Bear's Lair

You want the bad news

or the good news first.

The good news..........

The two racks are in, assembled and standing proud in the cellar ready to receive their goodies to store. From all the shit I have, I can use two more for the classical and spaceage pop albums that are still piled high. I also need a separate rack just for R&B that are piled up in two spots in the cellar, ditto for soundtracks. Make that four more racks. Soon were going to run out of cellar space.

The ugly news.............

Remember the last post about the sewer pipe backing up. For weeks, we had to take short showers and use the dish washer and washing machine sparingly. Everytime we turned on the water we had a nice deep puddle that was six feet round, 1 1/2" deep by the drain (AKA glory hole). If one took a nice shower, the cellar was one big shitty mess where the sewage would come up and do it's thing leaving it's funky residue on the basement floor. Two weeks ago, we had a plumber come by and unclogged the sewer pipe that was full of roots from the tree out side, plus a piece of a handy wipe that mysteriously found it's way down the loo. That's all over now, Margaret was cleaning the floor with bleach turning converting the "doo doo room with the reek complete" into a nice smelling cellar. She went though two buckets of water in the process scrubbing the floor while I moved the empty racks to get the funk underneith of them. We still have a ton of work to do but that's going to wait untill next week or next Tuesday depending what our plans are.

Boxes, which kind are better?

I had two boxes of records on the floor that were there before all this happened. Both of them are on plastic containers just in case of a flood, one box is carboard, the other is a Bags Unlimited black plastic container. Take a wild guess which one survived and came out unscathed!!! The cardboard box that contained all of my Jazz comps and JATP sets came out freakin' unharmed, where the collectable rock LPs inside the super duper plastic container from Bags Unlimited were 95% trashed, and that's it sitting on a plastic lid and the farthest away from the water/drain, the cardboard box was closest to the drain.

The cardboard box is indeed the winner.

The bad news...............

I lost a cache of albums to water damage in our flooding, close to 100 LPs are toast. The crates behind the boxes were high on a 3" high wooden plank so all of them survived. I'm very thankful that some of them survived. Some of the records that I kept in sleeves survived, some didn't. A mint copy of Wheels Of Fire, a original Atco pressing with laquers cut at Atlantic studios that sounds great survived unscathed. Ditto for a copy of Bowie's Hunky Dory, a genuine first press on RCA with the textured cover with no type on the front. A UK press of Roxy Music's Siren on Island (pink rim) came out OK with only a tiny bit of damage inside the gatefold cover. Water also got inside a copy of the first Faust album, the one on clear vinyl that came in a clear cover with a clear insert (German Polydor), that one survived as well. No mildew but steamy moisture got inside. My treasued copy of the Hollies "Hollies (Very Last Day)" LP on BGO is another goner, this LP isa mis-press where it's labeled mono but plays stereo. It's plastic outersleeve could not hold the fluid and got wet, it's drying out along with a UK Vertigo sampler, a UK press of the first Kinks album in stereo. A mint copy of Spanky & Our Gang's "Greatest Hits" on Mercury did not survive. It still had the original shrink wrap and was in a nice thick outersleeve and it still got waterlogged. The vinyl was soaked and it was in a plastic lined inner-sleeve, I wonder how long those records were marinating in water inside that plastic wonderbox? Some of them are no big deal like 1B 1A stamper Billy Joel albums and US Jethro Tull "Porky" cuts. I did lose some gems like some of my kiddie records like the original press Dr. Seuss Camden LPs that I had for ages, sealed Sesame Street mid-70s albums, various Chipmunks albums, and a few Golden LPs. Also in the deluge I lost a 35 LP complete NFL music library, a few of the LPs were water damaged to begin with but now the covers are all bonded together. I have 2 out of the 3 Frank Zappa "Shut Up & Play Yer Guitar" mail order LPs, both of them are toast. My Gentle Giant collection is toast. My copies of Three Frends, Octopus, along all of the Capitol albums are stuck together like glue. A few original Ricky Nelson, Monkees,Sandy Nelson, ELP, John Mayall, and Hot Tuna albums are casualties. In the mess, my original US press of Barclay James Harvest "Once Again" on Sire (Dist. by Polydor) is now confirmed as trash. I'm very bummed about this.