Late October traditionally is record show time here in Green Bay.
This year, however, the Green Bay Record Convention took place two weeks earlier than usual, bumped back to the second Saturday of October. Our venue, an Elks lodge, was booked on the last two October Saturdays with a craft vendor show and its annual Halloween event for kids.
This year, after 16 or so years of going to the show, I missed the party.
I work high school football games from August to October, doing the stats for my brother’s team. On the night before the record show, when I’d typically be helping set up tables, making signs and loading in early-arriving dealers, I was working a game 140 miles away. Before we ever knew the record show date, we’d planned to stay overnight and spend the next day up north, as we say in Wisconsin.
I hope everything went all right at the record show. I haven’t heard any reports one way or the other.
Over the past couple of weeks, my Facebook memories feed has been a steady stream of reminders of the things I’ve enjoyed about past Green Bay Record Conventions. The eager anticipation, the setup, the people, the digging, the finds. Among them:
- Over those last 16 or so years, I’ve followed the show from a downtown hotel to a suburban hotel to a bowling alley — that was 2015, the first year I worked at the show — to the Eagles Club (which then became a BBQ joint) to the Elks lodge.
- Last fall, the show was bumped forward to the first Saturday of November, again because of the Elks lodge’s availability. (Football was over by then.)
- I’ve sold records at the show at least three times, twice doing double duty by setting up near the back door and watching that in addition to selling records.
- Green Bay crowds are always bargain hunters and bottom feeders. $1, $2 and $3 records fly out of the crates.
- One guy bought $8 worth of records and paid with eight $1 coins.
- Some of our dealers are high maintenance.
- So are some of the shoppers. Ten years ago, in 2013, a couple of hotheads started to get into it at the show. Don’t know what set them off.
- I’ve twice bought bowls made from vinyl records. Can’t say that I’ve ever used them. (My bowls were made from the Eagles’ “Hotel California,” the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul,” as you see here, plus the Monkees’ self-titled debut LP and Badfinger’s “Ass.”)
- The first time I ever sold records at the show — 12 years ago, in 2011 — I made $131 and traded a shoe box of 45s for Edwin Starr’s “25 Miles” LP.
- That first show as a seller was a revelation. Had no idea the other dealers scrambled to dig through your crates, many seeking deals on the best stuff, before the show ever opened to the public.
- Last year, I bought four DVDs that essentially constitute the Pam Grier Blaxploitation Film Festival plus another blaxploitation classic. (I’ve also bought books, comic books and T-shirts.)
