In addition to selling about 600 records through Carolina Soul, I had mentioned in a previous post that I had another 3,500 or so records I was hoping to sell to a local dealer/friend/acquaintance. That transaction also happened and he came to the house with a colleague and picked up the records a few weeks ago. I sent him an email asking how he has been doing with the records, but haven’t heard back yet. In any case, I’ve shrunk my collection by about 4,000 records and feel great about it. I’ve done a couple of reorganizations since then, and I find that the collection is less overwhelming and I’m able to enjoy the records more, and listen to them more frequently and attentively.

Another reason I’ve been more attentive to the records is that I am now hosting a radio show here in my local community in The Berkshires. It is called Jazz Collector Live and it is on WTBR-FM Pittsfield. I’ve taped three shows so far and, last I heard, the first show is scheduled to debut tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern. I realize the show is called Jazz Collector Live and, in fact, it is not live. To me, it’s like John Coltrane Live at Birdland or Sonny Rollins Live at the Village Vanguard. The show was live when I recorded it, so that makes it a live recording. Anyway, the show will appear “live” tonight and you will be able to stream it or download it in a few weeks, once I have a few more shows under my belt. I’ll talk a lot more about it in future posts and definitely solicit feedback from my friends here. I’ve never done radio before and I’m really enjoying it.

The radio show is a volunteer gig and is a result of me trying to scale back on my work, which has been happening, slowly but surely. For the past six weeks or so (pretty much since my last post on Jazz Collector), I’ve been winding down my existing work assignments and trying to limit new projects that I take on. This has meant that my nose has been to the grindstone with working. It has also taken up a lot of my brainpower and I’ve had less time to devote to posting here. In any case, this past Wednesday I got caught up on all of my work assignments. I still have a new one coming in this week, but I’m really hoping to be working less, especially during the summer. Perhaps that will translate into more time doing Jazz Collector, but I’m experienced enough to know that I’ve thought those thoughts before and it hasn’t necessarily translated into action. So, we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, here’s the list of my records being sold this week by Carolina Soul:

The post Alive and Well (And Live on the Radio) first appeared on jazzcollector.com.]]> https://jazzcollector.com/blue-note/alive-and-well-and-live-on-the-radio/feed/ 11 9182 https://jazzcollector.com/features/the-great-jazz-vinyl-countdown-ad-infinitum/ https://jazzcollector.com/features/the-great-jazz-vinyl-countdown-ad-infinitum/#comments Tue, 18 Apr 2023 15:23:21 +0000 https://jazzcollector.com/?p=9163 To answer some of your post pressing questions. Yes, those are many of my records on the current Carolina Soul eBay auction. Seeing the actual [...]

To answer some of your post pressing questions. Yes, those are many of my records on the current Carolina Soul eBay auction. Seeing the actual listings makes it pretty clear to me one of the reasons why Jason and I weren’t able to strike a deal: We were grading the condition of the records on a different curve. That wasn’t the only reason, but it must have played an important factor. As a collector and former seller on eBay, I was grading the records quite a bit differently than Jason and his team, who are admittedly more in touch with today’s marketplace. Some of the obvious examples are ones I’ve written about here. Like the Jutta Hipp and Zoot Sims record on Blue Note and the Donald Byrd on Transition. I know that I got those records from the Bruce M. West collection in Baltimore, and I am pretty sure those records weren’t played more than two or three times. When I listened to them, once each, they were clean. In my collection, I had graded the vinyl condition at M- or VG++ at worst.

On the current auction, the condition of the Jutta Hipp vinyl is listed as VG. So is the Donald Byrd. Yes, I was surprised. My sense is that overall Carolina Soul is much more cautious and conservative in their grading than I would be, both as a collector and a seller on eBay. I don’t question them because they know their business, they are much closer to the market, and they know what issues other collectors may have with certain records. So, if I were to offer advice to anyone thinking about bidding on the records, go with their grading and not my descriptions here at Jazz Collector. But I think it is safe to assume that they are pretty conservative graders so, hopefully, auction winners will be pleasantly surprised.

The other factor in our failing to make an outright deal was that I modified the package that I was offering. To be clear, we had never made an agreement on the phone or on email. It was always going to be based on me deciding on the final package and Jason and Nate coming to view the records personally. It was conceivable they could have driven all the way from Durham to The Berkshires and driven back with nothing. It was also conceivable they could have driven back with a van full of records.

