Record Digging Stories (Please Add On)

[Rockadelic]

Here's a quick one.....





My brother was about 12 years old and he came down from NY to spend some time with me in Texas.





I was hitting some Thrift Stores and Pawn Shops one Saturday and he tagged along.





We go into this Pawn Shop that I had been to about 2 weeks earlier. It appeared that they had gotten in a new pile of records so I sent my brother to go look through a stack that I was pretty certain I had looked at on my last visit and I hit the new stuff.





I was less than a minute in and little bro calls over and asks "Is this one any good?" while holding up a Mint copy of "Mojo Hand" by Lightnin' Hopkins on the Fire label.





http://www.popsike.com/Lightnin-Hopkins-Mojo-Hand-Fire-LP-Original-Press-NM/260148017461.html

 

[The_Hook_Up]

Rockadelic said:Hell yes DC....tell us more......








We hit the road and went to eat at this amazing BYOB joint called ???Bullfrog Corners???.




went there when I was a kid...famous for their steak and froglegs if I remember correctly...my dad loved that place

 

[DCarfagna]

More WTF moments:





Finding the Astral Navigations LP on Holyground, totally unplayed, in the garage of an African-American woman in Cleveland, Ohio. Now I've found weird shit in weird places before, but this was a new benchmark. This woman and her husband ran a label throughout the 70s and 80s, and the only things in the garage were records they were somehow involved in. No token Michael Jackson records, no other gospel records from the era, just basically their stuff. How a seriously rare, extremely limited UK psych record from 1970 (with a very delicate cover) wound up sandwiched between a brick of tepid local gospel LPs is beyond me. How a copy even made it to the US outside of after-the-fact collector circles is even more baffling. I likened it to opening King Tut's tomb for the first time and finding a VCR in there.

 

[Rockadelic]

DCarfagna said:More WTF moments:





.




My brother and I are in Chatanooga with the intentions of hitting a couple of Antique Malls and Chad's, a really top notch store..





We're driving down the main drag on the southeast side of town and we see a big sign in a storefront window "Records", written in Little Rascal style. We stop and can see an entire vacant storefront filled with 1,000's of records. As we're walking in the front door we look down at the stack of 20+ LP's that are being used as a doorstop and right on top is a Mint copy of the prog/psych monster Nosferatu....


http://www.popsike.com/NOSFERATU-orig-Vogue-LDVS-17178-Promotion-Card/280452405699.html





The two dudes that were in charge were on some inbred hillbilly Jerry Springer tip.





We dug through at least 10,000 LP's and found NOTHING else even close to the door-stop raer.

 

[minneap]

Top notch thread Rock. As a self-aware little dude, these stories are awesome. Keep it going!

 

[holmes]

holmes said: massive warehouse shipment from Wisconsin

Rockadelic said: Milwaukee dude




Incredibly, after confirming with Rich by PM from half a world away, these two aspects from our stories involve the same dude maybe 20+ years apart!!

 

[Jonny_Paycheck]

This morning....





I had an appointment to see a few boxes of records at a storage in the Bronx. I went to my car, and couldn't get it out of the space because of the ice underneath it... after damn near breaking my back working with a small garden shovel to break up the ice, one of the neighborhood elders (word to HarveyCanal) stepped up with some bigger tools and salt. After another 20 minutes of busting our asses we were able to break down the ice and with another passerby helping us push, we got the car out into the road. I jumped out of the car and damn near bear-hugged the dudes. But I was like an hour late at this point.





So I get up to the storage unit and it's a young guy my age, which I kind of guessed by his email address which was hip-hop influenced. The records were a lot of post-'00 club rap but the rest was rare soul, disco, jazz and reggae that he had inherited from his folks. I bought like three crates and I gave the guy some money. The end








BEST STORY EVAR

 

[behemoth]

Titles or it didn't happen. We all know you scared of the Bronx

 

[Jonny_Paycheck]

behemoth said:Titles or it didn't happen. We all know you scared of the Bronx




You want the real scoop?





I got carne guisado and a presidente.

 

[Burns]

Jonny_Paycheck said:behemoth said:Titles or it didn't happen. We all know you scared of the Bronx




You want the real scoop?





presidente.




better

 

[ddown]

May this thread never end.





I love a good digging story.

 

[tokyobeats]

F it.


