Lately the thrift stores around here have been dry, not the kind of albums I’m looking for and/or want to listen to. However, a look at the local Craigslist showed that there was going to be a garage sale with boxes and boxes of records, 800+. The sale was going to be in the Queensgate area, a section of Richland, Washington that is relatively new but is very nice. I myself have never been to Queensgate so as I drove through looking for the house, I said to myself “damn, these are some nice homes.” That was a good sign, because generally if someone lives in a nice home, it will sometimes mean they’re tossing out their records because:
1) wife said so
2) he needs money
3) a combination of 1 and 2, which becomes “they need the money”
Again, like thrift stores it was a crap shoot. But I found the home, waited until it opened at 8am (no early birds) and at 7:59, as if by magic, all of the record collectors make themselves known. The door opens and it’s not like people at Wal-Mart the day after Thanksgiving jumping for Tickle Me Elmo, but it had that feel. Except record collectors are a slow bunch UNLESS there are good records.
I will say this, there was a lot of records, but I told you that, 800+ pieces. Lots and lots of common stuff, but I did see a good share of records I wanted to get. I didn’t want to go overboard, but I made it out with these:
The James Brown album, Sho Is Funky Down Here (Starday/King KS 1110) gave me hope to look for more after going through a few boxes and seeing nothing. I started on the third or fourth box because people were at the first two, and had I gone to the first one, I would have spotted some jazz albums. Not sure if anything else was taken, but Blowfly is someone whose records normally don’t pop up around here.
I didn’t get to talk to the guy selling the records, but each record was a dollar (which is why I went), and he has been collecting for awhile. He is selling all of these records so that he can, no surprise, buy more. A lot of people were talking about his Cadillac but I didn’t bother to look at it. As I was browsing, a few people were saying “wow, what are these?” The seller said “these are records”, leading to the inevitable “wow, people still buy these?” and the man replies “all of these gentleman are”. Another man was sharing his story on how he’s “new to records” and that he wants to get familiar with them. I thought it was cool, but it would be different to become familiar with records in 2009 than it was 10, 20, or 30 years ago when I started taking records more seriously.
I found myself wanting to be more choosy, because I know I have bought my share of crap. Fortunately if I need some vinyl crap, I can do a blog search. A few of these, like the Boz Scaggs album on Atlantic, I’ve always wanted to have on vinyl but never did. I know there’s a recent audiophile pressing of it but for the cost of that audiophile pressing, I was able to buy 20 records and head to McDonald’s for breakfast and still have change.
This Is Book's Music 