Diggin’ In My Own Collection – You Had To Be There

Diggin’ In My Own Collection is a nine-part series where I’m taking a look at some of the rare, and incredibly unique, albums in my CD collection. 

A couple of weeks ago I was having a conversation with my buddy (and fellow music industry veteran) Paul Gargano, and knowing how much I prefer the physical product vs. streaming, he suggested I start cataloging my vinyl collection using Discogs, just to see if any of my records were especially rare. My first thought was – I can do that. I only have a couple hundred records. Attempting to catalog my 3,000+ CDs, however, would take forever.

Fast-forward a few days, and my obsessive nature had me looking up the CDs in my collection that I thought might be rare. Hey, I used to collect baseball cards back in the day, so this is in my wheelhouse!

What I found was that not only do I have a whole bunch of albums that are rare, many of those albums have cool stories behind how they ended up in my collection.

After a quick brainstorming session, I decided to create a series of columns titled Diggin’ In My Own Collection, where I’ll be diving into some of those stories.

This initial installment of these columns gets things started with three CDs I picked up at concerts, because as the old saying goes – you had to be there!

 

Lights – Acoustic

Lights’ first acoustic effort almost didn’t make it into my collection.

It was late July 2010 when Lights had an acoustic show in NYC at Joe’s Pub, and I’d interviewed her in the green room the afternoon of the show. When I came back for the concert I did my usual routine of letting the person at the door know I’m on the press list, and when they crossed off my name I started to make a beeline to a good seat.

I’d totally forgotten everyone who entered received a copy of the acoustic EP.

I turned around, probably annoyed the heck out of everyone else in line, and said, “Sorry, I forgot the EP.” I then grabbed my copy, and went back to finding a place to sit.

That version of the EP, which is the U.S. version released on Sire Records, is quite rare, while the Canadian version is easy to find.

This is basically the CD equivalent of having a rare version of a common baseball card – like when Topps had gold embossed versions of every card in a set – but guess who always loved finding those cards? Yup, you guessed it – me!

 

Tonight Alive – What Are You So Scared Of? (Acoustic)

I discovered Aussie rockers Tonight Alive when they were on Warped Tour in 2012. Ironically, I first heard them when they were doing an acoustic set, and that led me to want to hear their actual set.

I was thoroughly impressed by both sets, and after their final song I headed over to their merch tent to pick up their album, What Are You So Scared Of?. When I got there, I saw they also had an acoustic version of the album available. Having loved their acoustic set, this was a no brainer for me. I picked up both versions of the album (as an aside, lead singer Jenna McDougall signed my copy of their official album).

What I didn't know at the time, was that the acoustic album was a promo, and was only available at the band’s, and their label’s, merch tents at that year’s Warped Tour. The CD has sold in the Discogs marketplace for anywhere from $50 to $79.99, but it hasn’t been listed in over a year, so you know it’s not only hard to find, once people find a copy they usually keep it.

This just goes to show it always pays to check out the merch table, and if there’s a tour exclusive, PICK IT UP!

Bad Rabbits – Stick Up Kids EP

This next story is another example of why you should always make your way to the merch table after a show.

During the 2011 Warped Tour I happened to check out Bad Rabbits’ set, and was so blown away I knew I wanted to support them by buying their music. When I was checking out their merch I noticed they only had one EP, Stick Up Kids. I picked up two copies, because that was the monetary equivalent of buying a full length album.

The version of the EP I bought was a re-release, but still had a limited print run. It’s now fairly difficult to find, with the price having gone up on a consistent basis over the past nine years. The fact that I have two copies, and picked them up when the band was working their way up the ladder, reminds me of the time I bought two Bowman rookie cards of a young catcher the Dodgers had in their system. His name was Mike Piazza. I believe I paid 75 cents for each of those cards. Let’s just say they’ve gone up in value just a bit since then.

 

From being at the show, to being on the job, the next installment of Diggin’ In My Own Collection will take a look at four promos that have become hot commodities.

Until then, keep digging!