SWAP MEETS FOR ROCKERS RISE AGAIN

Edwards, Dennis
Los Angeles Times (1923-1995); Dec 13, 1981; ProQuest Historical Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
pg- U6

CALENDAR
Gary Theroux, left, and Bob Gilbert,
two of the pioneer organizers of lhe
now resurging pop music swap meet.

The vendors—from the single week­

end types who clean out lhe garage and
sell whatever albums they can find io lhe
perennials like Worry Marks who come
with their bins of old records almost ev­
ery weekend—pay from S25 io $75 to set
up a table al one of the meets.
"I started out when I was a young fella,
with the old 78s." says Marks.
During lhe week. Marks is an assistant
film director (ho worked on Billy Wild­
er’s "Buddy Buddy"). Bui on weekends
he’s one of lhe more venerable vinyl col­
lectors who become vendors-for-a-day
at one or more of the growing rosier of
pop record swap mccis.
"In lhe early ’40s I worked as sori of a
bouncer al a place where lhe Big Bands
used io come inio L.A.—Sinatra. Dorsey.
I started picking up lheir records."
Now. like lhe dozens of others who
operate booths al lhe swap meets, he has
closets of records. And though he’ll con­
sider buying or bartering anything plas­
tic and grooved with a hole in the middle
—including any post-1957 efforts he
terms "rock ’n' roll crap"—Marks has a
specially that he collects himself. "Big
Bands. Nice smooth stuff."
But he’s not above selling rock 'n' roll.
SWAP MEETS FOR ROCKERS RISE AGAIN He holds out a plastic-wrapped 33’4 LP
of recent vintage, noting that it is one of
lhe more expensive of the several
By DENNIS EDWARDS hundred albums he has for sale. Il is. he
concedes, a rock album.
'Til gel S40 for it." he says, flicking a

W hether it be a chic dog collar
spiked in chrome or a more un­
derstated bronze for evening
wear. . . .
Or a “Blue Hawaii" LP. with a tan but
dour-faced Elvis pouting from the album
cover. . . .
Or the first-ever issue of Rolling Slone
magazine. John Lennon peering from
page one. . . .
Or the bootleg version of the Rolling
Stones’ "Get Your Ya-Ya's Out." rctitlcd
"Liver Than You’ll Ever Get" by the leg­
endary bootlegger Rubber Dubber. . . .
They all have their price when they go
up for sale at one of Los Angeles' super­
markets of rock *n’ roll nostalgia: the rec­
ord swap meets.
"Everybody’s jumping on the bandwa­
gon," says Bob Gilbert, one of the pioneer
organizers of these pop music second­
hand marls. "I think this city's got too
many of them. We get one more and
there’s going to be a record swap meet
every weekend of the month."
Several thousand fans trek to the Hol­
lywood Roosevelt Hotel. Wolf & Rissmil-
ler’s Country Club or one of the other
sites for the growing number of swap
meets each month for a chance to pick up
an artifact such as Presley’s mid-1960s
pressing of "Blue Hawaii." If it is flawless
—no scratches, clean cover, legible liner
notes—"Blue Hawaii" can command
$800.
The Rolling Slone magazine, kept
wrapped and unsullied in cellophane,
goes for S10. A 2V$-inch-widc leather
dog collar, with nine sharp spikes and
four rows of nol-so-sharp pyramid­
shaped rivets for the punk crowd, goes
for $13.
A genuine Rubber Duhher bootleg LP
can cost a swap-meet customer any­
where from $15 to $50. Like an original
Woodstock T-shirt or an unblemished
Beatles "Yesterday and Today" album
cover showing the Liverpool lads cov­
ered in gore with cleavers and dolls’
heads lying about, a bootleg album is a
rare find.
Though swap-meet organizers like
Gilbert now believe there are loo many
meets in Los Angeles, for four months of
1981 there were none.
Their comeback began last April al
Wolf & Rissmiller's Country Club in Re­
seda where the doors opened to more
than 2.000 customers, who paid SI a head
to browse through some 70 dealers’ old
records, rock concert T-shirts, posters,
bumper stickers and books.
The biggest competition thus far for
the Country Club (which bills its third-
Sunday-of-the-monlh meet as the Orig­
inal Meet) is a firsl-Salurday-of-thc-
monlh operation al the Hollywood Roos­
evelt Hotel. The "Hollywood Record
Meet." established under Gilbert's lead­
ership, began in August in the Roosev­
elt’s Blossom Room and has since become
successful enough to double its floor
space, now taking up two stories of the
hotel with booths, concessions and a vi­ "Todd Rungren. The original Nazz’ al­
deo room where tapes of old Doors and
Beatles performances arc shown through
the day.
Though the Original Meet and the Hol­ Beach Boys lhal will bring up lo S200.
lywood are the biggest, al Icasi iwo other
meets specializing in rock bric-a-brac
have been convening in recent months: a
Pasadena City College meet on the first
Sunday of each month and a flea market
that sets up shop from time to lime al the
Holiday Inn near the Los,Angeles Con­
vention Center.
In addition, a fifth monthly meet,
scheduled on the second Sunday of each
month, started recently al the Florentine
Gardens Ballroom in Hollywood.
The Original Meet and lhe Hollywdod
draw 1.000 to 2.000 patrons and 70 lo 100
vendors each. Admission is $1 while Gil­ on the meets lhemseivcs and lhe atten­
bert charges SI.25 al the Hollywood
Record Meet.
contemptuous finger againsi the cover.
bum. People will pay il if they warn it bad
enough. You’d be surprised."
Marks has a "Holland" album by lhe
There arc dozens of other rock jewels in
his collection which for the past few
years he diligently hauled to lhe latest
swap meet. Then, in December. 1981.
there suddenly were no meets lo haul
them lo anymore.
Gilbert and Greg Biggs, who helped
organize the resurrection of lhe Original
Meet in April, both blame political pres­
sure in L.A. Councilwoman Peggy Stev­
enson’s Hollywood district for the tem­
porary demise of the meets.
Stevenson herself wouldn’t comment
but press secretary Jean Davis laid blame
dant problems of hundreds of customers
in an unregulated outdoor setting where
the organizers simply couldn't control
lhe crowds.
According to Davis. Stevenson had
nothing to do with ending the swap
meets in her district: "Peggy Stevenson
had a 'Let’s Keep Hollywood Clean’ cam­
paign and 1 think we may have been the
victims of that." says Biggs.
"The point is it’s coming back lo Hol­
lywood." Gilbert says. "That will make
all lhe difference in the world. Holly-
wood is where lhe record meet belongs."
The Blossom Room of the Hollywood
Roosevelt, and an additional room
on the second floor where video­
tapes of old performances arc aired for
customers, cost Gilbert and his new part-
Assistant film director Worry Marks
spends his weekends selling records at
the various L.A. swap meets.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.

