i visited a true blue record store in downtown augusta several months ago. the owner really knew his stuff. sure, there were easy garage sale finds like barry manilow & barbara streisand. but i was impressed with janis joplin, otis redding, beatles (especially his copy of sgt pepper which was a rare find because the record itself had the image of the album cover pressed on it).
all of this began in a mexican restaurant over a year ago while clay was sipping a margarita the size of a fish bowl. he told joe & i an elderly lady in a fancy neighborhood was having a weekend-long garage sale & he'd found a collection of vinyl records that had belonged to the lady's son; he was going back to the sale the next day to grab up some CCR & Zeppelin at a quarter a piece.
i went home late that night & remembered listening to my parent's albums when i was little: robin trower, journey, edgar winter, foreigner. in my mind, the music sounded better on vinyl. i didn't know if this was because childhood memories always make things seem better or if it was just a fact. i hadn't heard music on vinyl since I was about 11 years old, when my dad gave the records to his brother. so the next morning, joe & i set out at 6 AM to find this lady's house & browse the albums - only to find she'd sold all of them the previous day; she said someone had stopped by & bought all 3 boxes full on the spot. thus began my mission to find some good classic records.
joe & i spent last spring & summer looking through yard/garage sale ads looking for listings including albums. we were lucky enough to find one where i grabbed stevie wonder, ELO, van morrison, & 15 other decent albums - all in excellent condition. at an estate sale i bought louis armstrong, nat king cole, & various jazz greats - all at a quarter a piece. joe spent weeks bidding on album lots on ebay that included cream, robin trower, ac/dc, pink floyd, the cars... until our collection amassed to over 100 records. the greatest christmas present i've ever received is a german copy of pink floyd's wish you were here after mentioning to joe i can remember staring at my dad's copy as a little girl, fascinated by the cover photo of 2 men in suits shaking hands, one of them on fire. it is proudly framed on the wall leading upstairs. joe is most proud of his austrailian press of ac/dc's dirty deeds done dirt cheap with the cartoon artwork of bon scott & angus young.
what i've found is that music does, in my opinion, really sound better on vinyl. the reason, i guess, is because i've grown up listening to CDs and now mp3s, where the music is so crystal clear & "digitally remastered"; no scratches, no static. i like the fact that when i lay the needle down on the record, there's a static sound hissing before the music begins & i can close my eyes & pretend i'm actually sitting in the room with the singer / band, listening to them live.
my favorite moment searching for records was in the middle of the summer, joe & i were the last 2 people browsing at a garage sale as the sales were pretty much over for the day & i asked if they had any records by chance. the man told us he & his wife had lots of records boxed up in the house but they were not for sale. curious, he asked what kind we were looking for. his eyes lit up when we said classic rock & he started listing his records proudly. " i haven't looked at them in a long time. i can bring them out & show them to you." he said. he began flipping through copies of every.single. beatles album known to man kind - seriously, every. single. one. also some rolling stones. jethro tull. boston. led zeppelin. pink floyd. jimi hendrix. i couldn't believe the records they owned. we ended up walking away with 3 albums: highway to hell (ac/dc; because apparently they weren't big fans, their loss, joe's gain), boston (self titled; because they had 2 copies), & the greatest find of all: dark side of the moon (pink floyd; because thankfully they had 2 copies). the man & his wife sat & talked with us for almost an hour about the bands & the music & remembering what was going on in their lives when they bought certain records, what songs they sang to their kids when they were little. they seemed so nostalgic. i could just imagine when joe & i got back into our car to leave, the couple would pack up the unsold items in their garage, take them back in the house, & just maybe they'd put on a record they'd mentioned with fondness & dance in their kitchen.
it made me start thinking of songs i hold close to me; songs that remind me of a certain moment in my life: my soundtrack.
what's yours?