In the final package, I pulled out some of the Blue Notes and Prestiges that I had originally intended to sell, including most of the 10-inch pressings. Got cold feet looking at the covers. I also pulled back all of the Mosaics after The Lovely Mrs. JC reminded me that many of them were birthday presents and, also, she thought they looked really nice on the shelves in our living room. So, what I originally thought would be 6,000 or even 7,000 records, was probably around 5,500. And the balance between original collectibles from the 1950s and 1960s vs very nice records from the 1970s and 1980s (as well as nice reissues), skewed a bit differently than I had originally expected.

To answer some other questions and comments:

I have never talked about specific prices, either buying a collection or, in this case selling a portion of my own collection. I feel like it would be disrespectful to the people I’m doing business with. Perhaps I’m going too far in even talking about the amounts of records in the way that I do. The reality in this case is that the only people who know what was in the package are Jason, Nate and me, so I don’t even see how the asking price would be illuminating or even relevant. But, either way, I’m not talking about it.

Similarly, I feel like I share quite a lot of myself here on the site. I go as far as I feel comfortable and I generally try to be honest with my feelings and not too guarded. Sometimes I realize I’ve shared more than I wanted and I pay the price for being too open. That’s why I appreciate supportive comments such as the ones by Daryl, Lennib, Peter, Clifford and others. Thank you. It’s also why I try to take the high road when someone is consistently negative.

Regardless of my feelings about being open or being guarded, the records are on sale for all of the public to see and for Popsike to record for all eternity. Except that not every record in the current auction is from my collection. Plus, there are some records that have been held back and will be on future auctions.

I still love Moanin’. Great solos, and I’ve always liked the way that Lee Morgan hands off to Benny Golson with a phrase that he repeats. I mention this on the radio show I taped last week. Still waiting for final approval from the station on when/if it will air and when/if it will be available on the internet so I can share it here. Stay tuned.

In his way, KC Ken finally apologized. Apology accepted.

I am not going to be obsessively watching the auction or writing about it obsessively. I feel comfortable that I am in good hands with Carolina Soul and feel like I’ve built a nice rapport with Jason. But when I do write about it again, which I will, at least the pictures I use will be from the actual collection, such as the picture of Byrd Blows Beacon Hill that goes with this post.

Finally, Shades of Redd. I may be going through an existential crisis, but I haven’t lost my mind quite yet. So, yes, I am keeping my original pressing of Shades of Redd. My Japanese reissue as well. And a United Artists pressing.

The post The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown, Ad Infinitum first appeared on jazzcollector.com.]]>

. . . but we couldn’t agree on the price. It was as simple as that and it was all very amicable. Jason and Nate were great and we had a nice, easy rapport. Jason shared pertinent information about his business model and what he and Nate thought they could get for the records. I didn’t want to let the records go for the amount they offered and we were too far apart for a compromise. So, sitting in my living room with Jason, Nate and The Lovely Mrs. JC, I suggested we turn to Plan B. I would go through the records yet again, this time with the idea that we would do a consignment deal.

If I haven’t done so already, I should make perfectly clear that money was not the primary motivation for me. If I wanted to maximize the value, I could sell the records on eBay myself, or even do something here on Jazz Collector, where I could avoid paying eBay fees. But one of the main decisions I made was that I don’t want to be in the jazz vinyl retail business. What I really wanted was to pare down the collection and reduce it by a significant amount. This meant including a lot of really valuable records, but also a lot of records that would not necessarily be worth the effort on Carolina Soul’s part to sell on eBay. I understood.

When I realized that I wasn’t go to pare down the collection in the amount I wanted, I reset my priorities. I was never looking to make a financial killing, but when I was hoping to sell a large part of the collection outright, I loaded the package with a significant amount of the real high-end stuff. A few examples: Thad Jones and Sonny Clark on Blue Note. I had original pressings and later pressings, either Japanese or United Artists. In the original package, I included the originals for Carolina Soul. In the revised consignment deal, it was the later pressings. Blue Train: I had a New York 23 and a West 63^rd. For the package deal I included the New York 23; for the consignment deal it is the West 63^rd. Miles Davis on Blue Note: in the original package I decided to keep the 10-inch and sell the 12-inch. When it became consignment, I kept them all.

