Egon

The first record on Sun Ra’s Saturn label I found was at Replay Records in West Haven, Connecticut: ‘Taking A Chance On Chances.’ It was in a plain white sleeve, sometime in the mid-90s, and I assumed that’s why it was so inexpensive. I’d previously found a few of the Impulse reissues of Saturn LP’s and they were far beyond my ability to comprehend, and at that time those records were pricier than the random independent Sun Ra LPs one stumbled across in stores in Philly and Chicago. Well, most times they were. The only Sun Ra record I really wanted back then was the one everyone I knew wanted: ‘Languidity.’ That one was always pricey. Over the years, I’ve become very fond of a small swath of Ra’s vast discography, and I’m intrigued by all of it. At the end of the Magic Isle record event at Now-Again, as Noel was packing up his records to ship back East, and I was hemming and hawing over a perfect copy one of my favorite Ra LP’s – ‘Night of the Purple Moon,’ in its first issue (a black Thoth Intergalatic label and a Saturn Research sleeve) – Noel made me an offer I couldn’t refuse, on that and what is my favorite LP by the maestro, ‘Sleeping Beauty.’ This copy was autographed by Ra’s vocalist and Arkestra glue, June Tyson. “To Nick, Happy Space Age,” she wrote, in penmanship as elegant as her voice.

After 23 years of selling vinyl, we now have the sign that says it. If you’re in LA and want to see what we’re about - stay tuned here as we announce all of our sporadic but usually monthly events this way. #KeepOnMoving #Vinyl

Here are some of the stellar records from Prince Be’re records that I’ve been inspecting, cleaning, sleeving and grading for Saturday’s event. If you want a chance to preview these, you can join us at Now-Again HQ in LA on Friday from 6-8PM. It would have been Be’s 56th birthday, so we’re celebrating: Muggs and I are pouring the 2020 and 2022 vintages of our collaboration with Broc Cellars, Notes & Tones; we’re playing records from Be’s collection; and @soilpimp is in town so you never know what he might bring. Come hang with us and take in a moment to consider the joy of record collecting, through the pieces amassed in a dedicated life pursuing these flat, black discs, by of one of its most regal representatives

Records from Prince Be’s collection that will be made available at Now-Again HQ in LA this coming Saturday in LA. It was a bitingly cold Thursday, earlier this year, and I made my way from Philadelphia to a town on the waterfront in New Jersey, to meet my old record collecting mentor Georges Sulmers and Prince Be’s family. We spent the afternoon going through many of Be’s records, and I heard story after story about this great musician and prodigious collector. Be’s widow Mary and Georges have known each other for forty years – back when her brother was in a metal band and Georges was moonlighting from his gig at Def Jam and writing for Hit Parader. The things these folks have seen in their lives in music! Satiated with what we assembled, Be’s son drove Georges and I to the ferry. We talked about Dilla and Kevin Smith as we drove by the store where ‘Clerks’ was filmed. Both of those geniuses were big P.M. Dawn fans. Georges told me more tales of the Roosevelt on the boatride. I then met Robert and Renee at Four Horsemen with a 1998 Griotte Chambertin I’d brought, vinted in the prime time of New York record collecting. And it was perfect.

In exactly one week, for one day in LA, we are selling rarities from the king – ahem, Prince – of NYC’s early ‘90s Roosevelt Record Conventions. With Prince Be’s family and one of my record collecting mentors - and PM Dawn manager, and original Def Jam employee, and 80s Hit Parade columnist, and, and, and – Georges Sulmers, we curated what will be the last sale of the albums that Be collected that not only helped define his life in music, but helped shape the course of what you now think of as not just hip hop, but popular music. When I first started thinking of what type of environment I wanted to have at the pop up record events I’ve been hosting in LA for the past 12 years, the vibe of the Roosevelt Record Conventions were what immediately came to mind. So it’s a real honor to make this one of the last record events we will host before end these in December. So – for the moment, come drift with us. If you’re in town - we’ll have a preview on Friday evening, 6-8pm, and Muggs and I will be pouring some of the last of 2022 vintage of our Broc Cellars collaboration, Notes & Tones. And the sale kicks off Saturday at noon.

