep in bird shit and feathers, sneezing feeling my allergy acting up, all I can think about is getting outta this place, as I stand up, the big bird which are not quite as hospitable as the lady, launches another attack on me, and once again ducking down, I feel like being in a alfred hitchcock movie or something... I politely thank the lady, and head for the door, as I calculate that I might be able to hit a couple spots on the way back, but the lady leads me into the living room again, saying that she has spotted my interest in birds, now she wants to introduce me to them, which apparently all have names.. Theres no way out of this one, i count aprox 30 birds all in all, and it turns out that they all have a little story of their own.
To make a long story short, I was sneezing breathing pretty heavy due to the allergy, as I finally got out to my bike, actually now embracing the freezing cold winter weather!!!
In the mid-90???s I found a copy of a record called Frances Cannon & The Extraterrestrials ???The Singing Psychic???. I had heard her on Howard Stern doing some cheesy psychic shtick but the LP was crazy???.and somewhat psychedelic. I decided to giver her a call since she was local here in Dallas and she invited me over to her home that coming Saturday. I had a couple of friends in town that were in the ???music biz??? (One was head of A&R for a major label in NYC and the other had been in the biz for 20+ years signing acts including Dire Straits) and I invited them to come along with me.
Frances lived in the garage apartment of a multi-million dollar home along with her Svengali-like manager. She invited us in and immediately began telling tales of her psychic powers. She claimed to have found and rescued literally 100???s of abducted children, including 80 at one time who were kidnapped by Eskimos and held captive in an Ice Cave. I politely mentioned that I was shocked I had never read about this amazing news story. She told tales of being invited to secret psychic conventions by the Soviet government. We spent about an hour with her trying to keep a straight face. Before we left she insisted on giving us a ???psychic reading??? which of course she sung while strumming her guitar and holding a microphone in her ample cleavage.
She asked some personal questions and then sung us our future(s). She said one of my daughters would become a professional musician(She has since played drums in a band that recorded a CD) and that my other daughter would marry a doctor(She???s still single). My friends had a blast, I bought some of her records and we were on our way, but before we left she gave us this nugget of wisdom. ???I got my psychic powers when I was hit by a lumber truck, but I can???t guarantee you???ll get psychic powers if you are hit by a lumber truck, so try not to be hit by a lumber truck???.
I am telling this story today because I just heard that she passed away about a year ago???..RIP Fran, you were a trip.
IShe told tales of being invited to secret psychic conventions by the Soviet government.
Oh, those Soviets and their psychics!
"2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book we cannot ignore, March 7, 2009
By
Richard H. Wachsman "Book Bed Bug Victim" (Lowell, MASSACHUSETTS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Hardcover)
When I first read Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain in 1971, I realized that we had better not let an ESP gap become the next missle gap. At the time I was working as a systems engineer on a project that was not practical with the technology that was then available, and decided that I wanted to research the ideas in this book instead. However, when I told them this at work, I was let go the next day. If I was going to research these issues I would have to do it on my own time using my own money. While we still don't have all the answers, or even know all the questions that must be asked to unravel these mysteries, much work has been done by many different researchers both here and abroad to at least verify that these psychic phenomena are real, if not always reproducible at will. It turns out that much depends on sunspot activity and the phases of the moon insofar as it affects changes in the Earth's magnetic field. There is an updated version of this book that consists of a condensed versiou of PDBTIC plus an update on research conducted behind the Iron Curtain since the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. Ironically, one of the most important discussions in the original edition was omitted in the new one, indicating that even the authors failed to appreciate its significance. Unfortunately, a bedbug problem forced me to have to get rid of most of my books including this one, so I was thrilled to find a copy readily available at AMAZON.COM I plan to purchase the new edition too. For anyone interested in psychic phenomena, this is probably the best first book to read. "
a story just came to mind that isnt really about crazy places or people, but more of how i am an idiot.