ner, John Robb, $1,850 one Saturday
each month. The fact the hotel is directly
across the street from Mann’s Chinese
Theater makes it worth the extra rent,
according to Gilbert.
The long road to the Hollywood Roos­
evelt and to Wolf & Rismiller’s Country
Club started about 10 years ago when
people like Morry Marks sold 78s and 45s
out of the trunks of their cars on Sunday
afternoons in the parking lot of a West­
wood pancake house.
In those days, old LPs made good Fris­
bees. There were those who treasured
their mint-condition 45 of "Rudolph the
Red-Nosed Reindeer’’ in its original
sleeve showing the recording artist, one
Paul McCartney, fuzzed out in full Santa
Claus attire.
But they were in the minority. Today
that 45 is worth $10 and those collectors
are regarded as shrewd. Then, according
to Gary Theroux, they were regarded as
addled if they were regarded at all.
The rare memorabilia offered for sale
at the collectors conventions includes
charms with old hit records on them.
“The old 78 record collectors used to
move from parking lot to parking lot,”
recalls Theroux, Gilbert’s ex-partner
who quit the swap meet business this
summer to finish a book on 25 years of
Top 10 records in the U.S. "Eventually,
they wound up next door to Capital Rec­ fees that now come close to $2,000.
ords in Hollywood.”
In the beginning about four years ago.
the first full-fledged record swap meets
took place in the parking lot next door to for my rent where I live, don’t I?"
Capitol's Vine Street building. They were
strictly small potatoes—an informal
Sunday get-together, according to The­ vendors. Meet organizers like Gilbert and
roux.
But the numbers began increasing. To
gel the best deal on a mint copy of Danny
and the Juniors or a Morry Marks 1940s
78, buyers had to come early.
So the sellers came even earlier. Soon salesman to set up his tables at Wolf and
the meet was no longer a Sunday morn­ Rismiller’s Country Club. Floor space is
ing event—it was a Saturday night
event.
People brought flashlights to see what
it was they were buying and the meet
went round the clock. According to The­
roux, the operators of the Pantages
Theater around the corner on Hollywood
Boulevard began to take exception to
swap-meet customers spilling over into
their parking lot area on Vine Street on
Saturday nights. That and other prob­ day is fast approaching when records will
lems—notably. lack of space to accom-
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
CALENDAR
modate the crowds that had now grown
to several thousands the first weekend of
each month—forced the closing of the
swap meet across the street from Capitol
Records.
“We started getting the undesirable
elements. People urinating against the-
neighbors’ walls, pushing over the Por-
ta-johns. By then, thousands of people
were coming to it,” says Theroux.
At its peak a year ago, the Capitol meet
had 100 to 150 dealers and upward of 4,-
000 customers, according to Briggs. By
then, the city had discovered the swap
meet, too.
What actually shut it down was a sec­
tion of the City Department of Building
and Safety Planning and Zoning Code
that essentially bans open-air flea mar­
kets and street vending such as that
practiced at the Capitol meet.
But a rock-meet renaissance was ine­
vitable. All entrepreneurs like Gilbert
and Biggs had to do was bring it indoors.
And there were plenty of reasons to do
so.
“I’m in this like anybody else is: to
make money,” says Gilbert, an assistant
caterer at the Hollywood Roosevelt
where he finally did get somebody to
take a chance on bringing his flea market
in from the cold.
He rattles off the dollar dynamics of
putting on a meet: $150 for a promoter's
license, about $125 for insurance, rental
"On top of that I have to pay for adver­
tising, use of my telephone to talk with
the dealers. And my rent. I have to pay
As Morry Marks learned some time
ago, there’s money to be made even by
Mamis have learned that lesson, too. In
their new locations, they’ve begun
charging customers admission and the
vendor price also has increased. It now
can cost as much as $75 for a Sunday
very nearly as dear at the Hollywood
Roosevelt.
A look at the kind of prices command­
ed by collectors explains why there’s
been a jump in the level of operating ex­
penses and sales sophistication since the
midnights in the Capitol Records parking
lot.
They aren’t yet recognized as such by