Here’s a selection of what I purchased from Prince Be’s family when we offered the first set of records from his vast collection at Rappcats in 2022. The copy of Power of Zeus came from John Carraro - if you want to know more about him, and the legendary Roosevelt Record Convention where this album was discovered, you can check my previous posts. And if this selection doesn’t tempt you to come visit Now-Again HQ in LA one week from tomorrow as we offer out the last of what Be’s family will sell - in a sale I curated with my collecting mentor and P.M. Dawn’s manager Georges Sulmers… well, to paraphase Charles Schultz, you’re better than me, Charlie Brown.

The final part in series of reflections on the late Prince Be, John Carraro, and the sellers, collectors and denizens of the Roosevelt Hotel Record Conventions in 1990s Manhattan. If you want to read more, there are eight posts before this. The first picture shows Be, John and John’s wife Jacqui, circa 1994; the second shows a rare Frankie Beverly 45 that John gave as a gift, and inscribed, to Be. That photo was taken last week by Be’s widow Mary. John Carraro died in New York in 2009, aged 52. You won’t find an obituary online – you might find the article he penned for Waxpoetics about his experiences at the Roosevelt if you kept stock of the journal; all online links are now gone. You will find a video interview of him talking with DJ Soulero in 2004, looking more gaunt than he does in the pictures you’ve seen here, but brimming with enthusiasm as he talks about the records he discovered and shared with his pals, as he called them: the upper echelon of New York’s hip hop producers of that important era that changed the path of popular music. Prince Be died in New Jersey in 2016, aged 46. You will find a lot of information about Be and PM Dawn online, and you will even find a passing reference to one of his great passions in his New York Times’ obituary: “He was also a well-regarded record collector.” You will probably agree, after reading these posts, how underwhelming an assessment that is. Be, John, “Boston” Bob and others – and the spirit of the Roosevelt in general – were what I was thinking of when I envisioned what our series of LA record events we once hosted at Rappcats - and now wind down at Now-Again - would look and feel like. The legacy of those events, and the legacies of those that made them legend, still inspire me. And the loving touch of those personal moments that went beyond collecting and commerce, the note John wrote for Be on the gift of that Beverly 45, that Mary has kept and always will – that is, and always has been, what matters most.

In this photo, the two best dealers from NYC’s early 1990s Roosevelt Hotel Record Convention – “Boston” Bob Gibson, in the upper left, and John Carraro, with his wife Jacqui in the center and right. In the second picture, another one of John’s epic Roosevelt walls. This is part eight in a series of posts about this era of collecting and the late Prince Be. Joe Mansfield: “Me, Bob and this other guy Michael Smart would pitch in on the table at the Roosevelt and leave super early from Boston to get there at 5 am and set up. The only thing with Bob was that he kept a lot of records in his personal collection and for the ones he did want to sell, he would take phone calls and sell records to people before the show started. So – our table was good, but John’s was better than ours. John would do this unveiling – and it was the craziest thing at the show. He would have his display wall covered with a sheet. Everyone who paid to get in early would be there for this. He would wait until he was ready and then unveil it - and it was always great. He could have Stark Reality, a library record no one knew about or the Surprize album ‘Keep On Truckin’’ That was rare then and its still rare. It was incredible!” Joe, “Boston” Bob, John and other dealers from that era –“Jazzman” Gerald, Michael and Jodi McFadin, “Cool” Chris, Aki and so many more – were creating culture and developing a language still being explored and augmented today. They were intrepid musical explorers, cartographers, discographers - when few cared. The collections amassed by those like “Boston” Bob and Prince Be will never be assembled again, because the way that they bought records was based on availability, instinct and utility. “Boston” Bob bought for education, enjoyment and, out of necessity, for sale; Be, for the former two things and for creating music. Now common drum breaks that Be paid hundreds for were evened out in his collection by records now classified as Spiritual Jazz that, back then, were called something else and sold for a fifteen bucks. Concluded tomorrow.