i was at a flea market outside of atlanta which was a long indoor hallway, where each stall had a garage door for an outside wall. i found a little record cubicle and found some nice things and i dug leisurely in the near empty market. there was a copy of the coffy soundtrack hung on the wall, so i hesitated to ask for it, but it was a dollar too, so i was pretty happy to put that alongside a copy of Jimmy Briscoe and someother funk things. it started pouring outside and so i stood around with a couple pld ladies and the guy who sold the records and we joked around about the weather. now, i was travelling and living out my van and when they started joking that one could take a shower for free, i started joking that maybe i should. they totally egged me on and finally, a little bit on a dare a little bit cause i needed a shower i went to my van, got in my swim trunks and lathered up in the parking lot. the old folks got a good laugh out of it, especially when the rain stopped right about when i was done with the soap. shit was corny, but at least they had a good time
About 8 years ago, I was meeting with my wife during our separation before our divorce, at her homegirls crib in a shitty part of Miami. After gettin tired of putting up with her bullshit, I take a break and walk down the street, towards a thrift shop that I had seen. Mainly furniture and junk, but he had a couple of decent piles of records I started diggin thru. I pull about 15 pieces, pay him 1.50 (the records were 10 cents a piece). A few days later, back in Orlando, I start going thru and put this kids record on, only to hear loud crispy banging drums hit my speakers.
She told tales of being invited to secret psychic conventions by the Soviet government. We spent about an hour with her trying to keep a straight face.
You know, that might actually be true. The USSR dropped a surprising amount of money & time on that kind of bizness.
I think Denton has more cat lady ??? possible sex criminal ??? obscure legend ??? fried-out shut-in collector types than anywhere else I've ever been, ever.
I'd like to talk about one of the most special days I've had in a lonng time (besides the birth of my two children and the day I got married).
It was September 27, 2008.
I used to run ads in the Philly and Allentown areas saying that I bought records... Towards the end of my hardcore digging days, I got burnt out driving down to Philly for house calls so I stuck to Allentown / Lehigh Valley which is a much closer drive.
I decided to take the day off from life and go hiking near where I went to school for two years (Penn State Mont Alto Campus near Gettysburg). It's a 2 hour drive but it's a place where I can find myself.
Unfortunately, it was a rainy miserable day but I decided to go anyway. As luck would have it, the rain stopped and the sun burned through the clouds just as I arrived. The hike was magnificent and it was just the escape I needed from my daily life.
After I completed the hike, I got a call on my cel from a gentleman who had "thousands of records from the 60s and all kinds of jazz." He was located conveniently on my way home just 10 minutes from my house in a major commercial area of Route 309.
It was a Lawn Mower Repair place that had been there for years and the owner was retiring.
It turned out to have 4,000+ jazz records, psych records, and northern soul promo 45s. Dude wanted $300 to take them away.
Best find that came to mind was a Promo of Vicky Baines - Country Girl which I ended up eBaying for like $1200
The place where I scored these records is now a diner / ice cream shop called The Inside Scoop in Coopersburg, PA....
Last weekend, a friend and I drove up to Woodstock, NY to see one of Levon Helm's Midnight Rambles. For those unfamiliar, check http://www.levonhelm.com/about_ramble.htm. On the day of the show, just by chance, we stumble upon a record tent sale and obviously go in to check it out. The guy running it was very friendly, wouldn't be surprised if he posted here, or at least knows people who do. After picking up a copy of The Band's self titled album (which had been missing from my collection for way too long for no good reason), the guy running the sale was nice enough to draw us out a map to Big Pink, which for those who don't know was a house rented by Bob Dylan and The Band in the 1960s where a lot of their best material was written. Got to take my picture in front of it, which is something I had wanted to do for awhile. Amazing that it still almost looks exactly the same as it does on the record sleeve of Music From Big Pink. Not really a record story, but just one of those cool things that all starts with digging.
The Midnight Ramble was amazing, by the way. Highly recommended to anyone who has the means of going.
Last weekend, a friend and I drove up to Woodstock, NY to see one of Levon Helm's Midnight Rambles. For those unfamiliar, check http://www.levonhelm.com/about_ramble.htm. On the day of the show, just by chance, we stumble upon a record tent sale and obviously go in to check it out. The guy running it was very friendly, wouldn't be surprised if he posted here, or at least knows people who do. After picking up a copy of The Band's self titled album (which had been missing from my collection for way too long for no good reason), the guy running the sale was nice enough to draw us out a map to Big Pink, which for those who don't know was a house rented by Bob Dylan and The Band in the 1960s where a lot of their best material was written. Got to take my picture in front of it, which is something I had wanted to do for awhile. Amazing that it still almost looks exactly the same as it does on the record sleeve of Music From Big Pink. Not really a record story, but just one of those cool things that all starts with digging.
The Midnight Ramble was amazing, by the way. Highly recommended to anyone who has the means of going.
the guy with the tents? was it on a dead end street? did he have an Aussie accent or something? named Zip? i went to his house once. looked through a lot of stuff. didn't leave with much of anything. he sells at FMU. always sets up like 100 tables...