I was willing to sell a bunch of high-end records because it will give me a sense of how well the consignment process works. It was a hard call, but I included all of my doubles. I tell you, when you are holding an original copy of Soultrane, Blue Train or Saxophone Colossus in your hands and you know that you searched for years for those records, it is very hard to part with them, even if you have another copy. I’m sure Ruldolf can attest to that as well. Also, there were very rare collectibles that I just don’t listen to: The Donald Byrd on Transition and Jutta Hipps and Grant Greens on Blue Note are examples of that. My Jutta Hipp with Zoot is so clean, I’m hoping we may be able to set a new high for that record.

What’s next? I haven’t heard from Jason for a few days, but per our last email, the records may be going up for auction this week. I gave him carte blanche to list them as he wants, to grade them according to his standards, to use whatever language he wishes to describe them. After all, he’s the one in the business of selling rare jazz vinyl on eBay, and he’s done pretty well without me so far. Stay tuned.

The post A New Adventure in Jazz Collecting, Part 6 first appeared on jazzcollector.com.]]> https://jazzcollector.com/features/a-new-adventure-in-jazz-collecting-part-6/feed/ 18 9161 https://jazzcollector.com/features/a-new-adventure-in-jazz-collecting-part-5/ https://jazzcollector.com/features/a-new-adventure-in-jazz-collecting-part-5/#comments Fri, 14 Apr 2023 12:45:37 +0000 https://jazzcollector.com/?p=9158 On Feb. 4, 2023 I turned 70 years of age. Yada, yada, yada . . . on Feb. 7, 2023 I sent an email to [...]

On Feb. 4, 2023 I turned 70 years of age.

Yada, yada, yada . . . on Feb. 7, 2023 I sent an email to Carolina Soul Records to see if they would be interested in buying a portion of my collection. So, yeah,  you could say turning 70 was a bit of a tipping point for me. Why did I reach out to Carolina Soul as my first choice? We’ve all been watching over the past few years as they have come out of nowhere to be one of the premier sellers of jazz vinyl on eBay. They seem to grade the records fairly, they must have a strong coterie of loyal customers, they get good prices, and they keep getting these pretty amazing collections of jazz records. I also figured, with the money they’ve collected in some of these auctions, they might have the wherewithal to actually pay cash up-front for the records. Plus, there were a few comments on the Jazz Collector site that pointed me in their direction, alluding to their reputation for being “very favorable” on consignment payouts, as Clifford mentioned the other day a comment on the first article in this New Adventure in Jazz Collecting.

The next day I got an email from Jason Perlmutter, the founder and owner of Carolina Soul, which basically said “let’s chat.” We did chat a couple of days later and I told him what I was thinking: That I was ready to sell a good portion of my collection; that I expected a fair price, given the quality of what I had; that I would prefer an outright sale versus consignment; that the number I had in mind for what I expected to get in return was pretty high based on my extensive knowledge of the market. I asked him if he was intimidated by the number and he said he wasn’t, which was a good sign. I also got nice vibe from him. He seemed like a nice guy and someone I would be happy to do business with.

We made a second date for me to show him the collection on FaceTime. This was before I had decided what I would be prepared to sell and what I would keep. I told him up front that I was keeping virtually everything by certain artists – Coltrane, Rollins, Bird, Bill Evans, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis, Billie Holiday – but I had doubles of most of their collectible records and they would be included in the package. I also said I was keeping all of my 78s, not just because I like them, but because the market for them is so limited.

All in all, I estimated I would be prepared to sell 6,000 to 7,000 records, which would still leave me with a core collection of about 2,000 records, including my Beatles collection and other non-jazz records. I also let him know that this was a fairly momentous decision for me, which he well understood, and I suggested he move pretty quickly before I had a chance to change my mind. Jason’s reply: “Thanks, Al. Based on what you’re saying, I ought to make plans to visit ASAP!”

There we go with another exclamation point!!!

So, we started making plans for Jason to drive in his van from Durham, North Carolina to The Berkshires in Western Massachusetts for the possible sale of 6,000 to 7,000 records. How did he end up with 700 records in his van as he began the journey back home? Stay tuned.

