Digging Through Scraps

All this talk about Real Groovy 'Soul/Funk' bins and record fairs is making me feel a bit despondent about living in this little town.

When it comes to record shopping it's all about opp shops and that requires a lot of holes in the Swiss cheese to line up. Someone with great taste has to a) die or b) get rid of their collection and for some reason not put it on Trade Me, the opp shop has to be reasonable with their prices and they have to have their records displayed in the way that makes it easy to dig through. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind working to find records; going through boxes trying to match up the loose records with their respective covers which are probably in another box on the other side of the shop. But sometimes you don't want to muck around.

This week I've had two opportunities to buy records which will hopefully culminate in a record-filled weekend. I'm imagining myself spending Sunday night watching The Wire re-runs while sorting out the amazing scores I managed to get. Fingers crossed!

Yesterday while listening to the radio I happened to hear the Buy, Sell, Swap segment and a lady said "Yeah hi. I have a banana box full of.... single sheets". I was so convinced she was going to say the box was full of records. Then she continued "I also have a set of metal bunks and a box full of records, probably 100?". I immediately wrote down her phone number and waited until after work to ring her.

From talking to her I know that there are 92 LP's and 20 45's. All she could tell me that is that they were "Old music". I can't tell if she means Classical or if she thinks I'm young and won't know who some of the old artists are. She doesn't want to sell them individually, has no idea how much to charge for them and someone from the next town over is coming to look next week. So, naturally, I set up a time to go check them out after work. My thinking is I'll see if there is anything in there worth buying the whole lot. If there is, I'll be honest with her and tell her that I'll probably keep the ones I like and give the rest to the opp shop - so that'll be the reasoning for not paying a lot for them. I gotta get in before this other person. For some reason, this faceless person has become my sworn enemy. Ahhh records, the things you make me do.

The other potential opportunity is the annual Salvation Army Book Fair. Those familiar with the fair will know that it hasn't featured records for a good three or four years. The last time it did I was walking out with armfuls of records and some amazing scores. The other week I woke up nice and early, fed the kids, put them in front of a DVD and drove down to the Sallies to look through their records. As I work during the week, Saturday mornings are my own chance to take a look at the scraps that are left behind. Without the kids I can spend as long as I liked checking out the years, sessions musicians, songwriters - instead of the usualy flick-flick-flick. When I got there all of the records were gone. I was crushed. Someone had obviously bought all of them and I'd probably missed out on the most amazing records my internal Rolodex could rattle off.

I asked the lady if they had anymore out the back (she regularly lets me go out the back and look through the unsorted LP's, thanks to my wife being a daily regular) and she said "Oh no, they've all been taken across the road for the Book Fair next week". My eyes lit up. All week this week I've been dreaming of what I might find. Some old lady wanted to get rid of her husbands records and give them to a good cause so she put them in her boot and took them to the fair. She didn't have a record player and besides, who is Bob James anyway? And them WHAMMO! I'm flicking through the records and happen to see the CTI logo on a sleeve facing the wrong way.


Will my day dreams become a reality? Will all my holy grails be in that lot of 92 LP's? Will the Book Fair be a bunch of Kahmal for $5 each? Find out next time.