Last weekend, a friend and I drove up to Woodstock, NY to see one of Levon Helm's Midnight Rambles. For those unfamiliar, check http://www.levonhelm.com/about_ramble.htm. On the day of the show, just by chance, we stumble upon a record tent sale and obviously go in to check it out. The guy running it was very friendly, wouldn't be surprised if he posted here, or at least knows people who do. After picking up a copy of The Band's self titled album (which had been missing from my collection for way too long for no good reason), the guy running the sale was nice enough to draw us out a map to Big Pink, which for those who don't know was a house rented by Bob Dylan and The Band in the 1960s where a lot of their best material was written. Got to take my picture in front of it, which is something I had wanted to do for awhile. Amazing that it still almost looks exactly the same as it does on the record sleeve of Music From Big Pink. Not really a record story, but just one of those cool things that all starts with digging.
The Midnight Ramble was amazing, by the way. Highly recommended to anyone who has the means of going.
the guy with the tents? was it on a dead end street? did he have an Aussie accent or something? named Zip? i went to his house once. looked through a lot of stuff. didn't leave with much of anything. he sells at FMU. always sets up like 100 tables...
Yeah that's the guy. Only other thing I came away with was a copy of The Pursuaders - Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Still, a pleasant surprise, as I wasn't really expecting to do any shopping for records on my trip.
Yall don't know bout Zip. I've got tons of fuckin heat from him. Cool about Big Pink, he's a nice dude.
Not trying to hate on Zip. To be honest, I was under time constraints and wasn't able to go thru his stash as thoroughly as I would have liked. I've discovered, in my email correspondence with him, that I looked over some Boosey & Hawkes library joints. My bad. But yeah, he's good people.
Some of you may know me as the guy who posted Owen Marshall mp3s some years back. Here's my story about finding Captain Puff.
I wasn't out digging that day. In fact, I was probably driving home from my local walmart (there's about 5 on Oahu). On my way home I decided to swing by a random garage sale and see if they had any records. This was when I first started out digging, and i had few clues on what to look for since I didn't have al lot of experience. I knew I wanted jazz or soulful music at the least.
So I pull up to a typical suburban home in the middle of Oahu, and there sits a lady and her teenage daughter in the garage, waiting for another bargain hunter to stop by.
"You got any records?"
"Yeah", the girl says and points to a single crate. The records belong to her father who isn't around at the moment.
Remember, I came to the sale unplanned, so I didn't exactly have any cash on me, just a debit card.
So I flip through the crate not knowing what I'm looking for, and in retrospect I wish i did, because there were probably a few more cool jazz funk fusion LPs in there. I was getting to the end of the crate and hadn't pulled anything yet. Thats when Owen Marshall caught my eye. Cool hand sketched cover art. Skimming the liner notes, turns out he worked for Blue Note and invented his own musical instruments! Plus it was signed. And yes, the photos of him jamming naked in his studio were raer-worthy.
But wait, I don't have any cash on me! So I turn to the mom and daughter and ask the price.
"One dollar each. "
"Ok, let me run to my car and see what I can find. "
Rummaged through every compartment and, sh*t, only three quarters! No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find an extra 25 cents. What the hell, I'll try anyway. I walk back up, holding up three silvery coins and apologetically say,
"Um, I could only find 75 cents..."
The mom didn't know what to say, probably dumbfounded that I'd even try to lower the price below a dollar? But the daughter turns to her mom and says.
"Oh c'mon mom, just give it to him!"
And that's how I got 25% off the selling price of an LP now worth 2000x those three coins. Oh, the mystical powers of the Naked Truth.
Early 90's story from Indianapolis that a few of you may know.
There was a mail order dude, Golden Memories in Mooresville, about 20 miles south of Indy, who had around 1 million records in a warehouse. Apparently he bought up every label and distributor's overstock that he could find. Dude reportedly defaulted on a bank loan and skipped town, so the bank was stuck with the warehouse. Story is that they initially sold it to a buyer that i've never been able to identify for something like $25k, but then his financing fell through. So then they approached a local record show promoter, and as the story goes, asked him if there were any books that could help them figure out record values, and if so they were going to turn to him to get help liquidating it. Supposedly, said promoter said, no, there were not. They checked, and found that there were indeed such books, so said promoter's cred was shot and they moved on.
