Name: Doc Delay

Claim to Fame:
Probably rare rap shit, but I'd like to think my catalog is diverse
enough to keep people on their toes and away from pigeon-holing, nah
mean?



Representing: I’m from Washington DC, or more specifically, Adams Morgan. These days I’m in Brooklyn, NY.



Years in the Game: I’ve been buying records for about 16 years.



Best Digging City or Town:
Do you mean record shopping or dumpster diving? (Laughs) I think the
term digging has kind of changed now since boutique stores and the
Internet have come into play. Digging used to be about finding some
random dudes collection and going into his basement to pick up records.




Nowadays
it’s more like regular record shopping for me. I even go to private
dealer’s houses sometimes. But in terms of shopping and finding great
records, I think Chicago kind of kills it. It’s just a great place.
Great guys out there too, everyone is a lot nicer. If it wasn’t so damn
cold in the winter, I’d move there. Every time I go there I come away
with great records.



The
interesting thing about buying records is that regionally different
genres are more prevalent. If you’re only looking for soul records and
your in Southern California, you might not do that well. But if you’re
down there and you know the rock genre, you can make your way. You have
to know what to look for if you want to come up anywhere. If you’re in
Europe you have to know European records. If you’re on the West coast
you have to know rock records. If you’re in New York you have to know
hip hop records. And if you’re in Chicago you have to know soul
records.

Most Prized Piece of Wax:
Hmm. Some of the records that are really expensive and sought after; I
don’t care that much about. They’re kind of like a form of currency to
me. I tend to trade them for other stuff. But some of the records that
I bought when they came out, like Nas’s Illmatic,
I can’t get rid of. I skipped school to buy that record. I skipped
school the Tuesday it came out, went to The Wiz, waited for it to open,
went in, and bought that record. I still have it and I’ll never get rid
of it.



I
love the second hand stuff I own and there’s a lot of good music on
those records, but it doesn’t have the same sentimental attachment. Hip
hop was my generation’s music at that time, so I have more of an
attachment to those records.

Favorite Album Cover/s:
I like the stock covers. If you privately pressed up a record back in
the day they had a catalogue of stock covers like sunsets and
waterfalls. You could get the generic waterfall cover and then print
the name of your band underneath it and it would look like 200 other
records with the same stock cover.



I
like those because they have that homemade kind of feel where you don’t
know what’s going to be on it. When I find one of those records in a
thrift store I think, “This could either be really good or really bad.”




I love those old stock covers, I think they’re great.



Dollar Bin Miracle:
There used to be this warehouse in Virginia called Record Finders. It
was like a big warehouse of 45’s. I found multiple copies of records
that were worth hundreds and hundreds of dollars there. I wish I knew
then what I know now, because I probably passed up some pretty amazing
stuff. One particularly crazy find was the the "Greyboy" 45 by Human
Race.



Those
dollar bin miracles used to be the battery power that would keep me
going. I’d strike out for a whole month, but then I’d have one dollar
bin miracle and that would keep me going for the next few months.

You
can still find lots of crazy rap records in the dollar bin. What’s
weird is that some of those rap records that are more obscure, like Raw
Dope Posse’s “Listen to my Turbo”, got put out by distributors that
didn’t specialize in rap. “Listen to my Turbo” was put out by a house
and techno distributor. They shopped that record to people who wouldn’t
like it, so it flopped.



It’s
kind of hard to find because of that. When you do find it, it’s always
lumped in with a bunch of crappy house and electro records from the
late 80’s and early 90’s. It sounds like Mantronix on PCP and it’s an
amazing record. You never know where shit like that is going to turn
up.

Total Records Owned:
I don’t own as many now. I’ve chiseled down my collection really
thoroughly. I’d say 1,500 total. At one point I probably had between 3
and 4,000 records. Serato helped me trim some of the fat. I got rid of
a lot of doubles, things that I had to play at weddings and shit gigs,
and Madonna 12”s.