the Internal Revenue Service, but the
be as rare and regulated a commodity as
coins or stamps, according to collectors.
There are already "official” price guides
rating records in terms of how obscure,
unusual and unscratched they are. Like
coin catalogues, the Osborne & Hamilton
series of "Original Record Collectors
Price Guides” gives market prices on
good, very good and mint-condition al­
bums and 45s.
The Presleyana Price Guide, for exam­
ple, puts a mint "Blue Hawaii” album at
$800. An original RCA sound track for
MGM’s "Speedway" album is worth $1,-
200.
"How much it’s worth is relative," says
Theroux. "An original Buddy Holly,
sealed, might be worth $50 to one person.
To somebody who doesn’t know who
Buddy Holly is it’s not worth a dime.”
"We stress quality merchandise," says
Beatlemania dealer Michael Macaluso in
the hushed tones of a funeral director. He
holds up a Beatles “Get Back" book,
printed in conjunction with the release of
the film "Let It Be.” It is, he says, an
original in fine condition, published in
England and very, very rare these days.
It goes for $125.
"There’s a 1969 lithograph of Lennon
that we’re negotiating for right now.
Quality, quality item; $1,000,” says Maca­
luso.
Not everything is so expensive in his
booth. There are T-shirts with Lennon’s
name and "Rock & Roll” printed across
the top. There are other shirts with car­
toon caricatures of the Beatles done in
several colors over the chest.
Macaluso’s T-shirts have been part of
his line for most of the eight years he’s
been selling Beatles memorabilia. Most of
what he sells is secondhand Beatle trea­
sures, however, and the impression he
leaves is that he would never consider
trafficking in a Beatle name if it meant
even the most remote harm to one of the
three surviving band members.
Remembering the assassination of
Lennon last December, Marcluso said:
"It was hard on us. We cried, of course.
Everybody cried when they heard it
happened. I knew exactly what I was
doing that day, like the day Kennedy was
shot. But you’ve got to carry on,"
He stressed that his John Lennon T-
shirt was printed and sold before the
Beatle was shot. He would never, never
cash in on his death.
Morry Marks appeared on the verge
of unloading his Todd Rungren album
After listening to Morry’s sales pitch,
however, the buyer pointed instead at an
album on the wall behind Marks.
It’s an album cover from Stag Party
Records, circa 1960, with a Jayne Mans­
field blonde falling out of her dress over
the legend: “Tales Your Mother Never
Told You.” The lady is apparently not to
be found in the official price guides, but
Marks has a price for her, too. Every­
thing has its price.
"The most expensive one I know is
something by the Five Sharps on Jubilee
Records," says John Hillyard, another
vendor. "It was a 45 and there were only
three ever made.”
Marks’ customer loses interest in both
Todd Rungren and Stag Party Records
and moves on.
With his own brand of dreadlocks
splayed out over the riveted denim of his
sleeveless vest, Hillyard is a direct con­
trast to the Big Band conservatism two
generations removed as personified by
Music enthusiasts peruse the display of
rare rock tape cassettes at one of the
record swap meets in the area.
Morry Marks.
Just as Marks has his favorites from
the Dorsey-Sinatra period, Hillyard
espouses "political rock" as his special
interest; "This is 'Turn Up the Heat’ by
Suburban Lawns on Direct Hit Records.”
He slips the 45 out of its sleeve and
shows a ruby-red record label with Di­
rect Hit’s logo—an instrument that's half
Fender guitar and half machine gun.
Smiley Lewis’ rendition of "The Bells
Are Ringing" means about as much to a
Direct Hit aficionado like Hillyard as a
"Nazz" LP means to Marks, but Hillyard
has one in his box of discs just below the
Suburban Lawn 45. The price tag is $100.
Organizers like Theroux, Biggs and
Gilbert, themselves vendors from time to
time, estimate that weekend salesman
from opposite ends of the pop music
spectrum like Marks and Hillyard can
come away with a profit of as much as
$50, $100, even $200 for their efforts.
And it doesn’t really matter whether
their tastes are in Artie Shaw or the Dead
Kennedys. There is a middle ground.
"I understand the Five Sharps record
is worth $4,000," says Hillyard. "It’s not
exactly my taste, but wouldn’t that be
nice to have?"
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