For a long time it was the initial pressing of "Runt," Todd Rundgren's debut which inadvertently left the pressing plant in small numbers with 3 additional tracks. There was only one way to know if you had stumbled across this vinyl gem, and it wasn't by just looking at the cover or the label. You needed to remove the LP from its sleeve and count the bands on each side to notice that it didn't match the amount of songs listed. I found one in 1979 at my long lamented home away from home, Zig Zag Records on Avenue U and East 23rd Street in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. $18, I believe, which was a good deal of money to spend on a record back then.
Then it was a mono copy of Pink Floyd's "Piper At The Gates Of Dawn." After that, it was a mono copy of Simon & Garfunkel's "Bookends," which has a story attached to it that is so unbelievable and disheartening, it'd be worth sharing if the acquisition of said record hadn't put those ill feelings to bed...for the time being. (Maybe I can be coerced for a future post.) Most recently, it was the elusive and super rare U.K. mono pressing of the Stones' "Let It Bleed" and the mono U.K. pressing of "The Who Sell Out." Both originally came with posters. These days, I could only afford one poster. So if you see the one pictured, give me a shout.
As an obsessive/lunatic/collector, there will always be something. This week, it's the mono pressing of The Zombies' "Odessey & Oracle." This one won't be easy, but it's worth the hunt. The catch is a different animal altogether.
All these years of buying and selling and listening and I have never owned a Beatles' Butcher Cover, probably the most famous collectible of all. I can't even recall holding someone else's copy. Someday, maybe.
Is there one thing...an LP...a 45...a recording...that you obsess over?
What's the story?
Is it finallly in your possession? Was it worth it? Are you still on the hunt?
I'd love to hear these stories and see if any are as bizarre and unpleasant as some of the craziness I've experienced, simply for that jewel. (In mono, of course.)
Back in the day when I was a wee lad...
ReplyDeleteI had no idea there were Monkees albums after "Head" (which I knew existed because I saw the movie on TV one late night, but could never find a copy of -- anywhere...)
I stumbled into a local used record store once and they had a copy of "Monkees Present" up on the wall. I thought it had to be a weird compilation or something because I'd never heard of it -- and there was no picture of Peter Tork on it anywhere.
But it was $45 (and this had to be around 1978-79 -- so that was a *lot* of money.) I remember staring at that album every week and never pulling the trigger to buy it. $45 was just *way too much* to spend on any single record.
The used record store eventually went out of business (gasp!) and it was gone. Never to be seen again...
Eventually, Rhino did their vinyl reissue series and I picked it up (along with "Instant Replay".) It's not a great album, by any means (apart from "Listen To The Band"). The Head soundtrack (which I eventually found in a Japanese Vinyl version before the Rhino rerelease) was much, much better...
But "Monkees Present" was one of those records I *to this day* still have a weird dream about every so often for some unknown reason. "The one that got away..." or something like that.
My 'holy grail' would be the JazzFest poster with Pete Fountain & Blue Dog on it. The thing is, I was at that JazzFest with a bunch of friends, and at the fairgrounds I had a copy of it ready to purchase and then... just didn't pull the trigger. I couldn't even tell you why. One of my friends who was with me bought one. There is absolutely no good reason that I don't have it. I have lots of other NOLA-inspired art, including two other JF posters, gracing the walls of my house. But I whiffed on this one, and now it fetches stupid, insane prices. It didn't become a holy grail item for me until I got home from JF that weekend and smacked myself in the head thinking "what did I just do?" And by then it was too late to even order one. Now, every time I listen to Pete, or hear anything about JF, I am reminded of how I screwed that up.
ReplyDeleteWhen I went to summer camp back in the mid-1960s, someone had a phonograph in a room that was called the "counselor's lounge". (A counselor named Norm Winer also would show up with a reel to reel recorder and amazing tapes - he later became Saxophone Joe at WBCN and was the person who taught me about FM music, but that's another story).
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I recall only one record laying around the lounge, and it was an original copy of the Big Bopper's only album, "Chantilly Lace." I loved that record and decided I had to have it. Not a copy of that record, that record. When I went to nab it though at the end of the summer, it was gone. Who took it? It took about ten phone calls before I found out. It was a nice enough guy, and fortunately he wasn't too bright. I got his number and made up some story about the record and somehow convinced him to meet me somewhere in the city to exchange it. He did.
