We have decided to go back into the Goldmine vault, digging up interesting articles —  before anything was digitally archived — and post them online for the first time.

This is an excerpt from an article that originally ran in issue #558, December 14, 2001. Enjoy.

By Cathy Bernardy

Never accuse John Gould Jr. of dabbling. Not involved in record collecting until this past May, he currently serves as steward over more than 200,000 unplayed records, mostly 45s from the late ’80s to mid-90s. It’s enough records to fill a semi-trailer, front to back, top to bottom and just barely be able to close the door.

One day in May, he just happened to be out to lunch with a friend of his, who suggested that Gould tag along when he went to look at a golf shirt. While at the store, his friend said, “with a curious smile on his face” to the store owner, “‘Why don’t you show John the record collection?’” Gould said.

His curiosity piqued, he followed the man down a maze of dimly lit hallways back to the warehouse. “It was like a movie,” he said. The ceiling fans rotated in slow motion, shards of light pierced the windows, and “the smell of years gone by was hanging in the air…. We turned a corner and I found myself face-to-face with a mountain…. It was kind of a dreamlike situation.” The possible result of a distributor going out of business, the shrinkwrap still remained on 23 pallets of at least 70 boxes apiece sent from the record labels. “I was in awe. It was a collection of every major artist in every major category…. My brain went ‘tilt.’ I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. I couldn’t speak.”

The Georgia businessman had received the records as payment of a debt a few years back. After receiving the records, the businessman had spent six weeks cataloging what was there but had to stop. Gould reported him saying, “‘I gave up and went back to running my business.’” He told Gould that he’d always wanted to do something with the records, but he eventually conceded that he would have to get rid of them in order to expand his business into the warehouse space.

Gould, a musician who on the phone with Goldmine found it impossible to name just one favorite band, had played keyboards in local bands in the Northeast during his teens–late 20s in the early ’80s, and he still performs in a rock band at his church. (“We really praise the Lord with a lot of power and might.”) At the sight of the boxes of records stacked to the rafters, all he could think was, “How can I get my hands on the funds?”

Finally he decided to call his younger brother, Tom, owner of The Gould Group, which is a human resources firm in Albany, N.Y., that places people in jobs from management and sales to engineering, finance and the cement industry. In a day or so, the collection was purchased. Tom took it on his brother’s recommendation and made the business deal sight-unseen, which he said was against the recommendation of his better half. “It sounded a little out there,” he admitted. However, he added that a person doesn’t have to be a hobbyist to appreciate what was stored in that warehouse. “I recognize if you have something that’s mint or near mint, that’s something special.”

One of the twenty three pallets of records still in shrinkwrap

Turning the pallets of boxes into orderly rows of shelves took four guys four days, eight hours per day. The almost 1,500 boxes of records are currently stored in seven shelves 25 feet long and eight feet high. Many of the boxes of 200 singles contain eight smaller boxes of 25 records apiece, though MCA boxes contain 300 singles apiece.

“I found myself in the record business so to speak,” John said. “I bought the Goldmine Price Guide To 45 RPM Records and called Tim [Neely, the author] the next day…. “I’d be lost in the dark in the woods without you guys. I have a nice little library of Krause Publications [titles] now.”

Neely, author of the new Standard Catalog Of American Records 1976-Present, said that the laws of supply and demand will apply to the sale of these records. Generally, the more time people put into selling a collection, the more return they will see. Warehouse finds of large quantities of single records can decrease the value of individual pieces while the stock is being sold, but he said it depends to whom the collection is being marketed.

“[The early 1990s] is a period where a lot of the general public seems to think that records ‘died.’ They disappeared from the Wal-Marts and Sam Goodys of the world, so as far as they knew, they disappeared entirely…. Those records that have disappeared from the distributors are the ones most likely to move….

….The Goulds’ purchase includes colored vinyl, picture sleeve 45s, jukebox- only singles and reissues (complete with pages and pages of title strips), promos and even a few albums — about 10,000 or so, brand-new as well. There is a small amount of material that has been played, from the collection of a DJ (and some not played from that collection), as well as a smattering of new 45s from the late ’60s and early ’70s. Being singles, the material from the late ’80s and early ’90s could be quite collectible. That was the time when chain stores stopped stocking vinyl, and labels reduced the amount of 45s pressed for singles. Many contain B-sides or alternate mixes not found on any album or at least any vinyl album. (Sometimes bonus tracks would appear on the cassette and CD.)

