End of an Era
On our way through Los Angeles, I had to sort out a storage locker full of crap from my pre-mexico life. Including but not limited to years of collecting graphic design books, magazines, art, interior decorations, my entire artistic career - every last thing I ever drew/painted/designed/photographed and last but not least 1500+ records. 10+ years of daily crate digging. Countless trips to the Pasadena City College swap meet and many long nights after work, digging through dusty crates in run down record stores across L.A. Every genre you could possibly think of, equal parts early-mid 90’s hip-hop, early reggae/ska/dub and funk/jazz/soul records.
My vinyl weighed a ton and after years of figuring out how to get the bulk of it to mexico, I came to the conclusion that this dream would never pass. So with weary eyes pointed to the ground, I trucked my 15 boxes of records down to Amoeba Records and said my goodbyes. Back whence they came, to light up other people’s faces. Better then a most certain death, south of the border, to heat, humidity and no second-hand market.
The upside? Ya see, the rub is this: I didn’t own the records, they owned me. I was their guardian and once I found them a new, good home. I was free. I did end up saving about 150 of them. The really good ones. The ones that will never make it to CD or even MP3, ever. Plus the ones that are really good on record. One Technique 1200, a Griffin iMic 2 and WireTap Studio Pro and I’m all set up to listen to my surviving collection directly from my computer. Ahh, techmology.
