A place I just visited was talked about on Crate Digers.

[somethingvinyl]

Not as cool as I thought it would be, but on this episode of Crate Diggers (within the first couple of minutes), this DJ who was in Jurassic 5 is telling a story about an old building here and he describes what has to be done to enter it. I just went digging there on Sunday! Small world and all.

[somethingvinyl]

[paranoidantroyd]

Hip hop DJs/producers dig for stuff that isn't always good. They dig for stuff that they'll actually use less than 10 seconds per record, if that. I do love Crate Diggers though, they've had some great guys on but I'm still waitin for a Premo episode.

[somethingvinyl]

Not the biggest fan of rap and certainly not a DJ, but this has some history.

 

This place is called Eddie's 3-Way and it's in a part of town that's historically black. In the 50's & 60's, Eddie Sr. couldn't really get distribution from white people who stocked the other white stores first, so he went directly to the labels and became the distro for the black communities surrounding the store. It was a thriving store in a bad part of town that was progressively getting worse. His son, Eddie Jr., took over the store in the late 70's. In the early 80's, he was shot while in the store as a result of a drive-by occurring directly outside of the store. His family put all the records up in the attic above the store for many years. Being handicapped, he couldn't take people up there.

In the 90's, he stared to let people go buy stuff. Not knowing what to charge after not being in the business for 10 years, he used to get like $10 a 45, $20 an LP. Lots of famous DJ's and not so famous ones pulled the best stuff out. If you're not a fan of soul and funk at all, especially NOLA music, than this wouldn't interest you. But the kind of shit pulled originally, well, is stuff like this:

http://www.popsike.com/EDDIE-BO-45-Showdown-BO-SOUND-rare-NOLA-funk-VG-HEAR/110802230203.html

 

http://www.popsike.com/Marlyn-Barbarin-RARE-Northern-Soul-45-on-Nola/120153105183.html

 

http://www.popsike.com/WILLIE-TEE-Please-Dont-Go-on-NOLA-Rare-Northern-So/4744273973.html

 

I've never been that lucky. The other day I came across a double LP that Little Milton played on in the 80's that's private pressing. Weird, but good soul/funk stuff that's worth between $30-40 because it was sealed. I've got a few $20 45's out of there. He charges $5 a 45 now and $10 an LP.

[paranoidantroyd]

When you're getting paid $10-20,000 for a beat it's easy to drop a grand on a single piece of wax. The average vinyl collector may think they've got something special because they have an album with only 100 pressings while these DJs/producers have crate after crate of albums with less than 10 in existence. Even if you're not a fan of hip hop you have to admire the great lengths these guys go to in order to perfect their craft.

[somethingvinyl]

I haven't seen too many DJ's, the non-famous ones I know, with anything really limited. Obviously, guys that got collections that are 20K+ records probably would. Most of the time, the ones I know, they're trying to find things not sampled or obscure enough to use, but it's nothing insanely rare.

 

I never appreciated J Dilla until he died. That guy had a passion for music that went beyond a genre.

 

[paranoidantroyd]

Jay Dee was one of the greats, no doubt. I'm just hoping Ma Dukes releases the vaults full of stuff he produced that have never seen the light of day. If his stuff peaks your interest you should check out Madlib or at least the first Quasimoto album, it's phenomenal in my opinion. There's an older documentary called "Scratch" that has some really great stories. Cut Chemist tells a story about T Ray traveling around the states to find obscure records and he would tear record store pages out of phone books at payphones so that other diggers couldn't find the stores. The average person has no idea who T Ray is but that guy has done an incredible amount of stuff. I think he even produced a Helmet album for christ sake.

[torpaul]

Scratch is an amazing documentary. the pieces on Shadow are really inspiring. if you have a chance, check out his "boiler room" set. its crazy.

[paranoidantroyd]

Eh, Shadow has been on a short leash with me. Honestly, I wish he would have quit after Endtroducing.

[torpaul]

while i agree with that with his recorded stuff, i really appreciate watching him do what he does live.

 

also, that 4 dj round table with the scratch pickles in that movie is crazy.

[paranoidantroyd]

It's been quite a while since I've seen it but I definitely remember a heavy dose of Q-Bert and Yoga Frog. It saddens me a lil bit that there aren't more hip hop enthusiasts on this board. To see a Digable Planets thread get about 6 comments while dogshit bands like fall out boy get 60 pages is very telling of what our society has become over the last 20 years. (Insert Cedric Bixler Zavala's bleating sheep noise here)

[jonnywreck]

It's been quite a while since I've seen it but I definitely remember a heavy dose of Q-Bert and Yoga Frog. It saddens me a lil bit that there aren't more hip hop enthusiasts on this board. To see a Digable Planets thread get about 6 comments while dogshit bands like fall out boy get 60 pages is very telling of what our society has become over the last 20 years. (Insert Cedric Bixler Zavala's bleating sheep noise here)

 

To form a full opinion on society you may want to venture outside a punk-oriented message board. While I think that the new FOB is pure dogshit, I also realize that most of the people that post on here would be more familiar with an artist rooted in "punk" rock stuff rather than hip-hop. I think there are probably plenty of people buying Digable Planets records, just not the type of people that post on this board.