This Is Book’s Music

Some weekends are made for Michelob, but for a lot of us record collectors/cratediggers/vinyl junkies’, it’s also the perfect time to look for records. As the weather in the Northern Hemisphere gets warmer, it also means we’re a month away from spring cleaning, which means many will be holding yard and garage sales. It will usually lead to countless witness accounts of endless collections of Mantovani, Bert Kaempfert, and Barry Manilow discographies (if you’ve ever questioned how Manilow could be so popular, just see how many of his records have been tossed out in the last 35 years). If you’re lucky, you’ll find someone with a nice collection featuring records that you want to listen to or buy to resell.

Chris Reisman, whose p/k/a is Nobs, went on such a trip to find records and stated this recently on Twitter:
just looked thru a disco collection. no lie. found a mummified rat. so gross. thank god I was wearing latex gloves and a respirator.

Keep this in mind. When I worked at a thrift store years ago, I worked there in order to get first crack (aah!) at the records that were coming in. No such luck: they put me in women’s clothing. I barely folded my own clothes, and now I had to fold women’s clothes? Anyway, I dealt with clothes that were rinsed in insecticide, a smell that I could not get rid of quickly. When things are tossed out from homes, you have no idea about the condition of the home, garage, or basement. If you’re going into a familiar neighborhood, you still have to do some research, but you can never expect for a mummified rat to be in a box or corner. So remember: hand sanitizer is a must. If you’re going through brutal places, be like Nobs and bring gloves and a surgical mask.

For more of Nobs’ adventures, you can click the blog I linked above, or this one.

(NOTE: The photo of the dead rat above is not an actual photo of the rat Nobs found in the disco records.)