Boot sale season has now drawn to close round here, and my attention has turned to the local chazzas for seeking musical (and other) bargains. I’ve found that dropping in regularly, when I happen to be passing, has yielded good results; it means that I can have a rifle through the newly put out records before other cheapskates have got their filthy paws on the loot.
Standout finds over the last week are a lovely clean copy of the Cure’s Boys Don’t Cry LP last Saturday, and late yesterday afternoon on the way to get a haircut Bob and the Wailers’ Exodus on LP and two great jazz CD sets from Proper: Art Blakey https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prime-Source-4CD-Art-Blakey/dp/B000TIQCH8 and Tubby Hayes https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Giant-Steps-Tubby-Hayes/dp/B00B1679JW. The Tubby set is missing one out of the 4 discs, but the extensive booklet is still there and all finds were just £2 each, so I’m not complaining.
How about you? Found any good bargains lately, musical or otherwise?
Those links: Art Blakey https://www.amazon.co.uk/Prime-Source-4CD-Art-Blakey/dp/B000TIQCH8
Tubby Hayes https://www.amazon.co.uk/Little-Giant-Steps-Tubby-Hayes/dp/B00B1679JW
We’re far too lazy to get up early enough for boot fairs so it’s chazza shops all year round for us. A typical Saturday day trip has us going to a local town and rummaging through the charity shops before a pub lunch and home. It’s not unusual for me to go to work fully dressed in charity shop finds except for socks and underwear. I am of modest means, so why pay a few hundred quid for a suit when the local shops seem to overflow with apparently brand new ones for a tenner?
Just yesterday I bought Murakami’s 184Q in hardback editions for a total of £2.50, and I sit here wearing a rather lovely Ferragamo tie which cost a pound. The recent find which sticks in my mind was a bunch of Hermès ties which I found in the local BHF a couple of months ago. As much as I like a bargain I didn’t really care for the ties so I did the right thing and told the shop that they were worth far more than the few quid each they were charging. A couple of days later I was back in the shop, and the ties were back on display at the original price so I decided that if they didn’t want to profit from them I would. And did. Less than 20 quid to but them all, almost 200 quid total when I sold them on eBay. I don’t look to profiteer but someone had to.
In my days of youth I went from the `Mod` look to a more Vistorian look. I mentioned to my step-dad that I liked wide colourful ties which he happened to mention down the pub. In no time at all I had a large collection of beautiful wide hand painted ties that his mates` dads and granddads donated to me. Happy memories.
Nice little mark-up! Good luck tomorrow if you’re out for a rummage.
Get out of my shops. Them’s MINE I tell you.
P.S. If there any fans of Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy on here I have 40 of their LPs going spare. Bloody bargain, as was my 25p copy of Kate’s The Whole Story on vynil (it’s making a comeback you know…)
That’s nice, Beany!
*backs away slowly*
Ive been working away a lot but funnily enough was promising myself a run round the chazzas and also there’s a new second hand vinly shop in Hitchin which I want to check out. We also have a hipster vinly shop which has “lovingly curated vinyl, craft ales and specially selected coffee” which translates to a strange and small selection of second hand records in a cafe. I’m always happy to see more vinyl emporia but on a quick visit they had nothing to tempt me.
For me it is a hobby/future source of income/gets me out of the house pleasure. Like David Attenborough down at the watering hole, you never know what will turn up. Another World Of Mantovani or the previously unseen Mrs Shufflewick LP with the added challenge of conversing with the natives. Car boot sales too often mean an early start and trying to juggle the low level boxes with one hand whilst holding onto 2 doggies with the other.
A local (it’s 30 miles away) town near us has 2 record shops.
One is a stylish, coffee-orientated, CD/vinly shop, that might indeed be the place to go for coffee, but it’s the non-stylish, pile-it-high for a fiver, rival that’s the place to go for music.
My dream retirement career may still be alive!
I want to open a cafe selling “artisan baps” and records.
It will be called Rock and Roll.
I will come and peruse your artisan baps.
If impressed, I’m sure I will spend.
My last visit to the local Hospice thrift store yielded the following, all for a dollar apiece:
Dave Brubeck – Time Further Out
Blues Brothers – Briefcase Full Of Blues
J Geils Band – Full House Live
Donny Hathaway- Live
Aerosmith – Greatest Hits (the one with the red sleeve)
Ooh, Donny H live is amazeballs. CD or vinly?
Woman please!! the full gatefold experience of course!
(and yes, it is amazeballs – if you haven’t already done so, I recommend you seek out copies of Extension Of A Man and the album he did with Roberta Flack, helpfully called “Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway”)
Cor!
(I have EOAM in a 5 album CD set. It doesn’t include the duets one, but I’ve enjoyed it on Spotify.)
