View allAll Photos Tagged cratedigging
I almost never shoot from the hip instead preferring to raise the camera to eye level. Wouldn't have worked for this shot so 'ya gotta do what ya gotta do', right? Feels good to shake it up every now and again; almost always it's a learning experience in my book.
The almost-forgotten (?) platter-sized Laserdisc format made a strong appearance at this retro record shop in Busan's Jungang-dong underground arcade. Original real-deal cunning linguistics!
A box of records outside a shop on Commercial Street, Spitalfields. If I hadn't been on my lunchbreak and therefore on a strict time limit, I'd have happily dug through this crate...
These rare LPs are on the spendy side, but they rank high on the 'exotic' scale. The soundtrack album may be just a bunch of runny-nosed kids singing in chorus, DPRK-style, but oooh-that cover art! ;-)
This Silver Anniversary commemorative LaserDisc features some classic James Bond 007 covers in the 'starbox' style and highlights from the first 25 years of the franchise. Cool, very cool.
Through the doorway of Hui Chun Arts Antiques, Hong Kong. This place is a mess of a museum, and believe it or not, this picture was taken after they tidied up a little. Everything from statues of Taoist saints to 1980s bootleg porno to “antique” computers. Located in Sheung Wan area of Hong Kong Island around Cat Street en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upper_Lascar_Row
a neighborhood full of second hand shops and tourist curio stands. I sometimes call this area the Mao market for its over-abundance of Little Red Books, Mao watches and Cultural Revolution porcelain statues.
Then there are the true junk shops, packed like Hui Chun Arts Antiques for the roving consumerist eye. Look hard and you find the vinyl tucked in the back of the shop, next to the ubiquitous Hong Kong household shrine.
Interesting to note the first record, "Baghdad By The Bay", is a term coined by SF Chronicle writer Herb Caen. It's a reference to the city's multicultural populace. According to Wikipedia, he's also credited as originator of the word, "Beatnik."
These dingy dusties are among the thousands on offer at the Dongmyo flea market. There are laws against defacing images of the Great Leader to the north. What about The King? ;-)
This vintage vinyl LPs sport alluring cover-arts and some comical misspelled lyrics on the backs. "Love Potion No. 9" seemingly would run afoul of censorship; its lyrics include the kissing of a police officer. ;-)
These vintage vinyl LPs were produced in Korea in the hardscrabble 70s- they have crazy-fragile thin jackets and plenty of fun misspellings ("The Beatless," "Eric Crapton") on the lyrics boxes.
Here we have some uber-rare Korean vinyl LPs from the 70s, including the "Benji" soundtrack. The graphic on the cover may be from the scene where a villain kicks Tiffany, thereby traumatizing a whole generation of kids one year before the movie "Jaws" came out. ;-)
This retro record store, billed as America's oldest, boasts over 1 million (!) 45s and tens of thousands of LP platters. Parking is metered, so bring quarters...
These vintage dusties are among the thousands kicking around the flea market. The Korean-edition Santana is a rare keeper....in decent condition, that is. ;-)
This pretty rare "Papillon" Laserdisc, on the Samsung label, stil has the Tower Records 30,000 won price sticker on it. Pricey - about $50 US at pre-IMF exchange rates! Now the poor disc, and others like it, needs a home. ;-)
Here at the P'ungmul flea market record corner we have some Beatles, Crue, and country. Crate-digging awaits. ;-)
Beppu is a small city in southern Japan known for its abundance of natural hot springs, in fact there is steam pouring out of the hills behind the city. It is also a rather unassuming tourist destination. In the heart of the small downtown one can certainly see signs of economic downturn. What's common to Japan is the covered arcade, and we found two of them in Beppu, which had the telltale empty storefronts. But as we were aimlessly strolling around one of them I said to my companion, "I can smell the vinyl, it's here somewhere . . ." though vinyl record store are generally known to any city in Japan, but just as I was looking at a store parallel to Back Page, my companion started giggling and pointing in the opposite direction. You can see that Back Page is a stand alone building (wouldn't it be cool to live above your humble record store?) and its collection is medium sized, eclectic and very well organised. Even though it has 45rpms in the window I didn't see any on sale inside so I bought "Don Drummond's Greatest Hits", an original Jamiacan pressing on Treasure Isle, and the shop owner very kindly explained (in his limited English) that this was indeed a Jamaican pressing and prey to those inherent low-fi qualities.
As if "Debaser" couldn't get any better:
The title "Debaser" references the fact that "Un Chien Andalou" debases morality and standards of art, according to Black Francis. In the earliest version of the song, the line "un chien andalusia" was originally "Shed, Appolonia!" – a reference to Apollonia Kotero, the co-star in the Prince film Purple Rain.
The Sino Center is something like 610 Nathan Road, Mong Kok, Kowloon, Hong Kong – I say “something like” as this is the densest of the dense Hong Kong, a place where one always has to painstakingly pick-out a sign, a store, the entrance to a building. Look carefully for this sign if you want to find your way on Nathan Road, as even if you get into the Sino Center, you still have to pick-out which escalator, stairway, elevator will take you to Very Collection, a used vinyl record shop on the 13th floor.
Believe me, getting lost in the Sino Center is much more fun than walking up and down Nathan Road looking for it; Sino Center contains its own dense collection of cultural commodities – toys, manga, dvds, Japanese magazines, all manner of musics, posters, gaming, and digital equipment – I’ve barely scratched the surface. So now get on the elevator on the ground floor, to the right upon entering Sino Center, and press 13.
Very Collection, on the 13th Floor of the Sino Center, is a museum that collects and then resells its collection. This jam-packed but well organized store, is currently displaying an intricate collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia – demonstrating that while the bigger part of Very Collection is vinyl records, the owner also has a great collection of photos, magazines, comic books and advertisements (all for sale). The stock is international but carries some heavy-weight Hong Kong collectables. All this in a tiny office/store (you can get the scale in the image of the hallway), up in the lower rent district of Sino Center.
I went hunting for neat sounds on vinyl in San Jose; the above are some of the more interesting covers from what I ended up bringing home.
There are a few classics in here, and I'm sure, a number of good breaks and other sample sources - in addition to some just damned good tunes.
Here we go . . . never give up hope, scan for the wax, the dusty platters . . . for crying out loud, the shop (Expo) has everything else!
This is the kind of shop where the record collector may get lucky, but for the most part, it holds the discarded remainders, the unwanted or the obvious. Nevertheless, I found a pretty interesting local title: a 45 rpm EP by Buckie Shirakata and his Aloha Hawaiians.