I'll contribute one more story, tokyobeats you choose:





3) Sacrifice Your Manhood








i'm willing to do as asked here to keep this thread alive......

 

[pointman]

The Tracheotomy and the Sword





One weekday afternoon here in Houston, I drove over to Fifth Ward to see these junker twins I visit with on occasion. The guys just have your random assortment of junkman-type accoutrements. Old beer signs, some records and apparently, on this day, two photo albums of homemade porn that a local had allegedly made and sold. Said the guy once played for the Kansas City Chiefs and the only thing he loved more than football was the ladies.





The building is situated at the corner of an intersection with a residential street. Remember, Houston doesn???t have any zoning laws and it???s not like the Fifth Ward would care anyways. I had struck out, the twins didn???t have any records for me that day and we were standing outside, shooting the shit and I posed my general inquiry whilst out digging in unfamiliar locales. ???Do y???all know anyone else around here that might have some records they would like to sell????





Without missing a beat, one of the twins turns and points down the residential street and tells me to go speak to Arthur at the fifth house on the left. As dumb luck would have it, as he???s telling me this, Arthur actually walks out onto his porch. One the twins screams out his name and points at me. I thank the twins and start my way down the block.





Upon reaching his gated yard, I immediately noticed the size of this man. He???s an easy 6???5 and 300lbs, not to mention he???s had a tracheotomy and was smoking Kool Filter Kings through the nicotine-stained hole in his neck. He wore a 1990-era Chicago Bulls bucket hat and fingerless gloves and when I went to shake his hand, I realized he was missing his right pinky.





Arthur didn???t have one of those electronic vibrato robot-voice amplifiers that you see people in similar circumstances tend to have. In order for him to speak, he had to press down on the valve in his neck and could only muster slightly more than a whisper. He told me he had tons of records in his garage, so like a moth to a flame, I followed him down the driveway.





At some point, part of the garage was converted into a tiny social room, completely separate from the rest of the structure. Arthur unlocked the door and let me into a little room that a Chihuahua lived in and apparently peed in, next to a few nice-sized piles of records. Arthur walked in behind me and shut the door.





I started going through all the vinyl and occasionally Arthur would make a random question from behind me like ???Do you like to play Pacman????





I started digging faster.





Rare local Houston disco twelves, local jazz titles like Bubbha Thomas and the Lightmen were appearing and at the same time, I came to the realization I may not be in the safest of situations. He???d randomly start belly laughing through his tracheotomy. I dug faster.





Then, I hear ???Hey man??? and I turn around to face Arthur and notice he???s pulled out a fucking ninja sword. A big, sharp fucking sword and he???s pointing it towards me from two yards away. I freeze. I don???t say a word. I???m cornered. My stomach sank; I figured I???d finally done it this time. I was going to die looking for records. How depressing! Killed by my hobby, I always imagined I???d die when my record shelves collapsed and crushed me. Nope, I???m going to be killed by a nine-fingered man with a tracheotomy and a ninja sword, wearing a hat straight out of Do the Right Thing.





He took a couple steps towards me, lifted the sword up to my neck and held it there for what felt like an eternity. I didn???t move, I didn???t speak, and I don???t think I so much as took a breath. Arthur just looked at me for a moment, started laughing, lowered the sword and asked me I found anything I wanted to buy.





I made sure to pay him VERY WELL that day.





Oddly enough, Arthur and I ended up becoming friends and he takes me over to his friend???s homes on occasion to buy records as long as I stop by the store first so he can buy a pack of smokes.





Sometimes life is stranger than fiction.

 

[Rockadelic]

pointman said:The Tracheotomy and the Sword










6 Stars

 

[The_Non]

Rockadelic saidointman said:The Tracheotomy and the Sword










6 Stars and 2 snaps in around the world formation!

 

[tuneup]

The only story that is coming to mind is my very first trip.





I was 10, and in Toledo Ohio with my Dad, who was then and still is a record man. I had been on trips with him before, but this was the first time I was an active member of the dig. He was buying 78 stock at Seligman Brothers, a shop that had been around I believe since the 40s, and this was 1981. They basically served the Black community with music, and the other side of their shop was hardware I think. We were not the first to get there, but my Dad was doing pretty good with finding stuff that would be great store stock for his shop in Toronto. My job was to carefully collect all his pulled items and stack them in the crates, while counting as I went and coming up with the grand total at the end. It's basically here that it all started for me. I look back at this with great fondness, as it was me and my Dad digging through music, and years later it became my profession as well. The craziest thing is, I remember passing by the entire 1st floor which was Full of LPs. My Dad didn't want that stuff as it was all 70s Disco and R&B. Of course....if we could only go back in time.

