Th Joes Garage Sale

Good Frank

OK, perfect moment for a dumb story.

When Frank Zappa died his family sold at very low prices his tour gear, some may remember the Joes' Garage Sale. At the time I had more space and decided that despite my not really giving a shit about famous people's stuff I'd rifle through the list.

Despite my initially looking for bargains, I spotted what clearly was in my mind a perfect tribute to the artist and his sense of humor, it was his wardrobe road case.

Frank Zappa was not the best dressed guitar player on the block, in fact he prided himself on saying fuck you to what ever was hip at that moment. By the 1980's his wardrobe was amazingly awful, sometimes making him look like a pastel Cosby sweater joke.

Bad Frank

I figured it was the most ridiculous item I could possibly buy from the estate. He had nothing to do with music, represented something I didn't feel was his strong point and would be hard to find any realistic use in the studio for it.

I called the guy who was handling the sales, bought it and received a faxed receipt.

Sadly, as is my understanding of what happened the guy who was "in charge" was selling multiple people the same items. He wasn't putting payment through he just was going through the motions. I think I was told that he was simply not capable of handling this job, screwed things up for the family who were no doubt busy was more important things like mourning and I think one collector ended up just buying everything lock stock and barrel.

I admit that it was disappointing because it was as if I was having a laugh with Frank Zappa who had certainly given me a lot of music to enjoy over the years and I had felt it was a tribute he might have liked.

I still keep that fax and maybe one day I'll here what really happened or another similar story. I have no real idea if the details as to what went array with the sale are correct, simplified or erroneous. Either way I am glad to have the story.   

Who's your daddy?

In the olden days "used" was not "vintage" unless you where talking guitars.

Daddy's Junky Music had a monthly catalog and if you saw something you wanted you probably called using a device called a telephone and spoke to Hirsh. You asked him whether it was still available and if it was you bought it.

The great thing about Daddy's was that if you had a band or owned a studio (which also was a different thing in those days) you could outfit your racks with more processing power, buy extra drum hardware and put together a good PA system for very little money.

At some point Daddy's opened more stores and stopped their "Used Gear By Mail" catalog and business. My memory was that there just was less used gear hitting the market and Ebay had probably had a negative effect as well. I know I was sad. I think the last item I bought was a huge Vox bass cabinet which I paired with a fawn AC-30 and made much happy noises.

Today as I was doing a search for road cases and I hit Daddy's site and much to my great joy, they are back in the mail order business. Touring bands to garage bands can rejoice and afford play.