The post A New Adventure in Jazz Collecting, Part 5 first appeared on jazzcollector.com.]]>

Looking back, it seems I’ve been going through this existential angst about what to do with my collection ever since I started Jazz Collector back in 2003, and probably well before that. I am sure, among this audience, I am not alone, but I’m fairly unique in that I  have this forum to share and explore my experiences, as I am doing yet again. I learn a lot about myself from doing Jazz Collector and from paying attention to the comments on the site.

In this case, I go back to a post I did on June 20, 2022 titled Back in Action. This was another one of those angsty posts in which I shared that my long-term plan for retirement was to spend more time doing Jazz Collector and to go back to selling records on eBay, a la Rudolf and some of the other regular contributors to the site. There were a lot of thoughtful comments on that post but one especially hit a nerve. It was from Mark and this is what he said:

“I think the last thing I would want to do when I retire is sell jazz records online! I mean perhaps selling a few key high end pieces would make sense, but in reality I would rather just consign the whole collection to a big name eBay dealer or store. It also seems that collecting taxes and such is more and more of a thing these days on Discogs and eBay.”

The exclamation point really caught my attention. And I thought: “Is this really what I want to do, how I want to spend my time? Taking pictures of records, putting them online, taking bids, boxing records, going to the post office, shipping them all over the world, dealing with potential complaints about the condition or the slow mail delivery, paying eBay and PayPal fees, paying taxes.”

I realize I’m putting it in a negative light because at one time not so long ago the answer to the general idea of selling records on eBay would have been yes, that would be an interesting way to spend my time. As I wrote yesterday, it could be a lot of fun enjoying the records as part of a process to thin out the collection and only keep records that give me joy.

But, as the reality of retirement kept creeping closer, I realized that was no longer my frame of mind, that I was much closer to feeling like exclamation-point Mark rather than feeling like any previous version of myself. So I had this all in the back of my mind as I was putting the records back in storage, reorganizing my collection once again, hauling records back to New York, and wondering what the hell was I going to do next.

So what was it that finally tipped me over the edge to reach out to Carolina Soul Records? Stay tuned.

I trace the roots of this latest chapter in The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown back to a post I wrote on Jazz Collector on July 28, 2022. It was simply called Updates. In this midst of writing about a bunch of records on eBay, I went off topic based on a comment from our friend Maarten Kools — the idea of spending time with the records and enjoying them while also enjoying the process of thinning them out. Then, I wrote this: “If someone would have the wherewithal to buy one of the world’s greatest jazz collections in one shot, you know where to find me.”

The next day I received an email. The sender said he did, indeed, have the wherewithal to buy a collection like mine. Henceforth, I will refer to this individual as KC Ken, short for Kansas City Ken, which is neither his real name nor real location. Anyway, I checked him out on LinkedIn and it didn’t take more than a minute to determine that yes, he did have that kind of wherewithal. I wrote back and suggested we chat.

I will spare you the gory details, but eventually he agreed to buy about 1,000 records at what I considered to be a fair price. The good thing, from my end, was that it did not include any original Blue Notes or Prestiges, or Coltrane, Rollins, Bill Evans, Clifford Brown, etc. I would even keep most of my doubles. But KC Ken did have certain requirements and one was that the records all be in M- or better condition. They also had to be original pressings from the 1950s up to 1970.

In order to put together the right package for KC Ken I had to do an enormous amount of work. Hauling hundreds of records out of storage, bringing hundreds of  records from New York to The Berkshires, pulling records off the shelves, throwing my collection into shambles, looking at every single pre-1970 record in my collection, putting together lists that he could peruse. It was nearly a three-month project that was both time consuming and arduous. By the time we finally reached a deal in mid-October, I was really ready to part with the records, no second thoughts.

Then, one day after we did a virtual handshake on the phone, KC Ken reneged. Said he changed his mind. Fair enough. He was certainly entitled to do what was best for him. I felt he should have apologized for putting me through all of that work and then backing out of the deal. I guess he didn’t think so, because he never did apologize. At the time, I figured, maybe it’s for the best. Maybe I wasn’t ready to part with that many records yet. Maybe I was better off not sending so many nice records to a person who had a lot of money, but perhaps not a lot of class.

So, I hauled hundreds of records back to storage, moved hundreds of records back to my apartment in New York, put an icepack on my sore back, reorganized my collection once again, and put this misadventure with KC Ken in the rear-view mirror. But, in some ways, the die had already been cast. I was mentally ready to part with records, this just wasn’t the right deal or the right person.