I had the record for thirty five years. I didn't want it just to have it though. I listened to it regularly and loved it (It's a great album) until we got ready to move from New Paltz and sold our turntable. I put it up for sale on Craigslist and got some decent money for it, but was sorry to see it go. At 50 years old, it was still in great shape and the music was as pleasurable as it had been when I was a kid.
I started out as a collector, but poverty and stupidity intervened to leave me with only about 2,500 cd's, and 300 vinyl lp's. Back in the day I'd sell thirty lp's just to get a couple new ones.
ReplyDeleteThen there's moving about 30 times including across the country, from CA, to FLA, to NC, to NY and then NJ.
If I'd kept them all there would be over 20,000 lp's taking up most of my living room.
I realized a long time ago that I was more interested in experiencing the music than owning the artifact.
I stopped buying music in 2005. These last few years of blog surfing have been great. Before the Megaupload debacle it was so easy to find anything that it became a game to see how fast I could find and download whatever I could think of. Mostly legendary out of print obscurities I never saw in a record store.
That's how I acquired items like Syd Barrett's last session from 1974, or "Mogul Thrash", John Wetton's band before Family.
Most of the records I've missed have turned up on cd, but there are a couple songs that have been elusive and taken me decades to track down.
I've always been partial to "Did You No Wrong", the B side of The Sex Pistols "God Save The Queen" 45 I bought as an import at Tower Records in Hollywood. I lost the record in the late '80's, moving from NC, to NY, and it's never turned up on any "Pistols" product I could find.
Supposedly written by "Wally", an early member of the band kicked out for wearing glasses. The guitar sounds like Chris Spedding, who produced their demos.
Here it is:
http://alanwalkerart.com/audio/did_you_no_wrong.mp3
I've been a fan oh Jonathan Richman and The Modern Lovers since way before breakfast, and some of my favorite tracks could only be found on the "Beserkely Chartbuster's" compilation lp.
Of these, this version of "Roadrunner" has been very difficult to find. I once ordered an album from Amazon that never came. It's got more charm than the version found on the their debut.
http://alanwalkerart.com/audio/roadrunner_twice.mp3
Roscoe Gordon was a Sun recording artist in the '50's and is known for "Roscoe's Rhythm", which has been linked to the origins of ska and reggae. I had a Swedish import compilation of his early tunes, which also contained the A side of a 1969 single he produced for his own label, "Little Bit Of Magic". This track is so smokin' cool that it's obscurity defies comprehension. This version comes from an old cassette I found in my basement. I like to imagine a Bryan Ferry cover of it.
http://alanwalkerart.com/audio/rosco_gordon_little_bit_of_magic.mp3
Great post, BBJ - and thanks for the bonus links!
Delete- A walk in the woods
1. Beatles "butcher cover" because I loved the Beatles and it was the first rare artifact I had heard about. Never bought it. Even when I earned enough money I just couldn't justify spending that much cash.
ReplyDelete2. Beatles "mono" albums, especially Pepper and Revolver. This one worked well in the fanaticism area because one of the first records I "almost bought" was Revolver at a local furniture store (they used to carry LP's to sell with the TV/stereo combos) but didn't because it was mono. Later when I found out mono was "collectible" it killed me. I gradually picked up increasingly better quality but still pretty beat up. mono copies, usually dirt cheap in bins piled with vinyl as CD's took over. Then the mono reissues on CD came and now I never listen to those treasures.
3. Of course there have been many other things, rare or not, that I got the "bug" on that I must have. One was the issues of Rolling Stone with the original serialized version of Tom Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities. Tracked 'em all down, and let me tell you, he improved that book by multiples when he rewrote it.
4. Not quite in the same category, but I still remember seeing tons of sealed (but cut-out) copies of the Sire Nuggets 2-LP reissue in one of my favorite cut-out locations. Also, earlier, a big dump of Apple records, including all of Badfinger's. In later student years of little money I often dreamed about having those babies to sell.
