At a Garage Sale: The Fortunes' Storm in a Teacup
Driving along Route 711, I slowed down when I saw a sign for a garage sale. I don't usually stop for garage sales, but you never know when you might stumble upon a garage full of records. It could happen. But even if you do, it is rare to find records you might want. Usually, there are boxes full of popular middle of the road crooners like Andy Williams or Perry Como. Or the like....
Uncollectable records, as Simon (Retromania) Reynolds calls them, "genuinely popular records that have dated terribly or suffered from a capricious reversal of mass taste...Seals and Crofts, The Alan Parsons Project, Styx, Chick Mangione, Asia, Bob Seger."
Still, I recommend stopping. You just never know.
So, in this case, for some reason, I decided to pull over at the sign, which led to a gravel road which led to a dirt road which led to another sign with an arrow pointing to the sale. Past one trailer home after another another. I arrive at a clearing.
A middle aged guy in a T-shirt is standing at the foot of the driveway, waving me in, with two women beyond sitting quietly by the garage door, one older, one younger. There are rusting cars and trucks in the yard, a shed or two full of yard equipment beckoning, doors open. Looking at the overgrown yard, I wondered when this yard equipment was last used.
"I got lotsa stuff I want to get rid of!" said the guy. "Lotsa stuff!"
I looked around and asked him if he had any records. He said he did have a box of records somewhere. I didn't expect him to have anything interesting, but, again, you never know. In a few minutes, he emerged from the back of the garage with a cardboard box.
"Some of these I wanna keep," the guy exclaimed as he flipped through the records in the box. "But you are free to look at the rest." The number of available disks was dwindling.
After picking out ten or so records for himself - nothing of interest to me whatsoever, see 'uncollectable records' above - he pushed the box towards me.
I pulled a few records out. Polydor's 1973 Clapton compilation is pretty rare, although everything on it is available somewhere else. The Turtles Golden Hits. And The Fortunes' 1972 Storm in a Teacup. When the garage-sale-guy saw that one, he shrugged his shoulders.
"Never heard of them. Well, you can have all three."
I was pleased with my purchase. Especially the Fortunes album. The Fortunes were once a reasonably well known harmonic pop group best known for having sung the Coca Cola jingle for many years. Crawdaddy related them to a slew of other groups in 1967, starting with Jay and the Americans:
"Jay and the Americans sound like the Fortunes, who sound like the We Five, who sound like the Ivy League, who sound like the Beatles, who sound like the Zombies, who sound like the Searchers, who sound like the Everly Brothers, who sound like a multitude of white country blues singers, who sometimes sound like Negro country blues singers, who can sometimes sound like urban Negro blues singers, who sound like the Rolling Stones, who sound like the Nashville Titans, who do not even look like Jay and the Americans."
Well, that helps!
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