A Weekend of Scraps

So, it's only right I give you an update of my weekend of records. I was pretty excited to have some opportunities in front of me to grab some acquisitions.

On Friday night I biked home via the lady's house to check out her 'old records'. I held my breath and stepped into her lounge where I saw a box full of 78's and a plastic bag of 45's. I was gutted about the 78's. I don't have a gramophone anymore and don't see any real value in them. As I flipped through them I did see that they were all in their original HMV sleeves - some great titles like 'Blueberry Hill' etc. There were some big names and I'm sure I saw some Elvis in there. But still, not for me.

One thing I did notice was a few of them were on the TANZA label which, being a diligent Kiwi, I realised had NZ in the name and thus must be made in New Zealand. Later on in the weekend I read up on TANZA and realised that there are quite a few titles out on TANZA including the first wholly-produced single in New Zealand music history called 'Blue Smoke'.

Looking through the 45's there was a very strange array of titles. Sometimes you can pick a persons taste by looking at what they have in their collection. This collection seemed like they'd just bought whatever was on sale. But, the highlights for me were the Viking 45's, La Gloria 45's (one in its original paper sleeve), a New Zealand pressing of 'Love Me Do' by The Beatles, a Johnny Devlin 45 in it's original picture sleeve (been reading about him and his place in New Zealand rock history in 'Ready To Fly') and a New Zealand pressing of an Elvis Presley track.

Were they scores or epic proportions? Doesn't feel like it. But I still picked them and others up for $20. I still can't decide whether to chuck them up on Trademe and see if I can make my $20 back or just hold on to them for swaps etc. I'd appreciate any ones advice.

I gave the lady some helpful advice about the 78's. She wanted $2 each for them which I'm sure someone would pay - There's an antique dealer in Greerton, Tauranga who sells 78's for $5 each so told her she should give him a bell. But I kinda regret not looking for 'Blue Smoke' amongst the TANZA discs. I would've liked to have that in my collection. I'm thinking I'll give her a call in a couple of weeks to see if they're still there.

Have a gander at what I picked up here:











Feeling a little bummed, I woke up early and trudged to the Sallies Book Fair to peruse the records. When I got in the hall (no door charge FTW) I realised pretty quickly there were no records on the floor. I had a little poke around the CDs and Sci-Fi books and then asked the volunteers where the records were. They promptly told me that they never have records and I should go across the road to the Sallies shop. I told them that I was there last week and they told me they had all been shipped over to here for the record fair.

So, I went back to the store and went through my story. One of the ladies said "Oh, there are a few out here you can look at" and handed me a couple of LPs. Nothing of note unfortunately. She then told me that that was all they had - the rest have probably been chucked out.

I left the store and the fair feeling pretty dejected and promptly went home and sorted out my entire 45 collection and shed about 30 discs. It was all I could do to make myself feel better.


Luckily there were a lot of non-record related highlights during the weekend. But I'm getting this feeling that the record gods are telling me to focus on and organise what I already have. So that's the plan of attack for now.

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.

New to Me

Had a couple of hours to kill so popped into Real Groovy and sifted through the Soul sale bin. Getting home I realised that I was excavating a very narrow 1977-8 vein. Maybe that's my thing?

The Floaters - Floaters (1977)

The highlight is side 1 track 1 Float On clocking in at 11:49 and affords the team to introduce

themselves and let us know their star signs and their preferred type of lady. I love anything zodiac.

This track went to Number 1 on the US R&B Chart in and inspired a Sesame

Street skit titled "Gimme Five" - imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery but inspiring a a Sesame Street skit surely must provide some form of immortality.

The track also features Dennis Coffey on guitar and "sitar".

Johnnie Taylor - The Best of Johnnie Taylor (1976-1980)

I would normally avoid buying best of compilations in favour of individual albums - and there were a number of albums to choose from. But I couldn't turn down the opportunity to get Disco Lady and Disco 9000. I am a sucker for a track with disco in the title - this is my confession. Another note worthy track is (Ooh-Wee) She's Killing Me with its groovy Moroder like opening.