Holy balls, how could I forget! Tull’s Thick As A Brick (US release on Reprise) with newspaper fold-out sleeve in very good condition!
My newspaper is complete but… in the sort of condition you would expect after 40 years. Ne’er mind.
If you find that you can’t live without that missing Tubbs disc, Mini, PM me and I’ll burn you whatever one is missing…
I would love that, thanks Colin! It’s disc 1, Tubbsville.
Sorted – PM me your address…
C
Will do, thanks again!
I’ve been trying that ruse for years and it’s never worked.
Bloody court order!
Tubby arrived safe and well today, Colin. Thank you kindly, sir xxx
You’re welcome, Minimeister. Not too portly to fit through the letterbox okay?
Not at all, it slotted through perfectly. (Careful, you’ll get @moose-the-mooche in another tiz).
I was doing my best to avoid setting up innuendos, but it seems I failed…
I just snagged some Tubby at David’s in Letchworth with 25% of the meagre sticker price. Storming!
http://i1094.photobucket.com/albums/i449/charlieboy14/Afterword/20161209_231347-1_zpscxtuoj9q.jpg
How about the two disc Alan Partridge DVD set for 25p? Classic series in the Linton! DVDs seem stupidly cheap in some places.
Car boots are also piled high with DVDs these days. The Netflix effect.
Plenty of Max Boyce, Andy Williams and Barry Manilow.
Leo Sayer is another popular offering.
Basically, nowt doing round here – last decent find in the 4 shops local to me were Pet Sounds double CD (Mono and Stereo versions) and 2 ELO singles on coloured vinyl (Sweet Talkin Woman on Purple, Mr Blue Sky on Blue). That was about a year ago
I did mange to find 3 Badly Drawn Boy albums for £3 a couple of weeks ago – this makes me think there may be some hope in the Chazza-Hunt, and I’m not giving up yet.
Although, I HAVE given up on Oxfam Music – £20 for a knackered copy of Beastie Boys: Licensed to Ill? I think not.
With charity shops it’s a good idea to drop in often, on different days of the week and at different times of day, too. It increases the chances that you’ll stumble across some newly put out donations. Ingratiating yourself with some regular donations also pays off, as the staff are more likely to say yes when you ask if there’s any more music in the stock room that you could have a look through 🙂
“Ingratiating yourself” eh? For the first time in my life working in a charity shop looks potentially not too bad.
Just keep it under the counter, Moose.
I can’t promise it won’t peep over.
Off Ebay, so many people seem to be offloading their collections, recent acquisitions at realistic prices: New Riders of the Purple Sage – Panama Red, Big Brother – Cheap Thrills, Fleetwood Mac Live, Pink Floyd – Relics, Bruce Springsteen – Born in the USA, Grover Washington – Winelight, and a couple of George Dukes ( all vinly). CDs: Can Anthology, Dylan/Band Flood and Basement, Dinosaur Jr, At The Drive In, Grant Lee Buffalo, Salif Keita, Lionel Hampton, Barney Kessel, Miles Sketches, Mercury Rev, Steve Vai, Ornette Coleman, LZ Presence, NY Zuma, Duke Ellington, Ry Cooder, Herbie Hancock, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rory Gallagher, Ride.
Phew!
I know. But I couldn’t not. The Kessel was a 4-disc doorstep for a quid. Best ones: Hancock’s Thrust, the Can stuff, and side 1 of Relics. Ho-hum award: At The Drive In. Collecting is strenuous.
Two weeks ago I got Floyd’s Relics, four Jethro Tull albums, Dark Side of the Moon, Ram, Get your Ya Yas Out, two ELPs, Two Rory Gs and a very shagged-out sleeveless Fresh Cream (hello @johnny-concheroo)
… for nowt. I AM a charity.
Nice haul.
Fresh Cream: was it on the original Reaction label, or a later Polydor or even later RSO pressing?
Reaction – mono and all. Jumps and crackles, but still sounds great to me.
Nice work. Fresh Cream was released 50 years ago yesterday, btw.
Yeah, I saw that -I put it on yesterday. It’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast of an album but frankly that’s never put me off.
PS. Apols if you said this yesterday, but it occurred to me that this is the earliest record I’ve heard that sounds like it could have come from the 70s – especially, er, Toad.
This may be drawing a long bow but I have been heard to claim that the track Sweet Wine was the start of heavy rock and/or metal
The link between this and what the Sabs were doing five years later is fairly clear.
Which ELPs, Moose?
Which Jethros, Moose?
Exhibition and Trilogy.
Stand Up, Benefit ,Thick, Aqua and Passion Play – the imperial phase as far as I know. I’ve never properly listened to JT and am looking forward to delving.
