Spring cleaning is great in Houston. Not just because you’re finally putting out for trash those tacky tchotchkes your horrible boss brought you as souvenirs from some luxury vacation they took or even because you’re hauling clothes you outgrew many meals ago to the Salvation Army, where they might be of real use again.
Some of the treasure being trashed by our neighbors is gathered and organized for lawn and garage sales. Because the weather is actually enjoyable right now (get it while it lasts), it’s the best time to go on a shopping spree in the driveways and front yards of our fellow Houstonians.
When I hit the streets for garage sales, I’m looking for music-related items. No disrespect to the fine music retailers of this fine city, the Cactus Musics and Sig’s Lagoons and Vinal Edges and Screwed Up Records we love, trust and rely upon to nourish our insatiable need for the good stuff. But garage sales afford music lovers a unique shopping experience, particularly in a city as large and diverse as ours. You just never know what you’ll find from the closets and storage spaces of millions of folks.
Maybe you’ll pull up to a sale organized by the homeowner who has moved past their classic rock period and is now paring down their Elvis, Beatles and Chuck Berry albums for $2 a record. How’s that for “Two Buck Chuck?” Or, the one whose concert T-shirt collection has grown so large they’re now willing to part with a few lesser-desired, one-time keepsakes, like that jersey they purchased before The Who’s 2019 Houston show.
The band quit after eight songs due to an alleged ragweed allergy that night. Hardly a show to remember with a $55 cotton-polyester blend (though, here is our recollection of the night, in case you did wish to look back). Maybe they’re selling those Kid Rock and Nicki Minaj T-shirts because they just can’t anymore with Nicki and Jimmy. Maybe those shirts are bad fits for your neighbor now, but not for you. We’re sure you could get them at a much better price than you’d find on Amazon. And, you’d get a little vitamin D in the process.
Never wanting to advocate for an experience without first attempting it, I decided to hit some of the garage and yard sales in my vicinity, not merely for the journalistic integrity of this bit but also to see what I might plunk a few dollars down for, things I’d seriously be stoked to add to my own music collection. I poured a good coffee into one of those tumblers that keeps heated liquids scathing hot for 10 hours at a time and drove around (not for 10 hours, only a couple) on a sort of a music guided scavenger hunt.
Because I expected to see lots of CDs and even a healthy smattering of cassette tapes out there, I decided to focus only on vinyl albums. Beyond the records and the fashion items, I had a few other scribbles on my wish list, things you’d maybe not be able to get your hands on easily or cheaply, even online.
We all do it differently, of course, and at the risk of sounding classist, I admit I avoided the most affluent areas for this exercise. The notion of “the more disposable income, the better the disposables” doesn’t really apply to garage sales. Rich folks can’t be bothered hauling stuff onto the lawn (or into the hallways of their high-rise condos) and just trash or stash things in storage until they die and that priceless Wu-Tang album is next seen at an estate sale. So, I hit the middle-income areas and am taking a sorry, not sorry stance here, seeing it merely as practical to obtaining the most cherished items on my wish list.
For instance: musical instruments. I’m especially interested in drums, an instrument I hope to learn late in life. These items seem like good garage sale finds because some music-loving, well-meaning parents who thought their kid was gonna be the next Meg White shelled out dough for at least a decent starter kit, only to learn their progeny preferred skateboarding or screenplay writing. Drums take up space, space I have for them, for the right price.
Maybe you haven’t considered how you might find a nice upright piano or a guitar amp or even a karaoke machine at a garage sale, but you should. According to market researchers, the music instrument industry in the US is at least a $5 billion a year machine. Not all of those instruments and associated gear will be cherished or housed for long in the houses surrounding us.
I didn’t find any instruments on my search, but did come across some cool items I considered buying. One was a record player. As we all know, vinyl records are making a comeback. Last year was the first $1 billion sales year for vinyl albums in the US since 1983. There are so many hip, affordable record players with neat Bluetooth and USB capabilities available now, only a musical MacGruber would have spent $4 on the fixer-upper I saw. Pass. But again, turntables, speakers, record racks, cassette players – they’re all the kinds of music items you may have some interest in and they are out there, feet away from the curb you’ve parked at for easy hauling.
Most of what I found of interest were smaller items. At one house – where shoppers roamed freely, with no homeowner/seller seemingly overseeing any of the action – there was a set of coffee mugs, one which read “Rock Star” and the other “Little Rock Star.” Super cute! And, there were records out there, though sadly no original prints of Kind of Blue or The White Album. I bought a copy of Billy Joel’s 52nd Street. I own it already – on tape, CD, saved in my Spotify favorites and yeah, on vinyl, too. But one can never have enough good copies of Joel’s classics. Have you seen that HBO documentary? Only cried three times watching it. Okay, maybe that’s the subject of a different story.
The only music T-shirt I noticed in heaps of clothing piled like Kilimanjaro at a garage sale, one where little kids were running crazily up and down the sidewalk like those beserkers in that Weapons movie, was a Lil Wayne T-shirt. At the time I smiled at it and passed on it and now regret it since Weezy is about to hit the road to celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Tha Carter” series. No Houston date has been yet announced, so there’s still time to rummage about for something to wear to the show when or if it ever swings through.
A sort of one-stop shopping garage sale is Punk Rock Garage Sale, a monthly market with music leaning vendors which is hosted by Bad Astronaut Brewing. It’s a lot of fun to ditch the scalding hot, early morning coffee for a mid-afternoon stroll through the music wares while sipping a beer. Maybe you prefer this shopping experience to driving through your neighbors’ cul-de-sacs and master-planned communities.
That’s where I found a bussin’ concert tee commemorating Billy Joel’s July 2015 show at Baltimore’s M&T Bank Stadium. Wearing the shirt has encouraged lots of folks to ask about that show and my answer varies, depending on the mood, between “OMG, it was incredible!” (probably not a lie but still a lie since I wasn’t there) to “I wasn’t there and bought this at a garage sale.” Either answer has led to some fun dialogue about music with fun, music-loving people. That alone was worth the $5 spent on the shirt.