At that point, someone (don't know who) helped them connect with big collector-dealer dudes around the midwest and invited them to come buy records at a low fixed price per record. After the initial pillage--which supposedly netted major raers of all types for the big dudes--they opened the doors to the public and let people buy records at, I think, 50 cents each. The place was open all summer, I'm thinking summer of 92 it was. The building itself was ramshackle and filthy, some parts didn't have lighting so you had to have a flashlight. Some areas had water leaks and water on the floor.
i had an intense day job so i only made it there a few times, and probably bought all the wrong stuff as I was pretty clueless back then. I can't even remember what I found now. Stan Denksi, on the other hand, had the summer off and more or less made his record bones there, he found box lots of stuff like Grodeck Whipperjenny and other obscure psych, trading like a banshee afterwards. At the end, they sold off all the remainder to one dude who messed with it for years, hosting out of town dealers, etc. Even then, there were still lots of Lamp label and other local/regional raers being pulled.
A couple of years ago a local digger that I knew told me he'd bought out a little warehouse in eastern Indiana, and I ended up buying part of it from him. Turns out that many of those records came from Mooresville, identifiable by the Golden Memories boxes. Not many great titles in there, but lots of $10-$20 private label funk and soul.
Anyone who knows this story is welcome to correct/update the info. Some of the above is fourth hand rumor quality info.
mines? long story short, the first year i started digging i overlooked this record and left it in the bin and I will never forget that moment, it haunts me still.
Price? $1.99
Condition? NM (would have been sealed had it not been for the record store's preference)
Location: Reckless Records in Chicago.
I did happen to pick up some decent latin records but truth hurts.
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!
Nice, just looking at the picture I want to flip the bananas out of his collection just to take a peek.
Had a trip planned to Northern Oklahoma this past weekend so I ran a Craigslist ad and got a bunch of response.....weeded out most of them quickly ......."I have 3 Beatles picture discs" & "Really rare.....blah blah blah.......ebay.....blah blah blah.....my uncle's will......blah blah blah.......house payment is due.....blah blah blah........thousands of dollars.......blah blah blah....Tommy Dorsey......LET ME STOP YOU RIGHT THERE!.......but one response seemed pretty promising.....2,000 LP's of all genres that were their late Dad's collection.....we agreed to a visit Saturday morning.
The trip had a curve ball thrown at it at our end so I tried to reschedule.....dude tells me he was really hoping I'd come because he had moved all the records from a storage building into his house....I decided the right thing to do was to go and my wife and I made the 5 hour drive stopping at Antique Malls and hitting restaurants from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives along the way.
I schedule to meet them early Saturday morning and I go by myself, letting the better half sleep late. I follow my map and get to a dirt road and call the dude to see where to go...he tells me to take the dirt road about 1/4 mile......8 dogs chase my car down the road. I'm greeted on the end of the road by a woman and her two brothers who very much resemble the two brothers from the show Swamp People....they bring me in the house and the Dining room table is covered with 8 three foot piles of LP's.....there were literally 100's of Sweet 'N Low packets strewn around the Dining & Living room floors.....some empty....some filled.
They explained that their father, who had passed away in 2010, was a pack rat. The LP's were the worst of the worst....VG- Charley Pride LP's.....the entire split seam Design label catalog.....when I was done looking at them they suggested we go out to the "buildings"....on about 2 acres of land were 3 buildings and junk covering the property. ....the building with the records was an old barn.....there was piles of junk and about 10 x 100 count boxes of LP's....it became apparent that 1) Their records sucked....and....2) They thought their records were worth thousands of dollars.
I felt bad and paid them $20 for a Tony Valor LP on Brunswick and a Sam Lay LP on Blue Thumb.
About 5 years ago, I was on tour in Germany and Switzerland. I found a lot of great stuff but here were a couple things that warrant a story.
I was staying in a flat down the road from a record store called '6 pack' that was owned by a guy named DJ Nail. He was super friendly and I ended up hanging out at his shop a lot since I had long days with nothing to do. Every day he would bring in a stack of records to show me, and i realized quick that this dude had a serious collection. One day he played me this Swiss banger:
He told me it was really rare and I would have a really hard time finding one. I rolled a joint and left the shop, smoking it down a side street. I got a few blocks away and found a another little record shop. I walked in, eyes glazed over, and looked through the bins. Pretty standard stuff. Just as a long shot, I asked the owner, "You don't, by chance, have a copy of a swiss record called 'Proud Mary, do you?"
He replied, "You're joking?"
I immediately figured he thought it was a stupid question because of how rare it was, but then he reached behind the counter and pulled out a fresh shiney copy.