Oh – and from the same source, a mono Let it Bleed with poster included. Reputedly word about fifty sovs but…. cold dead hands.
It’s Relics that nearly made me have a unscheduled emission. I bloody love that album. Moooooonshiiiiiiiine washiiiiing liiiiiiine….
Mono Let It Bleed, nice. The poster is rare. Does it include the special generic Decca inner sleeve with track listing etc? That’s often missing.
…. yes it does. The vinyl is good to very good…. But what would I spend fifty quid on?* A Cold Italian Pizza is for life, not just for Christmas.
(*answers on a postcard please)
So you got the tritone-heavies albums 3 + 4. Both good, if you need more, then 1 + 2.
Ah, this will be quite a Jethro journey for you, those albums are full of good tunes and playing, esp. Stand Up. And there’s lots more to discover further down the line.
Dunno about emissions, but that Relics is a lovely piece of product. Nice to have those first 2 singles (which I have) in album form finally.
Did well, Moose.
Playing it right now. So amusing to hear the soundstage (end of Interstellar) get up and revolve in the room.
So that’s what stereo’s for, thinks good ol’ Hurricane Smith, Spring 1967.
🙂
That’s a pretty arresting experience on headphones too (or at least it is at my kind of volume). See also the stereo Revolver, which is like that stupid Flaming Lips record that you had to play simultaneously on four CD players…
On my visit to the UK last month I popped into the local chazzas (all five of them) in Pinner where my mum lives. Only found one vinly worth my pound amongst the Roger Whittaker and James Last – but what a find! A mint original pressing of the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s debut The Inner Mounting Flame, complete with the CBS Inner Sleeve promo. Talk about a rose among thorns
I’ve managed to resist this record on more than one occasion. Remember: the M.O. – Just Say No!
Only teasing. It’s a great find for a charity shop.
You expect to see the JLO, the ELO and the RPO, but not the mighty MO. I was dead chuffed
Uncannily, Mini, last week I interviewed a man who is more or less the Pete Best of the Mahavishnu Orchestra – except that he left of his own accord just before anything happened. It’s for a new chapter in a forthcoming hard-copy edition of my McLaughlin book ebook extras (plus…). I’ve titled the chapter (I kid you not): ‘Mahavish? No!’ I was rather pleased with that… 🙂
Just popped into the local chazzas again, and came out of one with an LP of Louis Armstrong singing Disney songs, plus Houses Of The Holy on CD and a Jeff Buckley 2 album set, also on CD. A fiver the lot, and all in lovely nick.
This ‘dropping in frequently’ approach is paying dividends.
Desist at once. I have not been in a charity shop for 48 hours and am having withdrawal symptoms. I shall have to call in several on the way over to Doodypool shortly. I may have to play my Best Of Kylie double CD (25p) from Tuesday’s finds in the car.
Moose, I saw a copy of Control today and thought of you, but I expect like me you still have your original?
I do, and well shagged it is.
Eee, she could have had someone’s eye out with them shoulderpads.
PS. Waaaiiiidaminit! You saw a record that goes “Oh you nasty boys” and thought of me? I’ve never been so consulted….
PPS. Did you know that Let’s Wait a While had the working title “Sorry Luv, It’s Pod Week”. …? Well you didn’t, because it’s not true.
I got Control: The Remixes for 50p this summer. It’s quite good.
You had to be there, though, didn’t you? Same with the other R’n’B classics of that era – Rapture, Hearsay and (for me) Word Up! If you hadn’t signed up at the time you won’t now.
Not exactly a chazza shop tale, but an ebay one – a couple of weeks back I managed to acquire 24 issues of Melody Maker spanning 1955-63 for £25. Bear in mind that single issues of that vintage are routinely priced between £10-20 on ebay, and from magazine dealers.
A couple of weeks before that I managed to acquire, also from ebay, a virtually complete 16-month run – 70-odd issues – from September 1959 to the end of 1960 (a period that I was specifically keen on for research purposes) for £170. Trust me, that’s a fantastic bargain – and my front room, at leisure, with cups of coffee, is a vastly more pleasurable research experience than the only alternative: intense days scanning microfiche at the British Library, with a load of travel costs (and no proximate coffee).
It must be very interesting to chart the progress of MM during that period – starting off as a strictly jazz mag (steady, Moose…) and then having to hold its nose and grudgingly cover rock & roll and ‘beat’ music.
Oh, absolutely. There’s some fantastic Humphrey Lyttelton columns during 1960 – full of (entertainly written) hostages to fortune like ‘these stereo records will never catch on’ and suchlike. In fact, Humphrey pulled out of an annual BBC-run public multi-artist concert because there were rock acts on the bill and he thought it more or less beneath him. But there were a few, perhaps surprising, jazz-meets-rock events that year, including a craze for ‘Riverboat Shuffles’ from London to Margate with various trad jazz acts and rock acts – Dick Charlesworth & his City Gents sharing the stage (or poop deck, or whatever) with Johnny kid & The Pirates and the like. Larry Parnes even put out a first ever jazz meets rock LP, although pre-war jazz comeback artiste Nat Gonella was the sole jazzer among cuts by Larry’s usual stable.
And as I mentioned somewhere else around here recently, I was flabbergasted when I read in two December 1959 issues that blues duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (then visiting Britain under Chris Barber’s patronage) were about to leave for a 15-week tour of India. Not something one hears about in blues histories, is it?
“As the trad-jazz straw-hat of doom is crushed by the teddy-boy’s brothel-creeper of destiny…”
And the black beret of cool is shrunk in the twin tub of modernism…
Duo? Here’s me thinking it was a family trio of Sonny, Terry & Brownie McGhee!
*boom boom*
The progressive funk duo Rod Jane & Fred E. are often thought of, erroneously, as a hapless children’s light entertainment trio. it’s held them back, I feel.
Please. Punctuation is important. There must be a comma between “Rod” and “Jane”, lest the name of the troupe be misinterpreted as an imperative.
No. I was referring to the DUO featuring ‘Rod Jane’ and ‘Fred E.’
It was a joke – a laboured one, I admit – but it doesn’t work at all if there’s a comma. That just makes it ‘Rod, Jane & Freddy’.
I played the Led Zep CD this afternoon, and thought it sounded a bit thin and weedy in places, so I went on the SH forum (yeah, I know) to look it up. It turns out my ears are definitely not made of cloth, as this particular remastering (by George Marino and supervised by Page) is seen as inferior to others, lacking as it does in midrange and overall presence (yeah, I KNOW). Probably donated in favour of an upgrade to a different version.
I hope you took the time to post track-by-track bit-depth/sample rate resolutions…
Well I’d like to know what system you are playing it on as clearly this is OF MASSIVE IMPORTANCE when judging sound quality. If it is lesser to mine I will call you out for your stupidity.
SHF – hive of scum and villainy
Yeah. I know 🙂
I had no joy yesterday in the local chazzas – tempted by the Judith Durham Christmas album (who knew?) and a Johnny Winter double, optimistically priced at 9.99 but passed on both. Oxfam offered up a completely knackered copy of “Hergest Ridge” which I certainly would have had it it had been playable. Then I hit gold on the market – mint copy of Crosby/Nash – Live complete with insert. 6 of your quids. Bloke on the stall was moaning that it’s really hard to get stock these days as everyone sells it on eBay as prices have gone up so much. Which reminds me, my bid for “Electric music for the mind and body” by Country Joe and the Fish comes up this morning. Fingers crossed!
Spooky. I bought my first ever copy of Judith’s For Christmas With Love LP on Monday, alongside a James Last Christmas LP & Slade’s Christmas Album. Also some bloke called Morrissey and his Viva Hate platter for a 100 new pence. Is he any good?
The new Emmaus charity shop in Preston, nay warehouse, claims to be the biggest in the country. It is in an old B&Q with mostly furniture but does have a record deck to allow the playing of records to check condition (all £1). There was a pile of enticing vinlys there on Monday; Pink Floyd, Marillion, Hawkwind, etc. They looked perfect from the outside in their thick plastic covers but I would describe the records as gouged rather than scratched as I cannot imagine a stylus could inflict such damage. Shame.
Which James Last Christmas album? This one is foogin mega.
http://image.aimoo.com/ForumImages/458fc18a-44e1-46aa-b073-775102e8172a/101203_051248_73712629.jpg
I understand this Morrissey chappie is on the up and up, and is quite the hit with the younger set.
This is the one I have. It’ll be covered in this year’s Car Boot Christmas Countdown, which begins on the 15th. Ten days! Over 20 festive vinlies! Run for the hills before it’s too late!
What marble-hearted fiend recommended that Last album to you? Let me know and I’ve give him such a wallop…
I hear he’s well used to giving himself a good wallop.
Oho!
It is this one.
https://www.discogs.com/James-Last-Happy-Christmas-From-James-Last/release/5420037
I have never seen this 1966 German release or it’s subsequent reissues. Looks fab.
https://www.discogs.com/James-Last-Christmas-Dancing/release/1501309
“..my first ever copy…”.
*ulp*
I have some way to go to catch up to my Don Estelle Christmas Album.
Nine and counting.
It’s a social service. The more you collect, the fewer are out there to infect innocent people.