 

[El Prez]

OK here is another story from Ohio (Akron)....so I am standing in my driveway washing my car. This lady rides by in a red Lexus she stops and rolls down her window to ask me if I had a quarter she could borrow to make phone call. I dig into my pocket, walk into the street to give the lady a quarter (thinking the whole time who the hell has to use pay phone these days....must be a damn crackhead). So I think nothing of it and go back to drying off my car. Later that day I get a call from my homie F*rrest asking me if I would like to go on a record site with him. He goes on to tell me that this lady had been calling him for like the past few weeks but the thing is he can only come by when her husband was not home (I think she was trying to sell her husbands records without him knowing). So two days later F*rrest calls me and says that we have a meeting scheduled with the lady that day. So we get to the house and low and behold it is the same lady I had given the quarter. I jokingly tell her "Hey I know you...you owe me 25 cents." She let's us in the house and stands over us with her coat on and car keys in her hand. The first box I see F*rrest pulling Syl Johnson " Is it because I am black", Sun Ra,, S.O.U.L, Albert Ayler trio etc etc so we hurry up and pay the lady so we can leave. As I am driving down the street I see a red Lexus fly by me blowing the horn...it's the lady going to buy some blow. She calls us back three days later sayin that she has more records from her mothers house in Kent. We come by dig, pay her out.....and as we are driving down the street she blows by us going to score some crack.

 

[Frank]

This was back in the fall of 2000 when I was still digging for US Funk 45s. I had just moved from NYC back to Berlin and was on my first digging trip back to the states. It was towards the end of my stay that I also had a dj gig at the good old Silk City in Philly on a Friday night before flying back Sunday morning.





A friend from NYC and his buddy, an at the time big funk & soul 45 collector from Philly, let's call him "DB" came to see me at the club. After the party we hung out at the bar when at around 3 am DB offered to take us around town and show us some legendary Philly record sites. First stop was the building that had housed the Virtue studios which was behind a construction fence and already half demolished. Next stop was a store called "Smith's Records". DB explaiend how he had tried for 8 years to get records out of the place but how the ownre flat out refused to deal with white folks... DB said he had reason to believe that there was a storage room full of heat in the building and I couldn't believe that getting to it was an impossible task. We called it a night and got a few hours of sleep. The next day I talked DB into going by Smith's Records again and to let me try and get in there. According to DB this was a really sketchy part of town. I was surprised to find the front door unlocked but when I opened it, some sort of an alarm went off and kept going until store owner Stanley appeared behind the counter and flipped a switch. The entire L shaped counter was behind glass and additional wire fencing like in some liquor store. On display were mostly religous CDs and videos. I asked the owner if he had any funk and soul 45s and he immediately said he had a room full of them but that he would charge $5 a piece. To brighten the mood, I told him that if I'd find the type of stuff I was looking for, I'd gladly pay him $10 a pop. He let me in and I walked upstairs. There were shelves full of boxes and all of them contained 45s. First one I opened contained 100 copies of the Gunga Din "snake pit" 45 which at the time was still a $200-$300 record, Smoking Shades Of Black, Bobby King & The Siver Foxx Band, Maurice McKinnies & The Champions and a lot of more obscure stuff I had never seen before. All the boxes I could see were thickly and evenly covered with dust and it was clear that nobody had touched these for many years. Since this was on my last day, I only had about $400 left on me so this translated to only 40 records. DB at this point had also entered the store and was chatting with Stanley downstairs. Stanley soon got very antsy and said he only had very limited time because he "had to be somewhere". We still got to talk a bit more after the transaction was done and I asked him why there were so many Country 45s in there as well. He said that his daddy had also been a producer and been travelling a lot up and down the East Coast, recording for all sorts of bands. We stood on the sidewalk for a bit and talked about how awesome his old store sign was. mounted above the store name light was a red elyptical thing with a record painted onto it. Stan said it used to light up and turn. We asked if it would still work and he said he hadn't used it in over 10 years but why not give it a shot. He went into the back of the store, flipped a switch and the sign lit up and the red thing with the record on it began to creak and slowly move when na electrical wiring box next to the sign suddenly exploded with a loud bang, sending thick, golden sparks raining onto the sidewalk all around us.