He says, "I havent seen a copy for 5 years, but one walked in this morning"
I asked how much, thinking i'd get hit over the head with price or he'd tell me it wasn't for sale, but he shrugged appathetically and replied, "20 Euro"
I bought it and walked back to 6 Pack, smiling when i walked through the door, and held it up. Nail was flabergasted.
Also, on the same trip, I was in Munich with Large Professor. We had a really poorly attended show and the club owner disappeared at the end of the night with my money. I was supposed to get on a train to Berlin that night, but this dude told me he could help me find the club owner the next day and let me crash on his couch. The next day, I went to the owner's house and with a lot of struggle, got my dough. I had a bunch of bags and I was running late for my train, but i couldn't help but make a quick stop in a little record store on the way. I flipped haphazardly through the bins, finding nothing. I grabbed my bags, and headed towards the door, when a tiny little corner of a record cover behind the counter caught my eye. I asked the guy, "Is that Niagara"?
He looked down and pulled it out saying "Wow, how did you see that?"
I asked how much, and he sold it to me for 15 euro. The disasterous evening ended up being a blessing in disguise.
Comments
BeiJing might actually be an OK place to start. Lots of people hungry for cultural imports from the "outside" in the late seventies/early eighties, but I'd expect you'd have to delve deep into a LOT of junk in order to find anything. I found records there at a small shop in the GuLou district, but nothing to write home about. Also the renewal of the city is taking its toll on ANYTHING considered old, so go sooner than later.
PS: All of my talk about Chinese people ditching old stuff relates to "newer" old stuff. They are extremely proud of having a 3000+ years old continuous civilization.
So its been cold as fuck, all of february this year has been ice freezing, and def not the type of weather situation that screams for going out on a hunt.
However this lady tells me she has a soul collection, and when ever that happens (meeting people who says they have a soul collection) I immediately for some reason see syl johnsons is it because im black album floating in the air in front of me.. daamn haha, so high winds are blowing coldness in my face as I hit the bike fingers crossed.
About an hour later, frozen stiff, I arrive at the her place, she meets me in the door and asks if im afraid of birds, im like nope, thinking huge dogs are much worse ( a dog the size of a small car once bit a hole in my knee which bled for three weeks) Anyway, entering the apartment I notice the loud sounds of birds.. many birds, she says follow me, first thought that goes through my mind is, how can anyone live in this noise or sleep for that matter..whooa coming into the living room i have to duck, cause this big parrot comes flying right at me, dont mind oscar she says, turns out that the sweet lady has several bird cages in each room filled with budgies, in this other wise normal appartment, and has two large parrots flying free around the rooms, theres doodoo and feathers everywhere, and the lady tells me she hasnt been home yesterday, therefore the messy floor..
As we enter the next room i notice a small stack maybe 20 late 1980s/ 90s lps on the floor, thats the soul collection, common albums, dont even have to look at these, I do anyway, knee deep in bird shit and feathers, sneezing feeling my allergy acting up, all I can think about is getting outta this place, as I stand up, the big bird which are not quite as hospitable as the lady, launches another attack on me, and once again ducking down, I feel like being in a alfred hitchcock movie or something... I politely thank the lady, and head for the door, as I calculate that I might be able to hit a couple spots on the way back, but the lady leads me into the living room again, saying that she has spotted my interest in birds, now she wants to introduce me to them, which apparently all have names.. Theres no way out of this one, i count aprox 30 birds all in all, and it turns out that they all have a little story of their own.
To make a long story short, I was sneezing breathing pretty heavy due to the allergy, as I finally got out to my bike, actually now embracing the freezing cold winter weather!!!
Frances lived in the garage apartment of a multi-million dollar home along with her Svengali-like manager. She invited us in and immediately began telling tales of her psychic powers. She claimed to have found and rescued literally 100???s of abducted children, including 80 at one time who were kidnapped by Eskimos and held captive in an Ice Cave. I politely mentioned that I was shocked I had never read about this amazing news story. She told tales of being invited to secret psychic conventions by the Soviet government. We spent about an hour with her trying to keep a straight face. Before we left she insisted on giving us a ???psychic reading??? which of course she sung while strumming her guitar and holding a microphone in her ample cleavage.
She asked some personal questions and then sung us our future(s). She said one of my daughters would become a professional musician(She has since played drums in a band that recorded a CD) and that my other daughter would marry a doctor(She???s still single). My friends had a blast, I bought some of her records and we were on our way, but before we left she gave us this nugget of wisdom. ???I got my psychic powers when I was hit by a lumber truck, but I can???t guarantee you???ll get psychic powers if you are hit by a lumber truck, so try not to be hit by a lumber truck???.
