Weekly Digs – May 12, 2012

Definitely gotten it in this past week on the digging. A week ago, I pulled myself out of bed at 4:45am on a Saturday to stumble to the subway, sleepwalk to New Jersey Transit, and somehow make it on board the SEPTA train to Philly. Like some kind of 90s music video, my train arrived parallel to another train from the Philly suburbs, carrying none other than partner-in-crates Verb Math (aka Dave) and we stepped out onto the platform from adjacent trains like it was all pre-planned. (Only slightly)

Anyway, enough with the play-by-play. Basically, the mutual mission was the Philadelphia Flea Market (There has been a hesitation to reveal locations like this in the past due to the competitive digging aspect, balanced against telling good stories and sharing tales of finding great music. I still battle with it, but for the most part there’s enough to share, especially at these flea markets. If you’re gonna wake up early and spend the time to go in on these records, then you deserve to know about some spots, if that makes sense.), an occasional occurrence I’ve found myself at over the past decade, sometimes with much success, other times with nothing, but still worth a trip out of New York. (At least it always makes you feel like you’re dedicated to this crazy shit!) We weren’t super early, but we made it in time to cop a couple things, check a couple obscure cats. Dave went home with that Headhunters piece he’d been scouting out for awhile, and I took some risks on a couple fusion pieces, along with some $5 jazz records. One piece I picked up that should prove to be a sunny weekend classic:

No cover for my copy, but still well-worth it, along with a couple others I can’t reveal just yet.

Fast-forward to mid-week. On my way over to drink a brew or two Thursday evening, I stopped by my favorite Manhattan book-and-record store, which had just put out 4-5 new dollar crates. Ran through most of them and found this, which I hadn’t known about before:

Another one of those early 90s funky classics.

Finally, it was such a beautiful day in Brooklyn today that even though I had errands to run and things to be responsible for, I felt it important to walk up the block and check the hipsterfied Brooklyn Flea. Someone was selling used Star Wars figures for $10 each. Huh? No. Anyway – not too much depth to the record vendors but one older cat had a bunch of beat up soul classics, with a few of those lesser-known pieces in-between. For $3 I came up on Wade Marcus “A New Era,” which looked interesting enough to drop a few bills on. And…success.