Johnnie Taylor is new to me, and having got the Best Of home I am tempted to go back and pick up the other albums - especially the soundtrack to the movie Disco 9000 (which has tagline "When He's In The Groove The Mob Better Move").

The Moments - Sharp (1978)

Just to prove my point that "disco" in a track name helps me hand over the shekels side 2 track 1 is Disco Man (apologies for the strange listening method for sharing). The start has a bit of a repetitive drive that puts me in mind of Steve Reich which in turn reminds me of a book I read a couple of years ago called Repeating

Ourselves:American Minimal Music as Cultural Practice. As the Amazon product description puts it: Fink juxtaposes repetitive minimal music with 1970s disco; assesses it in relation to the selling structure of mass-media advertising campaigns; traces it back to the innovations in hi-fi technology that turned baroque concertos into ambient "easy listening"; and

appraises its meditative kinship to the spiritual path of musical mastery offered by Japan's Suzuki Method of Talent Education. It is a really good read (honestly).

Eddie Floyd - Experience (1977)

Eddie is a man in conflict. Side 1 track 1 is Feel My Body - almost too sexy to put

on. Certainly not when your mum is visiting. But side 2 track 1 is Don't Expose Your Thing.

What is wrong is that my main reason for buying this album was the cover - a very satisfying yellow/orange, a very solid afro, and sparkly letters. I am just lucky that the music is also groovy, if a little too hot for your mother.

Joe Sample - Rainbow Seeker (1978)

I picked this up because of the date and the instrumentation and vague feeling that Joe Sample might make the kind of music that I like. Imagine my surprise when I listened to In All My Wildest Dreams. Classic. A classic that I should possibly already known about but at least now I am caught up.

Nothing ventured nothing gained

Another record fair, another Lakeside album.

I had a funny feeling about selling at this record fair, the cost to sell there was high, they were charging entry for people to come in and look, and the poster was pretty terrible. Yet I didn’t act on that funny feeling. Funny that.

Those that did attend were clearly from the record collecting community, as with those who were selling. So, the sellers had little of value for the collectors, and the collectors would only pay for things priced at little value. I sold one two dollar record.

The overheard conversations were amusing, talking about who sold what for how much on trademe recently. And how so and so was a vulture that day when mr john john sold off his Columbia catalogue or some shit. I piped in at one stage of a conversation about unsuccessful sales on trademe and said “yeahhh.. but it’s only worth that much if someone is willing to pay for it” to which one response was, “never a truer word spoken” haha. Some of the pricing was pretty outrages. Being vinyl does not instantly make something worth $10.

I did get complements on my taste of music, though it was the stuff I was selling. I would’ve left the show minus forty something if it wasn’t for Oliver and Lee. It was sad to see my stuff go for so cheap but knowing these guys, it didn’t bother me too much. Thanks fallas!

I did pick up a couple of things myself:
- 2 x Delfonics 7”
- Nina Simone – Do What You Gotta Do / Aint Got No, I Got Life 7”
- Joe Tex – Don’t Cry Over Spilled Milk 7”
- Musical Youth – Pass the Dutchie 7”
- Klymaxx – I Miss You / Video Kid 7”

Also two LPs:
Motion Picture Soundtrack for Wild In The Streets. Crispy King put me on to this. Not famously used in feature02's – Astral Weeks from the not famous EP u.fo.& me.f.o

  

And, much like the other record fair, another Lakeside album. This one pre Solaar label, named Fantastic Voyage. Get home after spending the first beautiful sunny day in aaages at a dark, cold and uneventful record fair where I probably made a $12 profit, put this on, and all my troubles disappeared.

“forget about your troubles and your 9 to 5 and just saiill along!”

Oh yeah.. and as I was packing up the car after the fair, a late comer pulled up beside me. I told him we'd packed up early, but he could look at my records if he liked. I asked him what he was after, to which he pretty much responded, “Well I don’t think many other people go for what I go for. Have you heard of Klymaxx?” After some more talking, I established he was in the market for some of that sweet sweet 80s garbage. Looks like there’s some competition now!

Four Crates: Episode Eight

Long time no see! Haven't had time to blog lately as everything seems to be hitting at once. I wonder if Mercury is in retrograde? Anyways, enough with the excuses. Let's get down to business.

Various - Lay Your Burden Down

When I first discovered what a treasure trove of samples Christian records are, I found a beat up copy of this record with no cover. The song with the best drums had a huge skip in it (possible swap for -M?) and made it unsample-able. Anyway, I found a pristine copy with the cover and the paper insert that has all the lyrics. This is was a small victory for me.

The Mighty Wind - Reach Out

This is actually one side The Mighty Wind and the other side Certain Sounds '72 but side B is pretty crap. The Mighty Wind have a clavinet player who seems to leave lots of open notes for me to sample which is helpful. The photo is taken from when TMW were in Auckland City. I'm sure some eagle-eye could tell me where exactly. In the mean time, here's a beat I made out of various songs on the record:



The Hi Lo's - Suddenly It's The Hi Lo's

I bought this a long, long time ago before I had kids and had money to spend on records. For some reason my then girlfriend told me to keep it because the cover looked awesome and some of the songs were cool. I listened to her and seven years later she's now my wife and I'm finally giving this record a chance. She was right. This is a banger. Great vocal harmonies and arrangements. Hi Lo's is a pretty good name for a group too. Listen shelf-bound.

Stelios Kazadzidis - No 4

This is a total holy grail for me; A Greek record that doesn't have 'Zorba The Greek' on it! All of the liner notes are in Greek but helpfully they list the song titles in English. I don't know what the Greek version of Chinglish is - Gringlish? Anyways, this has it in spades. Cool enough for the cover but also sample-able.

Rod McKuen - Live At The Sydney Opera House

I'm not a huge Rod McKuen fan. I'm sure there are people out there that love him to pieces and collect everything of his. I've got a few of his records and this is probably the pick of the bunch. The banter with the audience in between songs is worth keeping this. Great photography and Adidas Super Star knock-offs on the cover. This has been sampled on a real old beat of mine so I'm keeping it.

Percy Faith - Today's Themes For Young Lovers

If you're ever hoping to make an underground New Zealand hip-hop hit and call it 'Irie', you'll need two cups of this record and fourty grams of unsalted Feature02.



Noman Leyden - Music For A Back Yard Barbecue

I mean you would keep this anyway right? It's got a song called 'Hamburgers and Hot Dogs' on it. It's got a recipe for a really ripping potato salad on the back. It's got some pretty sizeable steaks on the front cover. It's called 'Music For A Back Yard Barbecue', that's enough for me!

Los Indios Tabajaras - Always In My Heart

So the story goes that some honky was exploring in the jungle and left his battered and beat up guitar behind. It had four strings and had a big hole in it, but some how these two blokes picked it up and mastered it. They became the Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen of guitar playing. They recorded an album and then years later some radio jock discovered it and used it as his talk-beds. Then people starting asking what it was and the record company discovered there was a demand for their music. So they sent some guy back into the jungle to find the blokes and this album was recorded. Or something like that. The ending of the story is that I bought it, left it unlistened to for a few years and finally heard it yesterday. It's staying.

Honeytree - Me and My Old Guitar

Honeytree proving that you can kick out the Gospel jams live but still be terrible with grammar. My Old Guitar And I has the illest cover. If I didn't know it was Honeytree and on Myrrh records I'd be expecting some sort of freak-out music. Alas, no dice. Either way, there's some great on-stage banter ("I used to do a lot of drugs, then I found Jesus!") and her band is pretty rocking. It's a keeper, if not for the music then for the gate-fold cover which would sit nicely on the wall I think.

Dave Pope - Time To Take Account

Here's the deal: Dave is on Myrrh records, home to all the best Christian Rock breakbeats and open samples. But this record here is a special one. Drum breaks, open drum hits, open guitars - basically a cavalcade of open instruments for you to sample. This is probably the pick of this bunch. Next Salvation Army Christmas party, I'm playing this.


There you go. Hope you enjoyed this exciting adventure into my record crates.

One monkey don’t stop no show.

Big fan of my hood, always new things to discover and amusing characters to meet. Today I finally went into the second hand “book exchange” book shop, which I have walked past a million times but for many reasons never stepped inside (some reasons include, the place is pretty shambolic, i got no room for books and I imagined the owner to be the weirdo second hand bookshop owner type, which he was). I had time on my hands, and walking by I noticed there was a customer in shop, which means I could enter and not have the sole attention of the owner, and walk out unapologetically if I wasn’t going to buy anything, feel me? The customer who was in the shop happened to be perusing the porno magazines and at the time I entered he was asking how the owner had categorised them i.e “are these like sorted by big boobs and stuff?” Looking around the shop it was a pretty valid question considering it was the only section that looked orderly and cared for.

I noticed a little box that had a couple of records in it and flicked through while listening to the other customer try and make a decision about which mags he wanted, discussing the merits of each. I picked out one Frankie Valli LP which had the gem Beggin’ on it expecting to pay maybe $2.00 for it and also had a few 45s including Bruce Willis’ - Under The Boardwalk ? (picked it up for the novelty factor). Also in the pile were a couple of cassette tapes. 6 items in total and he told me $15.00!! noo wayyy. I said how bout $1 p/item? He wasn’t having it. So I looked at the pile and offered him $5 for these two 45s:

He said ok, then I opened my wallet and I told him I only had $4 (which was kinda true-ish). These two recs were a bit of a gamble. Never heard of either nor the label. Chosen by the year, the cover art and the “Demo only. Not for sale” stamps, which always add a bit of intrigue (no way is it a stamped certification of goodness).

Kristal – Ete Super, was everything I hoped for! Crazy Italian 80’s funk/disco. The raps are just Super.

But this is the bit i’m curious about. Are Monkey Productions records rare and sort after?? According to this website, the 12” of Dee D Jackson - My Sweet Carillon is worth £132.76 ?? hmmm…

Oh yeah I almost forgot. Before he left, the porn connoisseur told me he had some records at his house he’d be happy to sell me, mentioned Sam Cooke which I dig. But really though? He gave me his number, he did seem a little “out there”. Do I follow this up? He’s crazy, but got recs for sale. Hmmmm…

Four Crates: Episode Seven

Been a bit unwell lately so I've fallen behind in my schedule. I'm half way through one crate and have roughly two and half left to go. My chuck out pile is looking mighty healthy at the moment. More on that at a later date.

Wild Thing - Partyin'

Some generic band does covers of the latest rock n roll hits. Every single track is a floor filler! The only problem seems to be that the band falls in and out of time constantly. The drummer shifts timing in the middle of songs, it's so weird to hear something so unpolished out of an era where recording was a huge and expensive undertaking. I'm keeping it for the novelty factor but also because every single song on here is a winner. No beats.

Jefferson Starship - Red Octopus

I had the insert from this LP on my wall when I was a teenager without knowing where it came from or what it represented. Then when I found this copy of Red Octopus it all fell into place. I also realised that this record has a sample I used on an upcoming EP and I hadn't been able to figure out what the sample was, so that's great news. Also, it has a pretty iconic break on it too.

Honeytree - Maranatha Marathon

Was having a bit of a time with the camera last night. So, sorry about the flash flares all over the covers. Deal with it. Anywho, Honeytree was one of the keystone acts signed to Myrrh records. She was pretty big on the Praise music circuit and wrote some excellent jams like "Ain't It Grand To Serve Jesus!". Excellent if you're into that sort of thing. I don't know if you've seen that one sitcom 'The Middle'? Honeytree sounds like if the daughter from The Middle was morphed with Karen Carpenters band and they sung about how she used to do drugs but then found Jesus. Sounds like this:



Encore! - Great Gospel Songs

A double LP of great gospel tunes?!?! Count me in! But seriously, I picked this one up because it's on Word records, the most hiphop of all the Gospel music labels. Also, the covert art is amazing. Great colour scheme. Disc one was full to the brim of open drums, open pianos, open basslines and everything else you need in your beatmakers toolbox. Disc two was a bit crappy. But here is a beat to give you a taste:



Doug Sahm and Band - Doug Sahm and Band

A few years ago my fellow Dollar Brand writer, -M, lived down the road from me. As you can probably imagine his record collection is absolutely nuts. -M operates on an 'all bangers, no clangers' theory and thus everything you pull from his shelves is gold. At the time -M was having a huge clean out of records and he let me pick through the left-overs to see if I was interested in anything. I picked up a dozen and subsequently forgot about them. Anyways, this is one of the records and oh my word (blukku blukku!) this is killer. Promo DJ copy on Atlantic Records. Doug plays Country twangers and blues jams with Bob Dylan adding vocals and Dr John throwing down on the piano. 100% recommended.

Barbra Streisand - Stoney End

I just happened to have this in my 'unsorted' crates and after watching the above video I chucked it on. There is only one good song and it's the one J-Rocc sampled but by jove it's a doozy! Raer azzz!

Various - Australian Folk


There are some classics on this. I'm not really into twangy folk songs with twangy accents but to be fair there are some good dittys on this. It also has 'Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport' on it - which in some versions still has the lyrics "Set me Abo's loose, Bruce". Shocking. This has it. Put that in your TradeMe auction and smoke it.

Ariel - A Strange Fantastic Dream

This is another from -M's crates and when I picked it up, I thought I was getting some sort of weird Pysch-Rock record with noodling Moogs and reverbed drums. But if you open the gatefold it has a picture of a bunch of Australian Yobbos larking about on the Cortina production line at the Australia Ford Plant in Geelong. What? But upon further listening I did find the odd moog and pysch-out moments. Nothing that really hits you in your face but some great loops here and there. I've sampled this previously so no need to justify keeping it. Also, the cover reminds me of something that would be held up by this woman.

Andrei Gavrilov - Rachmaninov

I can't imagine I picked this up myself. I usually avoid classical if I can. The only possibility was that I thought I was buying some obscure Russian record after reading one too many Soul-Strut posts back in the day. Either way, I was pretty surprised to put the needle on and find out there was songs that be turned into this:



and this:




Right. Hopefully I can get this project back on track and give you another post soon. Enjoy the rest of your week.

Automatic kettle with hot new features!

On a whirlwind trip back to the home towny I did not expect to encounter any records. With limited time, I knew I wouldn't be able to visit any of my favourite spots in the district. But what-a-ya-know! As I was in the process of fixing my prized radiola in its new home, my mum brought out a wee box of 45s that she had recently received from… ummm… she can’t remember?!?

I start looking through the box at records I hadn’t really seen before. A few Ray Columbus 7s, which, showing my ignorance, I discorverd are really bad ass and rockin’. I think I had it made up in my head what his music sounded like, and I was taking a back at how up there he is. There were also some Buddy Holly EPs with slick covers, I’m not a Buddy Holly ‘fan’ like some folk, but I can dig, and they will go great with the other EPs of his contemporaries I have.

The “? (Question Mark) & The Mysrerians” was rippin. There was also an Australian soul number, what the? Aside from discovering all the great 7s in box, it was another discovery that made these records all the more interesting. My dad’s initials were written on most of them. I thought I’d seen all his records, I’d been through boxes of 45s that were his, but never had I seen these records. So where did they come from?? Where had they been for the last 13 years? And were all these records his, or have they been mixed up with someone else’s? like Nirvana, he probably could have purchased that, he was a disc jock on a student radio station during that era. Hmmm… a mystery. I‘m looking forward to getting a phone call from mum being like “I remember who gave them to me!”

In other news, being home alone at the moment, the lounge is slowly filling up with records. Spending every hour every night listening through the many boxes. Working on three sets, a rock’n’soul one, sexy 80s one, and a 70s ‘break-rock’ ( 70s rock that has the hip-hop factor for me - head noddin’) set.

Busted out the 80s set on Fleet Truck the other weekend. Didn’t have time to prepare anything or clean the recs, DJ’d in the dark, but had a whole lotta fun. You can listen here to the bones of what will eventually be the sexiest set in town.

Also constructing a rock’n’soul set for this weekend…