Later that night, DB and I went out to celebrate. We were very excited. I had only been in there for 30 minutes and without a portable so I only pulled the obvious funk stuff. No doubt I had only skimmed a bit around a small part of the surface. DB promised he would give me 50% of all the stuff he would pull out of there because I had "opened the door" for him and also because there was more in there than one person alone could even want to keep for themselves (or so I thought, I was still a bit naive back then). DB puked down his shirt in the cab on the way home. I left for the airport after giving him 20 out of my 40 records just to be fair and after all, there was no true guarantee that he'd be allowed back in at Smith's. Of course he got back in and of course he only sent me small packages of shit refcords all the while complaining I had inflated the price from $5 to $10. I called up Stanley from back home in Berlin and arranged for my friend and that time Philly resident Haim to go in there and get records for the both of us which worked just fine.





I went back for sentimental reasons when I was back in Philly some 5 years later. Stan was in much better shape than when we had met before and of course the storage room had all been turned over completely. All the 45s were removed from their boxes and they were stacked with only piles of turds remaining. One of the big guys had been there years ago and taken care of business for good which had been obvious by the number of Gunga Din buy-it nows popping up on ebay for several years already.





Just before I was about to say good-bye, Stan told me that he still had some LPs in his office downstairs, if I'd want ot have a look. First handful I pulled out of the shelf was all weird looking, mint African LPs on a label from Nigeria called "Tabansi Records". I had no clue about African records back then but was intrigued by the amazing cover art. I bought as many as I could afford. One of them was the Pax Nicholas & The Nettey Family LP and it got in immediate constant rotation right away. I had zero results when I googled the band name. At the same time, my wife was supposed to leave the country for her first forreign assignment. I said, "why not go to Africa" maybe there's more of this type of music out there..."





This was less than 6 years ago but it feels like it had been another life time. Amazing how a casual visit to a dug over old record store can completely change everything.

 

Hi y'all,





I'm sure there are some fabulous stories on this thread, but i have to apologize because my eyes don't read off the screen and I am more off a listener than a reader anyway. I love your voice!!!





Every great diggin' experience of mine has more to do with the people I dig with than the records I score...coincidently they go hand-n-hand to the beat of my recollection anyway.





Like I remember when I got my womb record at a KDVS record swap in Sacramento next to the spagetti factory restaurant. And sitting on the tailgate of the car in the sun making sure everybody had seen enough art was great. I think that was with a two radio friends D. S. & B. I., and friend.





More consistly though, I dig with the children. Some of them are boys and some are girls. Some like pokemon, some like animals, some like rap, some like friendly games and fun days. So, we talk about Charzars and charmander and pokemon stadium, or (because we are both at SPCA with are dogs) I will introduce Harley Davidson and they will introduce Squishy Elephant and we will talk about large breed and small breed and different dog blends. Today, for example, we talked independent rap, compared to major label rap. This lead to more talking about stories and intellectual property and claim jumpin'z. Cool groups of kids hang out around here, I love their voice.





I told them I'm a Dj at the local volunteer radio station, showed them the Tommy Tate on Juana, and that will be on tonight.





Lots of Love (my LOL)

 

[Rockadelic]

Frank said:.





Just before I was about to say good-bye, Stan told me that he still had some LPs in his office downstairs, if I'd want ot have a look. First handful I pulled out of the shelf was all weird looking, mint African LPs on a label from Nigeria called "Tabansi Records". I had no clue about African records back then but was intrigued by the amazing cover art. I bought as many as I could afford. One of them was the Pax Nicholas & The Nettey Family LP and it got in immediate constant rotation right away. I had zero results when I googled the band name. At the same time, my wife was supposed to leave the country for her first forreign assignment. I said, "why not go to Africa" maybe there's more of this type of music out there..."





This was less than 6 years ago but it feels like it had been another life time. Amazing how a casual visit to a dug over old record store can completely change everything.




Record karma in full effect.....great story Frank.