Ace
You know this is a loaded question for anyone reading this website. We all have dozens of touchstone recordings that we've spent months, sometimes years, hunting down. As noted earlier, before the fall of Megaupload, the availability for out-of-print material on the web was stunning -- a golden age so to speak. You couldn't buy this stuff anywhere, so why not download it. I've gone through the same with stuff like the Beatles Remixers Group series, or Bear Family box sets, which have always been radically overpriced. That sense of wildness and endless horizons doesn't seem anywhere near as strong as it was a few years ago (but I assure you, I drank deep from that well).
ReplyDeleteOne thing that took awhile for me: "Witchi Tai To" by Jim Pepper. I heard it on a movie soundtrack in the 90s, and it floored me. Vin Scelsa started playing it on his radio show. And of course, pre-internet heyday, it was out of print. I was able to find import copies of albums with other/older versions, but never the original. Visiting a friend in New Haven, I finally found the original single of the song from the 60s by Everything Is Everything on a Vanguard compilation, which floored me. And then some time in the early 00s, I think Wounded Bird reissued the album of the same name by Pepper's Pow Wow from the early 70s, and I ordered it immediately, only to find the version of the song on that ablum was a so-so update, and the rest of the album paled in comparison. That should also be part of your thread -- finding the holy grail and realizing it was made out of plastic!
Off topic, but since it was mentioned, any reliable site for Beatles Remixers mp3's (I'm too lazy for torrents)? I'm missing one of the Tuned to A Natural E collections and I would love to have it.
ReplyDeleteAce
From my recent experience, these are a lot harder to find, and most sites that you'll google have dead Megaupload links. I suspect if you get tapped into more private groups, stuff like this is easily found, but I just can't make that jump. A friend offered me entrance into a large network he's part of, but the gist is you need to keep uploading a certain percentage of your collection, i.e., leave your machine on all the time, and it just seems like too much work. Up to 2010, finding this stuff was like picking fruit off a tree, but not so much anymore. My collection has holes, too, but have to leave it for now.
DeleteI just found one of mine while doing Christmas shopping last month. When Atlantic released Eleventh Dream Day's first major label release, Beet, they also released a limited live lp of the same songs called Borscht. I passed on it a couple times, thinking I didn't need alternate versions, but then after the band broke up and i no longer saw them around, well... Cactus Records in Houston was selling it for $8 last month, not even prohibitive.
ReplyDeleteI'm in buzzbaby's camp - given up on collecting, and now cannibalizing the no longer appealing parts of the collection to pay for an album here and there. Some of the stuff I've had in my hands, but gave to the person digging in the next bin who said "oooh" - Pantera's first album when they were a hair metal band, the soundtrack to the first "Casino Royale" (supposedly the rarest soundtrack at one point), the Elektra version of the first Renaissance (w/Keith and Jane Relf).
I would probably pay good money for a copy of the ugliest album ever, Brownsville Station's first. I found a chewed up copy that I used as part of the decoration on an art truck, but haven't seen a playable copy in a long time.
and a copy of the 70's Chess double lp reissue of Sonny Boy Williamson, for the loooong liner note written by Cub Koda. Something about how whenever he put Sonny Boy on the bos, hookers would come from down the street and beg to dry hump his jukebox.
DeleteWould actually like to put to the test the rumor that "In Through the Out Door"'s album cover actually has hidden artwork under the original cover that will dissolve when water is poured on it! "Born to Run" with the silly font and the type-o on Landau's first name. All like my '72 McGovern For President with Eagleton as his running mate!!!
ReplyDeleteHidden artwork, never heard that? What I had heard was that there was on the INNER sleeve the old-fashioned water colors on there and if you applied a brush with a little water, the colors would be activated and you could paint them. It's true!
DeleteAce K.
P.S. I had a thing for awhile too about special political buttons and materials. "Muskie for President!"
bglobe313 is right. It's the inner sleeve that has water colours. I still see these turn up "uncoloured" quite often in shops.
DeleteEvery day is a new obsession for me. For now, though, my vinyl lust objects are Giant Crab, and related 45s. Any of their UNI releases, especially the final one, a cover of Rain's "ESP"; their two Corby singles, pre-UNI. Topping the list, their one-off single on Yardbird Records, billed as Enries Funnys [sic.], with a different version of "Through the Fields" (which would turn up on their classic first UNI album) on the A side, and a cover of The Olympics "Shimmey Like Kate."
ReplyDelete