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Old records
Jun. 2nd, 2009 01:06 pmQuite often I browse ebay listings to see what old punk records are for sale and I'm always shocked at how pricey some of them are. Looking at them, I sometimes kick myself for not picking them up back when I was a kid and they only cost three bucks a 7-inch and eight for an LP. Mostly, though, I think of the record collection my friend, Matt, had.
When we were in high school, his sister started dating an ex-punk who had this incredible hardcore collection he kept in milk crates in his college dorm. I first got to listen to it when Matt and I drove up to UConn in the spring of 1986 to see Black Flag. Matt and I pored over those records until about three or four in the morning, trying to listen to all of it in one night because we never knew if we'd get the chance again.
As fate would have it, Jeff decided to get rid of the collection and sold the entire two crates of records to Matt for something like fifty bucks (it may even have been less), and the collection was there for the listening whenever Matt wanted and whenever I went over to his house. There was a lot of crap in it, but there was also a lot of really great stuff, like the Angry Samoans Back from Samoa, an original pressing of Hüsker Dü's Everything Falls Apart, a couple Circle Jerks LP's, and all of Minor Threat's catalog. It was the Minor Threat stuff that was most amazing, because included with Jeff's copy of Out of Step was a personal note from Ian McKaye apologizing for the delay in shipping the record out (the band hadn't pressed enough copies of the record, not realizing their popularity, and so a lot of people who'd ordered it from them had to wait while new copies were pressed).
Though I could listen to it practically whenever I wanted to, I was always jealous of Matt for getting that huge collection for what seemed like a steal (even if I couldn't have afforded that price myself). But I did listen to it, and it provided a lifeline to a punk world that lay somewhere out beyond the confines of our tiny suburban Connecticut town, so even though it wasn't mine, I felt some sense of ownership of it, even if I never actually possessed the records. So I was a little pissed at Matt when he sold them in the early nineties.
He'd taken them to some record store in Massachusetts and gotten maybe a hundred bucks for the whole shebang. None of them brought in much, not even the record with the Ian McKaye letter, which only garnered about ten dollars (if that). I think of that now as I look through those ebay listings, looking at records that I yearned for back in the day, and that I yearn for still. Now, of course, the records are going for a lot more than a few bucks a side -- I think even the crap that we hated is going for more than that -- and in doing so, those records become more and more consigned to the world of the wealthy few who have several hundreds of spare dollars to spend on a single piece of vinyl.
When we were in high school, his sister started dating an ex-punk who had this incredible hardcore collection he kept in milk crates in his college dorm. I first got to listen to it when Matt and I drove up to UConn in the spring of 1986 to see Black Flag. Matt and I pored over those records until about three or four in the morning, trying to listen to all of it in one night because we never knew if we'd get the chance again.
As fate would have it, Jeff decided to get rid of the collection and sold the entire two crates of records to Matt for something like fifty bucks (it may even have been less), and the collection was there for the listening whenever Matt wanted and whenever I went over to his house. There was a lot of crap in it, but there was also a lot of really great stuff, like the Angry Samoans Back from Samoa, an original pressing of Hüsker Dü's Everything Falls Apart, a couple Circle Jerks LP's, and all of Minor Threat's catalog. It was the Minor Threat stuff that was most amazing, because included with Jeff's copy of Out of Step was a personal note from Ian McKaye apologizing for the delay in shipping the record out (the band hadn't pressed enough copies of the record, not realizing their popularity, and so a lot of people who'd ordered it from them had to wait while new copies were pressed).
Though I could listen to it practically whenever I wanted to, I was always jealous of Matt for getting that huge collection for what seemed like a steal (even if I couldn't have afforded that price myself). But I did listen to it, and it provided a lifeline to a punk world that lay somewhere out beyond the confines of our tiny suburban Connecticut town, so even though it wasn't mine, I felt some sense of ownership of it, even if I never actually possessed the records. So I was a little pissed at Matt when he sold them in the early nineties.
He'd taken them to some record store in Massachusetts and gotten maybe a hundred bucks for the whole shebang. None of them brought in much, not even the record with the Ian McKaye letter, which only garnered about ten dollars (if that). I think of that now as I look through those ebay listings, looking at records that I yearned for back in the day, and that I yearn for still. Now, of course, the records are going for a lot more than a few bucks a side -- I think even the crap that we hated is going for more than that -- and in doing so, those records become more and more consigned to the world of the wealthy few who have several hundreds of spare dollars to spend on a single piece of vinyl.