“It’s unique in its scope of artists, the sheer size of it and the fact that these have never been played,” he said. “It’s really hard to name an artist that we don’t have.”

The first time Tom saw the collection, “My thought was, ‘It’s going to take a long time to count.’” Since the Gould brothers acquired the collection in May, it’s taken an average of two people six to eight hours a day at least two days a week to count and catalog them all. That’s about 800 work hours so far. John found that the initial cataloging was almost perfect, except where boxes were mislabeled. However, the spreadsheet index of the records stopped at O, and some boxes hadn’t been labeled — and thus counted — at all.

“I’d call Tommy back and say, “’I found another 6,000 records [that weren’t on the spreadsheet],’” Gould said. He estimated that an additional 22,000 records hadn’t been represented on the spreadsheet…..

…..Tom said he was also pleased to find out that the records’ condition was all that the seller had said. In all his time with the records, John reported that he has only found two that were broken. Besides a little dust, there is not even a fingerprint on any of the records because any handling of them has always been with gloves.

“It’s like finding an unopened vault of treasure,” he said. Though he said that it’s going to be difficult to let it go, it was purchased as a business venture. But how appropriate it is that a load of records might help him fund his dream of having his own recording studio.

Gould said that they are prepared to sell it in pieces over a couple of years, but for a limited time they will take offers on the entire collection.

Here’s a sampling of the collection, a snapshot of the era:

Colored Vinyl:
Blind Melon: “No Rain”/Tones Of Home’

Garth Brooks: “Learning To Live Again”/ “Walking After Midnight”

Charlie Louvin And Roy Acuff: “The Precious Jewel”/ “Buried Alive”

Paul McCartney: “CMon People”/ “Down To The River”

The Proclaimers: “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” / “Better Days”

Big Country Hits
Alabama: “Born Country”/ “Until It Happens To You”

Garth Brooks: “The Dance”/ “If Tommorow Never Comes”

Alan Jackson: “Chattahoochee”/ “Mercury Blues”

Reba McEntire: “You Lie”/ “That’s All She Wrote”

Restless Heart: “Bluest Eyes In Texas”/ “Familiar Pain”

Randy Travis: “If I Didn’t Have You”/ “I Told You So”

Travis Tritt: “Can I Trust You With My Heart”/ “A Hundred Years From Now”

Pop Chart-Toppers
Richard Marx: “Right Here Waiting”/ “Wait For The Sunrise”

Milli Vanilli: “Blame It on The Rain”/ “Dance With A Devil”

Mr. Big: “To Be With You”/ “Green-Tinted Sixties Mind”

New Kids On The Block: “Step By Step”/ “Valentine Girl”

Roxette: “The Look”/ “Silver Blue”

Sir Mix-A-Lot: “Baby Got Back”/ “Cake Boy”

Oh, what a great song that was
Black Crowes: “She Talks To Angels”/ live video version

Tom Petty: “Runnin’ Down A Dream”/ “Alright For Now”

Bonnie Raitt: “Something To Talk About”/ “I Can’t Make You Love Me”

Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble: “The Sky Is Crying”/ “Chitlins Con Carne”

Whitney Houston: “The Star Spangled Banner”/ “America The Beautiful”

“Hair” metal
Bon Jovi: “Bed Of Roses”/ “Lay Your Hands On Me”

Guns N’ Roses: “Don’t Cry”/ alternate version

Poison: “Unskinny Bop”/ “Swamp Juice”

Slaughter: “Fly To The Angels”/ ” Desperately”

Warrant: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”/ “Sure Feels Good To Me”

Oh, I remember that, now that you mention it

Taylor Dayne: “With Every Beat of My Heart”/ “All I Ever Wanted”

Information Society: “Think”/ “Think”

Saigon Kick: “Love Is On The Way”/ “All I Want”

Spin Doctors: “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong”/ “Two Princes”

The Two Live Crew: “Banned In The U.S. A. “/instrumental

The Simpsons: “Deep, Deep Trouble”/ “Sibling Rivalry”

While many of these listed here were popular songs, collectors of particular artists or charts might be interested in some of the singles that didn’t chart so high and thus weren’t around stores as long, if at all.

It’s been 10 years of false starts, almost deals and record company dissolutions, but England’s own Uriah Heep is finally back with a new studio album, Wake The Sleeper.

The record is a decidedly stripped-down, rocking affair, with Heep’s trademark five-part harmonies, Hammond organ and wah-wah guitars making musical magic. It’s also the first Heep album in nearly 30 years without longtime drummer Lee Kerslake, who left the band in 2007 for health issues. His replacement, Russell Gilbrook, has brought new energy and a new voice to the band, composed of guitarist and founding member Mick Box, bassist Trevor Bolder, keyboardist Phil Lanzon and vocalist Bernie Shaw.

Goldmine spoke with Box about the new album, the new drummer and more.

Uriah Heep has had a history of bad luck and struggles with record companies. After recording your first album in a decade, you then had to wait a year for Wake The Sleeper’s release. Did you think it would ever happen?

Mick Box: Yeah. We always had faith, but you never know… the music business — the whole way it was [previously] structured with the record companies and the Internet came along and shook everything up. Initially, record companies took Napster to court, and they attacked the Internet, didn’t they? But they found out they couldn’t police it; they couldn’t work it, so they moved on and decided they had to embrace the Internet.

And in doing so, the record companies were never the same. They folded up, disappeared, amalgamated, got smaller, lots of people getting fired, not many people getting hired — it’s one of those jobs, you know. [laughs]

So it just went on and on and on, and we really couldn’t find a home. We’d actually left our last record company because they didn’t support Sonic Origami as well as we’d wanted, so we were kind of homeless for a while there. But we always had the faith that somewhere down the line we’d find a way of doing it.

We were very close during those 10 years with a number of little companies and some bigger ones. But as soon as you get in touch and start talking, the next minute they’re not there! [laughs] “We’ve been taken over.” And that ended up happening to us with this particular album, because we signed to Sanctuary — who owned our back catalog — in the U.K. And they said they were going to do a frontline label with a few bands like us, and we’d be the first on it. We went off and recorded the album, came back, and Sanctuary loved it and put a release date out, and then they got taken over by Universal! And we had to wait another year to find out if Universal was going to release it. Thank God they did. And now I’m talking to you. [laughs]

The five of you recorded this live, together, as a band?

MB: What happened was Mike Paxman, who produced the album, was a real inspiration. He came into rehearsals, heard the songs in the rehearsal room and said, “God, this is the way we’ve got to record it. This is so exciting.” He was bouncing off the walls with excitement, and it was just wonderful.

We thought that maybe he was onto something, because the band plays better because we were playing as a band! As long as you can play your instruments, that’s fine. We didn’t like the idea of doing it piecemeal — you know, doing the drums, and then the bass, and then the guitars, and then the Hammond. We wanted to do it as a band. I think we do our best speaking as a band, anyway, ‘cause we’re all on one pulse then.

So we went into the room — this particular room is called The Chapel. It’s an old converted church. W

About a year ago I authored an article for Goldmine — the theme was that you don’t have to go broke collecting rare jazz LPs.

Sure, there are some collectors who can afford to pay big bucks for Blue Notes and cartons of cash for Contemporarys. But, if you are not one of those lucky few who can, do not despair.

I get a special thrill out of finding a record that is both enjoyable and more or less unknown. The pages of my two price guides contain many penciled-in entries — records that don’t exist, at least according to the price guides. Because they are not listed in the guides, collectors tend to overlook them when they show up in thrift stores and yard sales. It is true that you have to do a little searching through some vinyl foolishness to find some serious wax, but isn’t that part of the fun of being a record collector?

This article is a continuation of my previous one. Listed and described below are a few of the many unknowns I have managed to rescue from yard sales, thrift stores and used vinyl emporiums. Most found their way into my collection for a dollar or so.

Big Beat on the Organ
Jon Thomas
Wing 12258
Personnel: Jon Thomas — organ, unknown sax, unknown drums, unknown bass.

I had just purchased three LPs for a dollar, and I was about to leave the thrift store when I decided to invest another 34 cents on this record. I’m glad I did. Fans of jazz organist Jimmy Smith will like these 10 tracks, but the mysterious sax player, with his warm, fat sound, often steals the limelight. This is especially true on “Diane,” “Hard Head” and “Memories of You.” Is this the famous “Jug” Ammons, who also had an LP on Wing?

Big Saxophone in Rock & Roll Style
Teddy & the Tornadoes
Shelley X-12
Personnel: unknown sax, unknown piano, unknown drums, unknown guitar, unknown bass.

The title notwithstanding, someone forgot to tell this outfit they were supposed to play straight rock and roll. This is definitely a jazz LP. “Moonlight Becomes You,” “Blue Moon” and “Moonlight and Roses” are standouts on this 14-track set that originated from the same Shelley label that gave birth to a few doo-wop gems in the early ’60s. I’m guessing this LP was also made in the early ’60s, based on the musical style. Anyone know the identity of these fine jazz musicians?

El Tigre
Barney Kessel & Harold Land
Charlie Parker 832
Personnel: Barney Kessel, guitar; Harold Land, tenor sax; Jimmy Rowles, piano; Pete Condoli, trumpet; Red Mitchell, bass; Larry Bunker, vibes; Mel Lewis, drums.

There is no mystery surrounding the identities of the seven players listed here. All are justifiably famous in jazz circles. The mystery is why this LP, featuring an all-star lineup and produced by a well-known jazz label about 1963, has seemingly escaped the attention of those who author jazz price guides. Condoli is bodacious on “Body and Soul,” Rowles shows his pianistic prowess on “Cheeta’s for Two,” and Land plays lovely enough to charm any snake on “The Cobra.” This is a consistently fine LP throughout.

Sax Spectacular Volume Two
Bob Fleming
HiFi Masterpiece 11036
Personnel: Bob Fleming, sax; unknown piano; unknown bass; unknown drums.

Fleming plays a mean sax in an echo chamber and the pianist is better than adequate on such classic tunes as “I’m in the Mood for Love,” “Stella by Starlight” and “All the Way.” There are no liner notes, but the back cover informs us that

Given the number of labels Porcupine Tree and Steven Wilson have called home, it should go without saying that the band has left an enormous amount of collectibles in the wake of its recordings.

One of the world’s leading Porcupine Tree collectors, Ray Badowski, claims to have hundreds of rare and standard-issue releases tied to the Tree.

“I started to keep track of every recording, with all its releases, promos, test pressings, versions, media types, colors, difference between EAN/UPC barcodes, etc,” says Badowski, who was first introduced to Porcupine Tree just after the release of the band’s Lava Records debut, In Absentia. “If you included the sampler-type recordings where there is even one Porcupine Tree track on it, the list is close to 400. I’ve got about 75 percent of that list… and I admit I’ve been losing ground.”

What are some of the rarest Porcupine Tree items in Badowski’s collection?

Badowski explains: “In addition to the mega-rare Lava Records Pre-Cleared Songs For Film Vol. 1, which contains the ‘Meantime’ track, I’d probably cite the following: Fans know the two original … cassettes, Tarquin’s Seaweed Farm and The Nostalgia Factory, but it is not as well known that they were released in two versions. The initial version, obviously the rarer of the two, did not have a label on the cassette itself; rather, it had the title hand-written with a silver pen. Also, the final edit for the band’s first Delerium LP On the Sunday of Life appeared on a cassette titled ‘Porcupine Tree — double album/CD — final edit.’ This was not released per se, but it is one-of-a-kind.

“There are others, but the Lava Records Pre-Cleared Songs For Film Vol. 1 is definitely one of the rarest items I own,” Badowski continues. “I don’t know the going price for that one — I believe I paid $160 when I got it. You should know, however, that recently both the early cassettes, the ones with labels, went for over $1,000 each.”

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