The dumpster story

Vinyl week continues with a real story from my past. In 1997 I was living in a dump of an apartment with a friend and his brother. This was an apartment where if you turned the stove on to cook, five minutes later twenty cockroaches would be running out from behind the stove to flee the heat. You couldn't put bagged food like chips or biscuit mix in the lower cabinets because mice would chew into it. It was a dump, but it was all we could afford at the time. My roommates weren't big on cleaning up so I always had to empty the trash. One day I was taking the trash to the dumpster and opened up the door and stood in shook at what I saw in the dumpster. The inside of the dumpster had piles of albums scattered across the bottom. This was a big dumpster and it must have been emptied not too long before because the albums looked to be the only thing in it even though it still had a very strong sour smell and lots of flies were still hanging around. The records were down too far for me to reach without getting in to the thing. On the top it was just things like Bauhaus and Love and Rockets, but I thought maybe down below that are some good ones. I didn't want to get into the thing so I went and got my broom and started reaching in and using the handle to push the albums around to see what was below the top layer. I rescued a copy of the Police's Synchronicity from the pile even though I already had a copy. Then I pulled out a couple of B-52's albums. I was getting the hang of pushing through the albums with the broom by this point and then I spotted some red lettering that I knew, it was the Iron Maiden logo. I pushed aside the albums covering it and pulled it over to me so I could get it out and I had copy of Maiden Japan. I had hit paydirt, a metal album for free, but maybe there were even more metal albums in there somewhere. I kept pushing aside albums hoping for something then finally at the bottom in the corner I uncovered a copy of Motorhead's Six songs live. This was an import recorded in 1980 and it went for about $12.00 new. It was even in a record bag. I tried repeatedly to pull it over to me with the broom, but it wasn't budging. I finally knew that I couldn't pull it over with the broom without risking damaging the album. Hell, it was Motorhead so I had to go in. I jumped into the dumpster and grabbed it and sorted through some other album with my hands then I had scurrying sounds from underneath the albums and decided to leave. I was happy with my free albums and I still have all of them. So I would even jump into a dumpster for free vinyl.

Next up will be the Vinyl Countdown 1970's edition.