Day Three (Not) At The WFMU Record Fair

So, after more than an hour of live rock music blasting in my ears, I decided to bag it at the WFMU Record Fair after Saturday, so I packed my records, loaded them in my Prius and drove them home. But what was I to do with them next? There were a dozen boxes of records, probably 700 altogether, plus another 500 or 600 records already in the house or in storage that are to be sold. I’ve bought three collections in the past year, and I have at least that many duplicates or reissues or records I simply don’t want. Previously, I’ve been selling records on eBay, but my real work has gotten quite busy and I’m not doing that anymore, so it seemed I was facing the prospect of just putting all of these records in storage and waiting another year for the next WFMU Record Fair so I could sell 100 of them while getting bombarded with close range music of mass destruction.

It is at times like this when I wish I had a record store.

Then, on Sunday morning at 6 a.m., on what would have been Day Three of the WFMU Record Fair, I woke up startled with a clear revelation. I would

rearrange the records in my basement, and use the shelving I have downstairs to place all of my doubles and records to sell and I would sell them from my basement, a la my old friend Red Carraro. This way, I could get rid of records and also give the readers of Jazz Collector an opportunity to purchase them rather than selling them to some random bidders on eBay.

So I jumped out of bed at 6:05 a.m. on Sunday and began moving records. By the time I was done at around noon, all – or at least most – of my duplicates were on the shelves in the basement and all of the records that had been there previously were now in boxes and in a separate storage closet elsewhere in the house. My back was quite sore as well, but the task was nearly done. Many of the records have prices on them, many don’t, and they’re not quite organized the way I would like, but it’s a start. Someday soon I will announce on Jazz Collector the opening of these secret little basement shop and we will see what happens next. It will only be available for viewing on an appointment basis, of course. In the meantime, if any of you are going to be traveling in the New York area and would like to get a preview feel free to send me an e-mail: al(at)jazzcollector.com. I’m quite busy with work these days, but we’ll see what we can do. So Day Three at the WFMU Record Fair, even though I was not at the WFMU Record Fair, turned out to be quite productive anyway.