That’s amazing.
Dream find. Always hoping to find some old geezer’s northern soul set but it hasn’t happened yet
I think that ship might have sailed. When even the people who work in charity shops - and not just the grieving widows / family members - know about eBay and Discogs, I reckon we should be glad of what we scooped at the time.
Last time I looked chazza records seemed to be way more expensive than what they should be. Dark Side of the Moon should cost about 50p, but stick it on the wall in a frame and some budding Instagramming ‘vintage’ enthusiast will probably pay £50 for it.
Did a bit of work with Keb Darge in my old job. He was talking about some southern-state radio DJ who had what was basically understood to be the greatest selection of Northern, and he had cancer. So every few weeks his wife would answer the door to somebody from somewhere in the world with a wad of cash asking - in Keb’s words - “Is the cnut deed yet?”
I think somebody a bit more helpful got involved and it ended up being split and sold across various auctions for charity, but that really seemed (to me) like the moment secondhand record shopping finished. Unless it’s regional stuff from overseas that didn’t have wide distro obviously.
I’m going to put it in my will to put all mine in various obscure charity shops. Found one of those Kent compilations recently so there’s a bit still out there. But yeah some are trying to sell junk for discogs prices.
I always thought the charity went both ways too, helping people who are skint basically
One time on a regional nightclub’s messageboard somebody posted that they’d dropped loads of records into a few (undisclosed) charity shops around here. Went down to my local on the extremely slim off chance that there would be any there, and came home with all the Cramps LPs I needed, loads of Crass records and some (mostly-shit) Factory Benelux and Crammed stuff. Lots of later Fad Gadget and Gang of Four I didn’t have too.
Fully appreciate that that was my one bit of charity shop luck for a lifetime.
People need food, clothing and shelter, not La Dusseldorf compilations.
Damn that’s sick
Yeah. I guess more like the clothes
Digging can obviously get a bit creepy, but I respect anyone who really puts work in. Mate of mine is a northern soul dealer and regularly goes out to the states and spends a lot of time in the arse end of nowhere, making contacts and flyering areas where grandad may be sitting on a stack of choice 7s.
Thing is my local record shop rat records is amazingly cheap a lot of the time and they don’t put out crap, so I really don’t know why I bother with the charity shop stuff. But you never know
A while back I was on a train and overheard the conversation the group of guys sat in front of me were having. One of them was saying how he’d recently been to visit John Peel’s record archive which is at his family home.
The archive is basically shelves and shelves of unorganised boxes of original Beatles, original first wave punk pressings, archive jazz 7 inches etc. An actual unseen treasure trove and it’s all just going mouldy in his basement.
Sidenote, it was bugging me at the time as I sort of recognised the guy talking. Anyway I picked up on something he said and realised it was Four Tet.
A couple of mates in a band called Urusei Yatsura had Christmas Dinner at Peel’s place once (although not actually on Christmas Day) and supposedly he farted throughout, and his wife and kids just seemed used to it.
Photos below from a dig / paddle around what was left of Pandemonium Records in Manchester a few years ago - not sure how many records were there but tens of thousands at least. The owner George was well known for refusing to sell any stock, instead offering to tape albums for people so the business didn’t last so everything got dumped in a basement in Newton Heath - all skipped in the end, sadly.
Remember Record Fairs? Expensive but sometimes quite good. Although most of the people at them were wankers.
Went to a slightly wanky boot fair last week, lots of overpriced stuff and mods standing around scooters. Only thing I bought was a chicken wrap. For 8 quid.
Good bit of advice I heard is leave the bottom bin empty if it’s in a basement
Yeah I’m sure boot fairs are called ‘Vintage Street Food Festivals’ now.
