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Posted: |
Jan 30, 2016 - 1:42 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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Anyone else remember that golden period when everyone was unloading their vinyl?
CDs had taken over, and no one wanted LPs, yet it was before eBay (or before everyone had access to eBay), and no one knew what anything was worth.
I'd been buying LPs since the early 1970s, and I've never stopped buying them, but I undoubtedly acquired most of my accumulation during this aforementioned decade.
I was buying jazz, oddball instrumental, space-age-bachelor-pad, Moog, sitar, Latin, Brazilian, Groovy, Funky stuff - anything that Dusty Groove typically sells.
And, of course, soundtracks.
This was a particularly great time for buying soundtracks, because, as we know, no one cares about soundtracks or knows anything about them. Sure, there were the dealers with their soundtrack LPs in plastic outer sleeves charging $20 or more per title. But right next to them was the Beatles/Elvis guy with the "miscellaneous" box that contained all the good stuff for low dough.
I felt like a kid in a candy store with a twenty dollar bill.
All good things must come to an end
So please share your stories. I will add some of my own along the way.
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Posted: |
Jan 31, 2016 - 11:58 AM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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I used to regularly attend record shows in the Northeast US during this period.
There was one seller who routinely made the rounds. He had come into an enormous collection that was clearly owned by a WWII-era hipster who must have had a killer system; His LPs were always in top shape. A couple of the inner sleeves had diagrams of his preferred settings for each album.
The seller knew only rock and pop, and all the stuff I wanted was randomly placed in these crates for $4 apiece. I bought a ton of jazz, space-age-bachelor-pad, and film scores from this guy over the years. My first time may have been the most memorable because I practically cleaned him out, but I would keep going back. and getting stuff at subsequent shows. That first time, I got a bunch of harder-to-find Michel Legrand and Pete Rugolo LPs. The Legrand titles included "Love is a Ball," "Plays Richard Rodgers," "Legrand Jazz," and the instrumental album of "Les Demoiselles de Rochefort." The Rugolo albums included an assortment of his Columbia and Mercury albums, including the brilliant "Percussion at Work," but also "The Sweet Ride" and "Jack the Ripper." I also got Kenyon Hopkins's "Baby Doll" and several Neal Hefti LPs, including "Barefoot in the Park."
That first trip happened during the winter, and I had a wood-burning stove in my apartment. I have nice memories of drinking wine and spinning all these albums for the first time, with the stove warming up the place on a very chilly weekend.
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Posted: |
Jan 31, 2016 - 1:35 PM
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By: |
OnyaBirri
(Member)
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The drive from Philadelphia to Princeton, NJ is a pleasant one. I can't remember the names of the roads now, but I could make the drive from memory if I was there.
On either side of Princeton, the main drag goes through a number of small towns, with farmland between. This is precisely how a lot of the more developed areas of New Jersey looked in the 1950s. When you are on that road, if you hit a stretch where no other cars are visible, you wonder if you'd time traveled.
I first went to Princeton Record Exchange in the early 1990s. I don't know what the store is like now, but I had never seen a store like this in my life. It took most of the day just to go through the dollar LP bin.
After the dollar records, I ended up going through the soundtracks and jazz bins. The miscellaneous lettered sections of jazz bins are often very promising, because oddball instrumental albums can end up getting filed there, if for no other reason than the clerks do not know where else to place them.
On that first trip, I got some real gems for very short dough: Kenyon Hopkins's "Shock Music in Hi-Fi" on ABC Paramount; Buddy Morrow's TV theme collections "Impact" and "Double Impact" on RCA; Peter Nero's score for "Sunday in New York," (I've yet to stumble across another copy of this); A Nino Rota collection on CAM; Axel Stordahl's exotica gem "Jasmine and Jade" on Dot; and Marty Gold's percussion LP "Sticks and Bones" on RCA.
As anyone who has ever shopped at Princeton Record Exchange can attest, you will always remember which LPs you bought there: The stickers are IMPOSSIBLE to remove!
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Posted: |
Feb 1, 2016 - 11:23 PM
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By: |
RonBurbella
(Member)
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I moved to Lawrenceville, the town right next to Princeton, in 1981. I still live there. In 1981, the Princeton Record Exchange (PREX) was a skinny little hole-in-the-wall store with huge somewhat unorganized stocks of vinyl in all categories. They hadn't yet become informed about the high values of rare soundtracks and all were reasonably priced. I haunted the place at least once or twice a week, searching on my hands and knees in the dollar bins and standing up for the regular-priced soundtrack, classical, and pop albums above. I had developed a keen talent for being able to flip albums at warp speed and not miss a soundtrack. They knew I was a physician and they gave me the nickname "Dr. Soundtrack."
The back room staff had my phone numbers for when a big soundtrack collection would come in. Since I was a very good customer, I'd usually get "first dibs" on purchased collections. 1981 was at the beginning of the HIV/AIDS era, and so sadly quite a number of show and soundtrack collectors in northern New Jersey and Manhattan succumbed to their illness. Their families often liquidated their collections by selling them to the Princeton Record Exchange. I was a regular customer at all the New York City out-of-print dealers and they would let me go in their "back room" inner sanctums to look at their stock. Invariably I would come out with an armload of items for purchase. And it was inevitable that I would come across many, many fellow soundtrack collectors in NYC of many varied backgrounds. It would be a very bittersweet occasion when I would get a call from the Exchange to check out a soundtrack collection that had just come in and then find out it was from someone whom I knew. I gave their LPs a good home.
Then, PREX moved to their present bigger building, and the video revolution took over a larger part of the floor space. Classical LPs and soundtrack LPs have dwindled to become a shadow of their former self. The soundtrack CD section gets inexpensive "promo" copies of most new soundtracks, especially rock compilation CDs and indie film soundtracks and is worth a look through. The regular stock is hit or miss.
I still stop in once a month or so to see what's come in, but my old first-name-basis friends have mostly moved on. A lot of young kids with multiple piercings and tattoos and odd-looking hairdos make up the friendly sales staff, but they have no idea who I am. Just some old guy. I do kind of miss the days when I would get that phone call to come right away and sift through a liquidated radio station library or a big soundtrack collection that had just come in. But I'm at the time of life when the thought "I have enough" occurs to me more and more. It's a hard passion to give up completely. But there are fewer and fewer soundtrack "hits" when I sift through the "New Arrivals" bins. The Internet has filled a big void, and I don't have to hunt for a parking space. 
Ron Burbella
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