I am telling this story today because I just heard that she passed away about a year ago???..RIP Fran, you were a trip.
That's about as sound as advice can get.
Oh, those Soviets and their psychics!
"2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A book we cannot ignore, March 7, 2009
By
Richard H. Wachsman "Book Bed Bug Victim" (Lowell, MASSACHUSETTS United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (Hardcover)
When I first read Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain in 1971, I realized that we had better not let an ESP gap become the next missle gap. At the time I was working as a systems engineer on a project that was not practical with the technology that was then available, and decided that I wanted to research the ideas in this book instead. However, when I told them this at work, I was let go the next day. If I was going to research these issues I would have to do it on my own time using my own money. While we still don't have all the answers, or even know all the questions that must be asked to unravel these mysteries, much work has been done by many different researchers both here and abroad to at least verify that these psychic phenomena are real, if not always reproducible at will. It turns out that much depends on sunspot activity and the phases of the moon insofar as it affects changes in the Earth's magnetic field. There is an updated version of this book that consists of a condensed versiou of PDBTIC plus an update on research conducted behind the Iron Curtain since the overthrow of communism in Eastern Europe. Ironically, one of the most important discussions in the original edition was omitted in the new one, indicating that even the authors failed to appreciate its significance. Unfortunately, a bedbug problem forced me to have to get rid of most of my books including this one, so I was thrilled to find a copy readily available at AMAZON.COM I plan to purchase the new edition too. For anyone interested in psychic phenomena, this is probably the best first book to read. "
http://www.amazon.com/Psychic-Discoveries-Behind-Iron-Curtain/dp/0137320817
Yeah.....crazy.....I can't even comprehend what it must be like to dig in a place like that.
I hope some other folks come here and keep this thread alive.
i was at a flea market outside of atlanta which was a long indoor hallway, where each stall had a garage door for an outside wall. i found a little record cubicle and found some nice things and i dug leisurely in the near empty market. there was a copy of the coffy soundtrack hung on the wall, so i hesitated to ask for it, but it was a dollar too, so i was pretty happy to put that alongside a copy of Jimmy Briscoe and someother funk things. it started pouring outside and so i stood around with a couple pld ladies and the guy who sold the records and we joked around about the weather. now, i was travelling and living out my van and when they started joking that one could take a shower for free, i started joking that maybe i should. they totally egged me on and finally, a little bit on a dare a little bit cause i needed a shower i went to my van, got in my swim trunks and lathered up in the parking lot. the old folks got a good laugh out of it, especially when the rain stopped right about when i was done with the soap. shit was corny, but at least they had a good time
It was this joint
for 10 cents
word.
You know, that might actually be true. The USSR dropped a surprising amount of money & time on that kind of bizness.
I think Denton has more cat lady ??? possible sex criminal ??? obscure legend ??? fried-out shut-in collector types than anywhere else I've ever been, ever.
That and you should never stop diggin,lol, even when times are bad
I'd like to talk about one of the most special days I've had in a lonng time (besides the birth of my two children and the day I got married).
It was September 27, 2008.
I used to run ads in the Philly and Allentown areas saying that I bought records... Towards the end of my hardcore digging days, I got burnt out driving down to Philly for house calls so I stuck to Allentown / Lehigh Valley which is a much closer drive.
I decided to take the day off from life and go hiking near where I went to school for two years (Penn State Mont Alto Campus near Gettysburg). It's a 2 hour drive but it's a place where I can find myself.
Unfortunately, it was a rainy miserable day but I decided to go anyway. As luck would have it, the rain stopped and the sun burned through the clouds just as I arrived. The hike was magnificent and it was just the escape I needed from my daily life.
After I completed the hike, I got a call on my cel from a gentleman who had "thousands of records from the 60s and all kinds of jazz." He was located conveniently on my way home just 10 minutes from my house in a major commercial area of Route 309.
It was a Lawn Mower Repair place that had been there for years and the owner was retiring.
It turned out to have 4,000+ jazz records, psych records, and northern soul promo 45s. Dude wanted $300 to take them away.
Best find that came to mind was a Promo of Vicky Baines - Country Girl which I ended up eBaying for like $1200
The place where I scored these records is now a diner / ice cream shop called The Inside Scoop in Coopersburg, PA....
Mega raer score.