Part seven in a series of reflections of the denizens of the Roosevelt Hotel Record Conventions and digging in the ‘90s. All photos taken by 88-Keys: the first photo you see here is John needle dropping a record for Busta Rhymes; the second one of his wall arrays at the show, circa ‘94. By the end of ‘97, armed with the information I’d first gotten from Dooley-O and augmented by the time I spent with Georges Sulmers, I was busy driving from Nashville to whatever part of the South or Midwest on any weekend I could. My mentors soon included Matt Weingarten, Dante Carfagna and, by proxy, DJ Shadow, Phillipe Lehman and Chris Veltri and I was even able to glean bits by winning over, record by record, NYC’s post-Roosevelt gate-keepers like Aldo, Romain, Steve, Rob and Jared from A-1, and later at The Sound Library. It was mind boggling how many records we found. Georges was always a phone call away – when I showed up at Jim Russell’s World Famous Used Records in New Orleans and saw a bin card for the Chuck Carbo 45 on Fireball, I called Georges and asked him how many I should buy. “All of them,” he replied. But they are $12 each, I said, and I only have a few hundred bucks and there are records everywhere! “Who can you call, and how much can you borrow?” was what George said. And he was right. I only wish I’d paid more heed: I’d have storage units like DJ Shadow does. (I’m a decent, dedicated collector, and a horrible, hesitant seller.) You could still buy from mailing lists back then, and still find incredible and obscure records if you were one of the first to reply to Craig Moerer or Lew Stanley or David Forman, after their newsprint catalogs arrived in your mailbox. Soon digital digging - on long, poorly coded databases offered online by stores, and then Gemm, and then eBay - changed things forever. At one point in the mid 2000s, Madlib and I spent an entire day at Japee Records and Tapes in Miami, and I remember, hacking from the dust and with blackened fingers, bringing Japee a hundred or so records to price. He took his time and told me he would sell me ten of them – and he thanked me for bringing him the rest to auction on eBay. Continued tomorrow.

Part six in a series of reflections on the late Prince Be, John Carraro, and the sellers, collectors and denizens of the Roosevelt Hotel Record Conventions in 1990s Manhattan. All photos taken by 88-Keys: the first photo you see here is one of their wall arrays at the show, circa 1994. I met Georges Sulmers through Wes Jackson, who was working in promotion for Georges’ Raw Shack Records, right around the time they were issuing J-Live’s second single and, if I recall the story correctly, when Mark Ronson was moonlighting as a producer for the label. Georges lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn, and when you entered his lofty apartment, you saw towering stacks of records, both LP’s and 45s. In 1997, this was the best collection I’d ever seen in person, and Georges let me rifle through it. I asked him about samples used on the J-Live record and he showed me his Stark Reality and the ‘Mulatu of Ethiopia’ album. The collector Dante Carfagna once described finding the ‘Astral Navigations’ album in Thomas Boddie’s Soul Kitchen studios as akin to finding a microwave in King Tut’s tomb. That’s the level of incredulity is what I felt when George needle dropped that Mulatu LP. (The sales price of that Mulatu album, between John’s picture - sitting next to the Wayne McGhie he got from Aki - and Georges showing it to me, adjusted for inflation – around $200.) I asked Georges about all of the most important record collectors, and Georges held respect for all of them, especially Chairman Mao (pictured at John’s table in the second slide, aside Lenny Roberts) and Prince Be. I asked Georges to introduce me to them both. I’ll never forget the meeting with Be, and what it felt like to stand in his presence, as the questions fell upon themselves in my mind as I blurted them out. I remember Be having plenty of time for me, and his confirming the rumor that he had, somehow, a copy of the Skull Snaps album autographed by the drummer, whose opening beat on “It’s A New Day” was already an indelible part of hip hop history, passed from New Haven’s Mrs. Brown’s collection to my mentor Dooley O to Stezo to Paul C to DJ Premier and so many others. Continued tomorrow