So what changed between mid-October and early February, when I reached out to Carolina Soul Records? Stay tuned.

Let me start this new adventure with a post from Jazz Collector from Sept. 29, 2009. I had the audacity to call it The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown, and this an abridged version of how it began:

“I counted my records the other day. At least I counted most of them. I have more records than I want. I have them in four separate rooms in two separate homes. I have records I have owned for more than 25 years and have never put on a turntable. I have records by artists I don’t especially like. I have collected them because I am a collector. It’s what I do. That is why my site is called Jazz Collector.

“I counted the records because I have made a fairly momentous decision, and that decision is this: I am going to get rid of many of them. This is heresy, is it not? These are my friends, all hand selected personally by me. I have invited them into my home, to share my space, to give me comfort and joy in times of stress or sorrow. And they have served me well, all of them, in whatever way they could. But the time has come to part with many of them.”

As I said at the time, this was a fairly momentous decision.

I don’t think it lasted more than a few days. I either didn’t want to do it or simply couldn’t do it. Whatever the reason, there never really was a Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown here at Jazz Collector. In fact, I went in the opposite direction. Within two weeks of that post, I sold 12 records and bought 300. I had a net gain of 288 records: “At the rate I’m going,” I wrote at the time, “in three years I’ll have half a million records and I’ll be living in a straitjacket.”

Less than three years later, I purchased the Irvin Kalus collection, about 2,500 records in all. A year and a half later, I purchased the Bruce M. West collection, about 1,500 vinyl, plus a few hundred 78s. There’s collection here in my neighborhood that I first saw more than five years ago. I’m still pursuing it.

Instead of shrinking, the collection has grown in both quality and quantity in the 13-plus years since the beginning of The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown. I love hunting for and buying records. Been doing it since I can remember. It’s been a major part of my life. People know me as a jazz collector. You all know me as Jazz Collector. It’s an important part of my identity.

But . . . .

Obviously, the idea of paring the collection down has been on my mind for a while, at least since Sept. 29, 2009. Why did I finally decide to act on it now, and how did about 700 of my records end up in Durham, North Carolina with Carolina Soul Records? Stay tuned.

“You know I saw that record collection today,” I said, quite casually.

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “Anything of interest?”

“Yes, it was pretty interesting,” I said.

We sat in silence for a few seconds.

“There’s a chance I may be buying it,” I finally said.

She stared at me in stunned disbelief.

“How many?”

I smiled a sheepish smile and held up three fingers.

Her eyes popped out of her head. “Three hundred records! How can you buy three hundred more records!”

I shook my head no. I said it wasn’t three hundred. She smiled a smile of instant relief.

“Three records. That’s fine.”

I shook my head no again.

Her face turned an ashen white. She pushed the words out softly, as if they were pure evil and should have never been voiced aloud by any human being. “Three thousand records.” It was barely a whisper. The words just sat there between us. Her face went from white to green. She looked physically ill. She couldn’t swallow and her breathing tightened markedly. “You’re not serious, are you?”

Now I should explain something, lest you reach the mistaken conclusion that The Lovely Mrs. JC is anything but a wonderful and supportive spouse. About a year ago we decided to sell our home in Great Neck and downsize and get rid of many, many things that were deemed unessential. The Lovely Mrs. JC rid herself of hundreds of books and some artwork that she had treasured and I vowed to shrink my record collection, not only through the now mythical Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown, but through selling records on eBay and even donating records to charity. Last year, in fact, I sold 500 records at a garage sale for $1 apiece and donated 1,500 more to the ARChive of Contemporary Music. This was huge progress in the interest of matrimonial compromise and bliss.

However, since then I had done nothing to downsize and, in fact, had purchased two more collections and had custom cabinets built in our Berkshires home to accommodate several thousand records. In fact, I had recently designed new cabinets with my builder that were to be installed the following week, allowing me to get records out of storage and have space for yet another full roomful of records on the order of at least 2,500 or so.