Last weekend, a friend and I drove up to Woodstock, NY to see one of Levon Helm's Midnight Rambles. For those unfamiliar, check http://www.levonhelm.com/about_ramble.htm. On the day of the show, just by chance, we stumble upon a record tent sale and obviously go in to check it out. The guy running it was very friendly, wouldn't be surprised if he posted here, or at least knows people who do. After picking up a copy of The Band's self titled album (which had been missing from my collection for way too long for no good reason), the guy running the sale was nice enough to draw us out a map to Big Pink, which for those who don't know was a house rented by Bob Dylan and The Band in the 1960s where a lot of their best material was written. Got to take my picture in front of it, which is something I had wanted to do for awhile. Amazing that it still almost looks exactly the same as it does on the record sleeve of Music From Big Pink. Not really a record story, but just one of those cool things that all starts with digging.
The Midnight Ramble was amazing, by the way. Highly recommended to anyone who has the means of going.
the guy with the tents? was it on a dead end street? did he have an Aussie accent or something? named Zip? i went to his house once. looked through a lot of stuff. didn't leave with much of anything. he sells at FMU. always sets up like 100 tables...
Yeah that's the guy. Only other thing I came away with was a copy of The Pursuaders - Thin Line Between Love and Hate. Still, a pleasant surprise, as I wasn't really expecting to do any shopping for records on my trip.
Not trying to hate on Zip. To be honest, I was under time constraints and wasn't able to go thru his stash as thoroughly as I would have liked. I've discovered, in my email correspondence with him, that I looked over some Boosey & Hawkes library joints. My bad. But yeah, he's good people.
Some of you may know me as the guy who posted Owen Marshall mp3s some years back. Here's my story about finding Captain Puff.
I wasn't out digging that day. In fact, I was probably driving home from my local walmart (there's about 5 on Oahu). On my way home I decided to swing by a random garage sale and see if they had any records. This was when I first started out digging, and i had few clues on what to look for since I didn't have al lot of experience. I knew I wanted jazz or soulful music at the least.
So I pull up to a typical suburban home in the middle of Oahu, and there sits a lady and her teenage daughter in the garage, waiting for another bargain hunter to stop by.
"You got any records?"
"Yeah", the girl says and points to a single crate. The records belong to her father who isn't around at the moment.
Remember, I came to the sale unplanned, so I didn't exactly have any cash on me, just a debit card.
So I flip through the crate not knowing what I'm looking for, and in retrospect I wish i did, because there were probably a few more cool jazz funk fusion LPs in there. I was getting to the end of the crate and hadn't pulled anything yet. Thats when Owen Marshall caught my eye. Cool hand sketched cover art. Skimming the liner notes, turns out he worked for Blue Note and invented his own musical instruments! Plus it was signed. And yes, the photos of him jamming naked in his studio were raer-worthy.
But wait, I don't have any cash on me! So I turn to the mom and daughter and ask the price.
"One dollar each. "
"Ok, let me run to my car and see what I can find. "
Rummaged through every compartment and, sh*t, only three quarters! No matter how hard I looked, I couldn't find an extra 25 cents. What the hell, I'll try anyway. I walk back up, holding up three silvery coins and apologetically say,
"Um, I could only find 75 cents..."
The mom didn't know what to say, probably dumbfounded that I'd even try to lower the price below a dollar? But the daughter turns to her mom and says.
"Oh c'mon mom, just give it to him!"
And that's how I got 25% off the selling price of an LP now worth 2000x those three coins. Oh, the mystical powers of the Naked Truth.
There was a mail order dude, Golden Memories in Mooresville, about 20 miles south of Indy, who had around 1 million records in a warehouse. Apparently he bought up every label and distributor's overstock that he could find. Dude reportedly defaulted on a bank loan and skipped town, so the bank was stuck with the warehouse. Story is that they initially sold it to a buyer that i've never been able to identify for something like $25k, but then his financing fell through. So then they approached a local record show promoter, and as the story goes, asked him if there were any books that could help them figure out record values, and if so they were going to turn to him to get help liquidating it. Supposedly, said promoter said, no, there were not. They checked, and found that there were indeed such books, so said promoter's cred was shot and they moved on.
At that point, someone (don't know who) helped them connect with big collector-dealer dudes around the midwest and invited them to come buy records at a low fixed price per record. After the initial pillage--which supposedly netted major raers of all types for the big dudes--they opened the doors to the public and let people buy records at, I think, 50 cents each. The place was open all summer, I'm thinking summer of 92 it was. The building itself was ramshackle and filthy, some parts didn't have lighting so you had to have a flashlight. Some areas had water leaks and water on the floor.
i had an intense day job so i only made it there a few times, and probably bought all the wrong stuff as I was pretty clueless back then. I can't even remember what I found now. Stan Denksi, on the other hand, had the summer off and more or less made his record bones there, he found box lots of stuff like Grodeck Whipperjenny and other obscure psych, trading like a banshee afterwards. At the end, they sold off all the remainder to one dude who messed with it for years, hosting out of town dealers, etc. Even then, there were still lots of Lamp label and other local/regional raers being pulled.