More reflections on the legacy of the late Prince Be, the P.M. Dawn co-founder and revered record collector: with his family and my collecting mentor Georges Sulmers, we’re selling records from his collection at Now-Again HQ in LA on Saturday, May 16th, the day after what would have been Be’s 56th birthday. The words here are more generally about collecting records in the 1990s, a marvelous time to collect records. This is part five – all photos from the legendary dealer the late John Carraro, pictured here with Mr. Walt, Evil Dee and his sometimes assistant 88 Keys, at NYC’s Roosevelt Record Colleciton. There were times when you might get fucked up over a record, and Dante Ross - pictured digging next to Be in the second slide - told me a story of Lord Finesse finding a record Be wanted and Be making an offhanded remark – probably in jest – and Finesse snapping on him. Be was a big dude, but his presence was gentle. Back then, the KRS One/P.M. Dawn feud was contemporary, and Be traveled with a bodyguard, who you can see in that second slide monitoring his stack at John’s table. The point is, back then, anything could happen, and I’m going to bet there was a lot of jealousy directed at this hit making producer who was in a different circle - and tax bracket - than most all of the people who would be considered his collecting peers. Some years ago, at a beat-battle at LA’s Root Down, Thes from People Under The Stairs went up against will.i.am, around the time that Will was on the cusp of something far bigger than all of us around him, and when members of the Black Eyed Peas still came to hang and drink cold Sierra Nevadas with the rest of us at Club Gabah. On that still non-descript corner on Melrose, Will ended the battle by picking up the mic and saying something like, and I’m paraphrasing: this has been fun and all y’all, but I got a session with Justin Timberlake, so I’ve gotta go. That was Prince Be in the mid-90s. “You are a huge influence on me and so many,” wrote Timberlake,” after Be’s death in 2016. Tyler, Drake, The-Dream - so, so many more. Continued tomorrow.

More reflections on the legacy of the late Prince Be, the P.M. Dawn co-founder and revered record collector: with his family and my collecting mentor Georges Sulmers, we’re selling records from his collection at Now-Again HQ in LA on Saturday, May 16th, the day after what would have been Be’s 56th birthday. The words here are more generally about collecting records in the 1990s, a subject I’ve mused on here before. It really was a marvelous time to collect records. (If you want a different perspective, be sure to check out Aki’s - @cosmosrecords – latest post.) This is part four – all photos from the legendary dealer the late John Carraro, at NYC’s Roosevelt Record Convention. Joe Mansfield - hip hop producer since the 1980s, the reason Ed O.G. and The Bulldog’s first album had so many deep samples - sold at the Roosevelt Convention alongside “Boston” Bob Gibson. Besides John, Gibson’s table offered some of the best records at the Convention, and everyone knew that. Chris Veltri, of San Francisco’s Groove Merchant, and I went through Gibson’s personal collection about 20 years ago, after Gibson sold it to Michael McFadin, and a semi full of records arrived at Michael’s spot in Costa Mesa. Chris went through the LPs and I went through the 45s and we both assessed it to be the best collection of its type that we’d ever seen. This was the first time I saw Del Jones’ ‘Court Is Closed’ album and the Papa Bear and His Cubs 45, amidst thousands of equally exciting and obscure records. Joe saw this picture of Prince Be digging next to Pete Rock and Diamond D at the Roosevelt and noticed a plaid-shirted arm in the photo as his own. He called me to relay Be’s unique stature there. Long before anyone carried a cel phone, when even the wealthiest might only have one affixed to their car, Be had one, and he gave it to an assistant to carry with him to the Roosevelt when he couldn’t be there. Joe recalled a time that Be’s assistant showed up and handed Joe the phone, so he could play Be his latest discoveries. Be apologized he couldn’t be there in person – he was in the studio with Burt Bacharach. Continued tomorrow.