That
was a big portion of my collection, shit I only used when I played out.
Now I’m kind of an audiophile. I’m all about good condition records and
great albums as a whole. I don’t want a record for one song if the rest
of the album is crappy.

I’m all about whittling it down to the
essentials, but I’ve kept a lot of common things that I like. I kept
all my Led Zeppelin albums. I like each one of their records all the
way through. I kept really clean copies of all of their albums and I
listen to them to this day. I probably listen to a Zeppelin album at
least once a month. They’re the best band ever, without a doubt.



Best Digging Story:
This lady who cuts my hair around the corner named Alina has been
cutting my hair for five years. She runs this place called Alina Cut
& Style. She’s Polish, and one day we randomly started talking
about Polish records. I started naming a bunch of Polish rock bands and
she was like, “Wow, you know a lot about this stuff. My husband was
really into Polish rock and he has all of those records. I don’t know
where they are, but if I find them, you can have them.”

Months
passed, and I totally forgot about the conversation. I went in their
one day to get a haircut and she said, “I have something for you.” We
went outside, she popped the trunk, and she had two huge boxes of
records. It took me two trips to lug them up the street. It was the
greatest score of all of those Polish breaks that people are into and
collect. I got all of them in one big haul, and I didn’t even have to
pay for it. It just fell into my lap. Subsequently I made my last mix
CD, Eastern Block Party with those records.



I’m a lucky dude. Things just fall into my lap sometimes, I don’t know why.

Here’s
another good one. I remember once when I was DJing in Richmond, VA,
this guy came over to the booth and started talking to me. His uncle
had been a DJ in the 70’s and apparently had a ton of records. He
wanted me to stop by his uncle’s place and have a look at them
sometime. I gave him my number and months passed without hearing from
him. We had a blizzard one day with about a foot and a half of snow and
he picked that day to call me. I think I had a Honda Prelude at the
time, and it was not ready for the snow, but I decided to go anyway. I
picked him up and we headed to his uncle’s house.

On the way
there he told me, “Oh, by the way, my uncle is a preacher now.”
Apparently his uncle had burned himself real bad while freebasing.
Afterwards he changed his whole life and found religion. He had pews in
the living room and he gave sermons in his house. When we opened the
door he had a scarred face from all the burns. He was like, “Yeah, all
my records are in the basement. Go ahead.” I went down there and it was
awesome. It was a great score. He didn’t want to get rid of a bunch of
the records when I brought them up. With a lot of them he’d say, “Oh
no, I can’t sell this”, but the things he held onto weren’t that big a
deal. The smaller label and rare stuff was what I ended up walking away
with. That was one of the weirdest digging adventures ever but it was
also a really amazing score. I got a lot of really hot shit.

I’ve
got one more before we wrap this up. There was this old dude who I used
to buy records from back in the day that everyone called Pops. He ran a
place called Pops' Record Roundup in Richmond, VA. One time my friend
Tsega and I were on our way there to get some records. We were smoking
some weed on the way and it was some really strong shit. By the time we
got there we were completely blazed, on some other world shit. We saw
Pops and we were talking to him. All of a sudden, in rolls his grandson
with this hood rat entourage.

His grandson is this 16 year old
kid with these little wire rimmed glasses and kind of dorky looking.
Pops said to his grandson, “Hey, these guys like rap, rap for them.”
This kid takes the gum he’s chewing out of his mouth and puts it behind
his ear. No joke. It was like something out of Leave It to Beaver. Then
he starts aggressively rhyming at us. It was some fast, double time,
southern shit about fucking bitches and shooting people. We were stoned
out of minds, thinking, “What the hell is going on here?” Pops, this 90
year old dude with a hearing aid, who couldn’t hear a word his grandson
was saying, was smiling ear to ear. He was so proud of his grandson.
The kid wasn’t bad. He didn’t lack cadence or breath control, but I
wasn’t about to give him a record deal or nothing.

Make
sure to head over to the Doc's MySpace, sample some of his music, and
pick up a mix tape. You can get to his MySpace by clicking here.