You Can’t Download This From Beatport, Vol. 1

Yeah, I know we tend to go on and on about vinyl here at ISM. Deal with it. One of the reasons I love record shops is because you can find so much more than records there. Sometimes it might be a disco classic stamped with the info from a classic local deejay or disco, other times it could be running into a collector or deejay with many years on you who can break you off with his tips on jams you may never have heard of, or it could even just be an album or 12″ that you listen to because it looks cool, allowing you to randomly discover a new classic of your own. You might even meet your new best friend, the person who ends up being the best man in your wedding. There’s never any way to tell exactly what is going to happen, and you are rewarded for each additional hour you spend digging and listening through the piles of wax. This will be a recurring theme for these posts where we will show some of the fun things we discover in record shops.

The other day, I was digging through some crappy R+B records at one of my local spots when I saw a record with the distinctive Trax style font on it. Picking it up, I noticed that the writing credit was for Craig Loftis, a producer who put out some joints on DJ International back in the day, has been contributing to the DeepHousePage forums for years, and even more recently has been making noise with his edits and remixes as Grand High Priest. Of course I gave it a listen, and when pulling the vinyl out of the sleeve I was surprised to see a promo sheet in there with the record:

Quite entertainingly, it was signed by the Saber Records Director of Promotions, one Mr. Marcus Mixx, whose tunes have recently been resurrected and remixed by the Clone label as well as Let’s Pet Puppies, who are in the business of finding and releasing old reels from Chicago cats like Ron Hardy and Armando Gallop in addition to Marcus Mixx.

I happily paid the man at the record shop my $5 for this slice of dance music history. You just can’t get that from Beatport!