A couple of years ago a local digger that I knew told me he'd bought out a little warehouse in eastern Indiana, and I ended up buying part of it from him. Turns out that many of those records came from Mooresville, identifiable by the Golden Memories boxes. Not many great titles in there, but lots of $10-$20 private label funk and soul.
Anyone who knows this story is welcome to correct/update the info. Some of the above is fourth hand rumor quality info.
mines? long story short, the first year i started digging i overlooked this record and left it in the bin and I will never forget that moment, it haunts me still.
Price? $1.99
Condition? NM (would have been sealed had it not been for the record store's preference)
Location: Reckless Records in Chicago.
I did happen to pick up some decent latin records but truth hurts.
Nice, just looking at the picture I want to flip the bananas out of his collection just to take a peek.
The trip had a curve ball thrown at it at our end so I tried to reschedule.....dude tells me he was really hoping I'd come because he had moved all the records from a storage building into his house....I decided the right thing to do was to go and my wife and I made the 5 hour drive stopping at Antique Malls and hitting restaurants from Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives along the way.
I schedule to meet them early Saturday morning and I go by myself, letting the better half sleep late. I follow my map and get to a dirt road and call the dude to see where to go...he tells me to take the dirt road about 1/4 mile......8 dogs chase my car down the road. I'm greeted on the end of the road by a woman and her two brothers who very much resemble the two brothers from the show Swamp People....they bring me in the house and the Dining room table is covered with 8 three foot piles of LP's.....there were literally 100's of Sweet 'N Low packets strewn around the Dining & Living room floors.....some empty....some filled.
They explained that their father, who had passed away in 2010, was a pack rat. The LP's were the worst of the worst....VG- Charley Pride LP's.....the entire split seam Design label catalog.....when I was done looking at them they suggested we go out to the "buildings"....on about 2 acres of land were 3 buildings and junk covering the property. ....the building with the records was an old barn.....there was piles of junk and about 10 x 100 count boxes of LP's....it became apparent that 1) Their records sucked....and....2) They thought their records were worth thousands of dollars.
I felt bad and paid them $20 for a Tony Valor LP on Brunswick and a Sam Lay LP on Blue Thumb.
rockadelic i need to meet you someday.
I was staying in a flat down the road from a record store called '6 pack' that was owned by a guy named DJ Nail. He was super friendly and I ended up hanging out at his shop a lot since I had long days with nothing to do. Every day he would bring in a stack of records to show me, and i realized quick that this dude had a serious collection. One day he played me this Swiss banger:
He told me it was really rare and I would have a really hard time finding one. I rolled a joint and left the shop, smoking it down a side street. I got a few blocks away and found a another little record shop. I walked in, eyes glazed over, and looked through the bins. Pretty standard stuff. Just as a long shot, I asked the owner, "You don't, by chance, have a copy of a swiss record called 'Proud Mary, do you?"
He replied, "You're joking?"
I immediately figured he thought it was a stupid question because of how rare it was, but then he reached behind the counter and pulled out a fresh shiney copy.
He says, "I havent seen a copy for 5 years, but one walked in this morning"
I asked how much, thinking i'd get hit over the head with price or he'd tell me it wasn't for sale, but he shrugged appathetically and replied, "20 Euro"
I bought it and walked back to 6 Pack, smiling when i walked through the door, and held it up. Nail was flabergasted.
Also, on the same trip, I was in Munich with Large Professor. We had a really poorly attended show and the club owner disappeared at the end of the night with my money. I was supposed to get on a train to Berlin that night, but this dude told me he could help me find the club owner the next day and let me crash on his couch. The next day, I went to the owner's house and with a lot of struggle, got my dough. I had a bunch of bags and I was running late for my train, but i couldn't help but make a quick stop in a little record store on the way. I flipped haphazardly through the bins, finding nothing. I grabbed my bags, and headed towards the door, when a tiny little corner of a record cover behind the counter caught my eye. I asked the guy, "Is that Niagara"?
He looked down and pulled it out saying "Wow, how did you see that?"
I asked how much, and he sold it to me for 15 euro. The disasterous evening ended up being a blessing in disguise.