As the color of her face went from white to green to white again and then starting recapturing its normal pinkish hue, The Lovely Mrs. JC asked me what I intended to do with these 3,000 records. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was really about 50 or so records that I cherished, that I wasn’t even sure what was in the entire collection. But I had thought about what to do with the records and it was a strange conclusion I had drawn that was completely unexpected to me. I wanted to keep the collection intact for a while, to just have it and pore through it and play with it and play the records, without thought to whether or how or when to sell the duplicates. For some odd reason I felt respectful to the owner of the records, whom I had probably never even met, and wanted to honor him in some way by keeping his collection alive. I have a feeling it had something to do with my own father, who passed away about 15 years ago: Knowing how much my dad treasured his records and how much it meant to him to build up his own collection and how each record he purchased meant something special to him. It seemed kind of odd, but for some reason felt natural. It was what I would have wanted for my own dad, I guess. In any case, The Lovely Mrs. JC was suddenly sympathetic to the situation.

“You know those record shelves you are building in the country,” she said. “If you buy the collection, you could put the records there.”

Brilliant. Hadn’t even thought of it myself.

So the potential obstacle of The Lovely Mrs. JC was now overcome and her support was in hand. And now I knew what I would be doing with the records if I were to purchase them. Next I just needed to get the OK from the owners of the records. Which turned out to be not as easy as it may have seemed.

Stay tuned for Part 6

A few weeks ago a woman sent me the following e-mail:

“I’m wondering if you can help me. My dad passed away suddenly in an accident. He left a huge jazz collection of approximately 2500+ vinyl albums. He died at 82 and was a jazz enthusiastic since his teens and his collection dates back to then. To his great disappointment I did not share his passion for jazz. I am interested in selling his collection. How can I go about finding its value? I’ve read some of the information on your blog and realize I need to consult an expert. Any guidance you can give would be greatly appreciated.”

I get emails like this fairly often now that I do Jazz Collector. They usually  don’t turn out to be much. I generally look to help people over e-mail and my advice if they have anything collectible is to usually tell them to try to sell the records on eBay. I’m not necessarily looking to purchase collections: I’m still a collector and not a dealer and I have way more records than I have places to keep them. Some of you, Rudolf I’m sure, may even recall that I began a project several years ago to pare down my collection, which I grandly labeled The Great Jazz Vinyl Countdown. Needless to say that project is quite defunct.

I do enjoy helping people and sharing my knowledge, which is one of the reasons I love doing Jazz Collector, and I also continue to keep an eye out for interesting collections. So I did what I normally do when I get an inquiry like this, which is to first try to figure out if the records have any value. I wrote back and suggested that she look through the records and pull out any Blue Notes, Prestiges or Verves and let me know some of the titles, so I could get a sense of what she might have. Oh, and I also asked where the records were located. I figured if the records were convenient to either of my homes in New York or Massachusetts I could always stop by and take a look.

A few days later she wrote back with a list of records. She said she went through about 100 records. There was one Blue Note – Jazz Classics, Celestial Express, the Edmond Hall Celeste Quintet.  There were two Prestiges – Bean and the Boys, a Coleman Hawkins reissue, and the Walter “Foots” Thomas All Stars, which, honestly, I had never heard of.  There were several Verves, which consisted of a few Roy Eldridge records and a JATP record.  I wrote back and asked if any of the Verves had a drawing of a trumpeter on the label. She wrote back and said they could not locate a drawing of a trumpet player on any of the labels I mentioned.

Based on the evidence at hand, I figured, eh, not a collection worth pursuing, at least not for me. It didn’t seem like a collection with original pressings and it seemed to tilt more towards more traditional jazz as opposed to the bop and hard bop of the ‘50s and ‘60s, the jazz that most of us here at Jazz Collector love and crave. If the records weren’t at a convenient location, I probably would have just passed up the opportunity and told her to look on eBay to see if she could find comparable records to see if hers had any value.

But she told me the records were located in Massapequa, which is in my old stomping grounds – and record-hunting grounds. When she gave me the address I realized the records were literally around the corner from my favorite record store, Infinity Records. At this point I really assumed the collection was nothing special – if it was anything special, surely my friend Joey at Infinity would have gobbled them up by now. However, it was Massapequa and I was planning to drive from The Berkshires to Long Island with the lovely Mrs. JC on the following Monday, and I figured I could take a look and then, worse comes to worse, stop in and say hi to Joey at Infinity.

So I set up a time to see the records.

What happened next? Stay tuned for Part Two. The following picture will give you a hint of what’s next: