hobby jobs and vinyl tips

a job is something that swallows you up whole, often times rendering you a very cold, indifferent, and perpetually annoyed person. even in covered "easy" or "hobby" jobs, i've noticed people become so overwhelmed with the load that they come to, in a way, resent their passion and close up shop on it. it is astounding to me that people can manage to continue to see some of the worst parts of human attitudes towards their beloved pastime and still find it in them want to wake up in the mornings.

i say this as one of the many people who still wake up on time to attend one of these "easy hobby jobs," and has been dutifully [though often irritated] by general process. i don't buy vinyl as often as i used to, economically it isn't viable. i don't get paid enough at the record shop to buy records. i have been standing by our front doors at one shop, on one occasion after rejecting purchasing boxes of used classical & easy listening covered in mold etc, and felt the impact of at least 70LPs + a glass plated iron door hitting me in the back as the unsatisfied customer lunged the boxes into our doors as they sped past. suffice to say this wouldn't happen elsewhere in these exact circumstances. i laid on the store floor behind the register for around fifteen minutes after and had bruises in the pattern of coals.

i reckon people don't know what to expect. they see the big names like harry belafonte or mozart or whatever have you, or they a 78 – something that is foreign most times even to gen x-ers and even moreso to millennials – and figure they're going to make a MOMA-purchasing-original-velvet-underground-reels deal with an independent record shop which is run on the gay strip.

a tip for selling records: with the exception of a few titles by martin denny and enoch light, no one is going to buy exotica and no one will buy non-avant garde classical. even unorthodox players like glenn gould are quite common in bigger cities. barbara streisand is never a yes, not even for elliot gould, and every beatles record since 1965 has been repressed every single year since their respective release date and the odds of you having a true original is fairly low. you can check if you own a reissue or an OG by reading the fine text on the back of the record or sometimes the gate, which will typically say 'printed in [original year], [year of that pressing]' the second date is the one you have. save your body the strain of carrying those boxes and pay attention to the dates.

others can find themselves in a tricky perdicament which has occured many times in even just my seven years of working in records, in fact, it's happening to us right now. recently we found ourselves in one quite peculiar situation, which is that of the common art of the bootleg. sometimes they are blatantly obvious: the cut of the record is frayed with strips of polyvinyl loose and easily peeled off, it provides no information on the back of the record where the small text ought to be, it is in a unique and otherwise unseen colour/pattern, includes tracks not featured on the actual album, and generally feels too new to be the real thing. most of these don't have matrix run outs either, which are the engravings on the deadwax near the centre of the vinyl. bootlegs vary in price but cannot be sold on markets like discogs as they don't comply with industry standard and are generally considered somewhat unethical to alottuv snobs. i have a lot of bootlegs, and i love them, however.

recently we came into the possession of a series of modern, out of print records which came from a dealer who got his bootlegs from new york. titles like frank ocean's "blond," "channel orange," & "nostalgia," westside gunn's "ash & hall," kanye west's "yeezus," & smashing pumpkin's "meloncollie & the infinite sadness." all look fine on the surface and most sold quick, however we discovered somewhat of an artificially inflated bubble of demand on ebay. multiple accounts were cropping up with so-called *SEALED* copies of these titles with no customer ratings or reviews. dozens of these accounts and listings had cropped up since we first heard of this new york bootleg operation and the dealer. they were creating a higher asking price based upon the discogs previously sold & general demand for these titles & are reaching far, far, far into the $200+ arena for bootlegs. obviously attempting to dupe desperate franknocean fans or something and turn a profit on their rubbish pressings. it's an interesting phenomena and a little funny that you can find market tampering anywhere, even in a market as innocuous as vinyl. don't fall for the those types of ebay listings, it's a whole lotta money for a whole lotta nothin.

while we're here, here's a few pointers:

• modern issues of david bowie records will have an orange centre which reads "BOWIE" in the RCA font instead of the RCA logo. these are modern reprints issued largely post-2014 or so. originals from the 70s will always read the normal RCA logo with the exception of a 5 year, 3 record contract in the 80s wherein titles like "let's dance" will be released on EMI.

• OOP = out of print

• when dealing with higher prices in much wanted vinyl, always check the matrix runout and run it by discogs apps which have the matrix information in the notes of the first pressing, if that's what you're after.

• any record with a barcode on the back was pressed sometime after 1980, when the barcode became a popular tool and the tech was developed to utilise it. henceforth, if you happened to find a queen or led zeppelin or something of the likes for a shocking price, and it has the barcode on the back -- that's why it was so cheap.

• don't underestimate the beauty of 45 / 7" records ! or singles themselves, be that 12", 10", or 7" ! most bands include b-sides on the back that will either be other mixes of the track or in the case of bands like the cure -- a completely new and often shockingly better track.

i love you very much.

free radio harley xoxo