What is the oddest way you have acquired a record?

Surprised it wasn't actually "Wake of the Flood"

During college (early '80's) I won 5 albums in a poker game, two of which were an original Neil Young Zuma LP and US Reprise Jimi Hendrix 'War Heroes', which I recently realized is a 2x RL. Can't remember what the other 3 were...

 

Here in Maine too. Nice surprise "finds".

 

Sometimes I think you can will albums you want to appear in the racks. I had something like this happen with the album Time Machine by an obscure German prog band called Dzyan. The review in The Billboard Guide to Progressive Music made it sound pretty cool and I figured I'd search it out online, but before I bothered to do that, guess what I found at my next visit to the local used record store? What a fluke.

 

The lady who owned the apartments that I lived in in Austin, Texas in the 70s hired me
to clean out the bottom unit that had been occupied by her 78-year-old mother who had
just passed. The old lady had been a hoarder and trash-picker...and amid the ceiling-high
stacks of old newspapers, magazines, cardboard boxes etc. was a small stack of LPs. It
was pretty unremarkable stuff, except for the near mint MONO copy of the first Grateful
Dead LP (WB gold label). The best part is that I got to keep it.

 

Found a copy of Eagles' The Long Run in the trash at a school where I worked, in great condition. Took it home for my collection and still haven't played it.

 

Walking down the sidewalk headed back to the office from a coffee shop. I saw a couple boxes of debris (wood scraps, empty paint cans etc.) on the sidewalk in front of a business being renovated. One thing stood out glaringly. In one box was a beautiful clean UK pressing of Jethro Tull's Benefit. They told me to take it. I did. Weird.

I read of a guy in England whose brother found a super rare copy of Genesis' first single (on Decca) sitting in a bush out back of a school.

 

This may be a unique story. I've told it on here before in some other thread (can't remember which one, tho). When I was a kid (under 10) I used to make my Dad drive me out to the local radio station every Halloween so I could trick or treat them. They always gave me a record instead of candy, that's why I wanted to go. (Yes, I was a weird kid) I still have one of them in my collection. Since this record was released in 1970, I have to think I got this when I was 7 years old.

 

"Wild finds" like this used to happen in the UK too - I remember stumbling on some in the bushes at my local park. The phenomenon gets a nice reference in the wonderful sitcom Spaced, co-written by and starring Simon Pegg, with Edgar Wright directing.

(For those from less trainy countries - railway sidings are infrequently used dead-end bits of railway used for short/medium term storage of spare carriages/wagons. In the UK they're the kind of semi-abandoned, half re-wilded urban place where kids used to hang out in times past)

 

The same exact thing happened to me in the late 1970's. I ordered a couple of posters (they never showed up) but i did receive a bootleg called 'sweet apple tracks' that album further solidified my love for the group. I initially got hooked during the second wave of Beatlemania, circa 1973.

 

Nice choice. One of my favorite albums.

 

Through divorce.

 

I found some nudie Polaroids in a record I bought at a yard sale. Do I get double points for that?

 

Late 80s, I was in Kingston upon Hull, and, with time to kill before my train home, found a small record shop somewhere near the railway station. I bought most of the Red Guitars 12" singles they had, and the shop owner then gave me a one-sided white label 45 by Robert Holmes (ex-Red Guitars singer).
Robert Holmes (3) - The Monkey Song

Back in 2006 I was on holiday in SF, and went to see Magic Christian at the now-closed Red Devil Lounge. Before the show I was chatting at the bar with Cyril Jordan, bought him a drink, and asked him if he could confirm that he played slide guitar on a Mark Ashton single I have. He was knocked for six that I knew about that, and gave me a 2-CD studio/live album, and a CD single, both by Magic Christian. After the gig, he gave me his backstage pass, and introduced me to the others in Magic Christian (Paul Kopf, Alec Palao, Prairie Prince), plus the The Dilettantes and Powell St. John, who also played that evening..

 

I worked at a radio station back in the late '70s as an assistant engineer. The station had moved to another building and had changed formats and one of my tasks was to empty the old record library. I went thru every record they had (a large room full). Most of it was dreck but I did liberate a few of them including Steeleye Span's single "Gaudete" which made me a fan of theirs.
Earlier in 1970, I helped one of my older brothers move into a dorm near the UC Berkeley campus where he was attending. The previous occupant had left behind three LPs, Silver Throat -Bill Cosby Sings, Renaissance-Vanilla Fudge and Steppenwolf's s/t first album. Since my brother was into classical music he let me keep them and the Steppenwolf album became an all time favorite of mine.

 

Was it a Black Muddy River?

 

Back in the late 1990s I had a coworker who I used to share a lot of my music with. We had similar taste, so I used to bring in CDs for him to listen to while at work.

One day at lunch time he walks into our office with a stack of maybe 20 albums. They looked brand new except they didn't have the cellophane on them. He says "I found these in the dumpster out back. Who would throw away records in a work dumpster?" I had no answer for him.

There were a couple of Cat Stevens records in the pile that he said he had no interest in and asked if I wanted them. "You bet!" I still have them. I don't remember what else was in the stack, but not bad titles - 1970s and early 1980s.

 

Not really that odd, but my wife was manager of the music library at a TV company in London and they were going completely digital and ditching vinyl. Basically we had first dibs on what was in the library - tens of thousands of records, many never played dating back to the 60s and possibly earlier. It was a case of taking as much as we could carry. Unfortunately each cover had a ruddy great label stuck on which ruined some of them, but most were removed with judicious applications of denatured alcohol and other substances.
It's horrible to think most of the remainder would have been chucked.

 

Soundtrack recording for the movie "The Graduate" by stumping a movie buff on a talk radio show about a Buster Keaton film. The album was my prize, and I walked over to the station to get it, which was only a few blocks away from where I lived. I think I was about 12 yrs. old at the time.

 

The cops stopped me because I had a “burned out taillight.” The next thing I know one of them reaches into his pocket and pulls out a big bag of white powdery stuff. He starts talking about it being on my console in”plain sight” then all of a sudden I’m in hand cuffs .....

Oh, sorry that’s a different kind of “record.” Never mind.

 

sounds like you are still borrowing those Philly albums...

 

Yes! Yes! Like him! Like him!

It was a great promotion. Their song "ABC" was a perfect fit for
Alpha-Bits, and the J5 had their own cartoon series, so they had
a big attraction for the kiddo cereal consumers!

I have two more...

I answered a trivia question on a radio station, and the prize was
a copy of Elton John's "Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy."


Whoops! Forgot where I was: EJ's CF&TBDC





And to piggyback on the OP, I also got a flexi disc inside of a 1973 Mad Magazine:



It was vulgar, not at all PC, and hasn't aged especially well.

You can listen to it! Here:

MAD Magazine presents "Gall in the Family Fare"

 

I'm a postman in West Wiltshire in between Bath and Chippenham and a couple of years ago a customer gave me a very nice condition copy of Genesis Live as a Xmas tip.

 

When I was 16 0r 17 some of us went trick or treating, a bit liquored up, for kicks. Someone gave me a copy of Ian Hunter's "You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic." I liked that album a lot actually.

 

What's with all these country clubs? I want a country club! All I had growing up was playing on the street and getting out of the way when someone yelled "CAR!".

 

In '90 when I got to Hameln, Germany as the newest member of 8 Troop, 42 Fd Sqn, RE, I was part of a group cleaning out the attic bar. Found a copy of the Stones' "Through The Past, Darkly" with the octagonal cover. Guy in charge said I could have it. Bit beat up but played okay. Still have it but not played it (or any other Stones) in years.