Eugene Record Convention: Thought I'd check out today's one-day record convention, held in a large conference room at the Hilton in downtown Eugene. Strange (and strange-looking) crowd, a little younger than I expected. It's hard to imagine that many of them got out of the house much while looking as they did, but maybe looking like a roadie for a punk rock band is their normal appearance. Also, personal hygiene didn't seem to be a big concern with many of the attendees; combine that with the odor of greasy fast food that a some of the dealers had on hand and there was some truly funky air quality in there. Not good in a closed room, even a large one.

As far as the LP selection goes, I have to say that my meager collection is more oddball and unusual than what most of the dealers were selling, which was disappointing. I was expecting to come across a lot of stuff I'd never seen before, but no, most of the vinyl I browsed through was on the pedestrian side.  Kind of a let-down.

The emcee of the event would try to help prospective buyers find what they were looking for by asking the dealers for assistance over the PA system, and even those requests were largely mainstream (including Dolly Parton, The Monkees and Led Zeppelin...I was practically tripping over LPs by the last two, so it wasn't as if these were hard to find). Someone did have the emcee ask for a Robert Mitchum calypso album, which I thought was a pretty funny joke; apparently such a thing exists. Needless to say, there are some really twisted collectors out there.

Much of what was being offered was seriously overpriced, too; can't believe that people would pay $30 for a used LP that you can find on CD for less than $10. I'm not one of those folks who thinks that the vinyl format is automatically superior to digital, so I did wonder if the dealers with the higher prices were able to sell much of anything.

I try to do something at least a little absurd at events like this, and haggling over a Twiggy record seemed like a good idea at the time:

Me: "Please tell me that 'Twiggy' is one dollar."
Dealer: <pause while he looks at the LP> "'Twiggy' is three dollars."

I have a fairly hard and fast rule on novelty records that limits me to a buck, so despite the hideous promise of awful singing a record by an ex-supermodel must hold, I had to pass. A few minutes later, the dealer tried to split the difference with me, but I held firm. "She has a lot of fingerprints on her, too, but she's too skinny for me", he said while looking at the vinyl. The guy also had a sealed Kojak book and LP, which gave me another laugh. Again, $3.00, more than I was willing to pay.

Verdict? Glad I satisfied my curiosity, but probably won't go again next year. Rubbing shoulders with introverted, punk-rock fashion-damaged, Robert Mitchum LP-collecting freaks is only tolerable once in a great while.