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Crate Diving in Modern America
Records Under the Bins
A kinder, gentler approach
It’s hard getting on my knees these days, and yes, I know how that sounds. Actually, my knees are fine overall; it’s my lower back and whatever makes it difficult at this ripe time of life to stand up again (my brother-in-law keeps telling me that we aren’t built for standing anyway, but he’s even older than I am so I still think this is just his way of compensating).
In any case, though my record store owner- Joe at Cabin Floor -says those records in crates under the actual bins are “there for a reason,” I still think the reason is so that my digging feels extra conflictual, like what often happens when we break sod for our garden and discover a forgotten stone or brick buried where that tomato plant died last year. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, except that the creaks and cracks you are hearing aren’t from the records themselves, always.
I also enjoy not knowing what I’m looking for when I bend down, or kneel, or squat to look into the reason why tons of vinyl sit below eye and “see” level. Yesterday, I was hoping to find something by The Sadies, or at least a Merle or Waylon record I don’t already have-and with both, I still have wide sargasso gaps galore. Maybe, I also think, Waylon Payne might have actually had a…