Collector #3: Mike Hooker
Monday, March 1st, 2010“So, this is the wall” Mike says, gesturing at his collection. It’s arranged the same way as collector #2: broken down into categories, then alphabetical and chronological, with compilations and various artist records at the end of each respective category. There’s one difference. Mike’s records are organized right to left instead of left to right. Mike insists it’s so he can read them faster by looking at the covers instead of the spines when he flips through them. Having gone to Hebrew school all of my childhood, I have another thought.
“I can find any record in my collection in 10 seconds, because it’s organized in a way that makes sense to me.”
His LP categories are:
- Billy Childish (hailing over 50 records from the Chatham garage punk legend)
- Punk (though he admits his definition of punk is loose and includes glam, among others)
- 60s garage/Beatles/bubblegum (he has every Beatles record including many rare variations)
- R&B/Soul/Girl Group
- 50s rocker, rockabilly, & honky tonk
- Old timey – country/blues/jazz from the 30’s and 40s
- Misc (soundtracks, 80s, oddball, embarrassing stuff, etc)
Mike is more of a 45 enthusiast than an LP collector though, and he keeps his singles in a series of boxes he’s custom upholstered.
He has about three times as many 45s as LPs, with a focus on punk and power pop from ’77 to ’83, as well as Texas records. Altogether he has four punk boxes, three garage, two soul, one girl group and a rockabilly box, which total somewhere between 2,000-2,500 45s, and they’re all impeccable.
The ones that caught my eye most were a double box set of Phil Spector-produced singles on red vinyl.
“45’s are more appealing to me. Lots of the punk and power pop records I collect are from bands that only released one great single and then vanished into obscurity. But in cases where a song exists on both an LP and a 45, I would typically pay more for the 45 than the LP it came on because I prefer the format,” Mike says.
Mike’s life of enjoying vinyl started when he was 15 in South Florida. “A friend of mine had some Beatles records and the packaging and sound of them enamored me. Plus they were cheaper than CDs, so I was instantly hooked!” He begged and pleaded for a year with the owner of a record store in Ft. Lauderdale called Sid’s until they hired him. Mike ended up working in a few stores in Florida including Radioactive Records.
He made his way to Austin and worked and even co-owned a store in town before selling his half to move on. Mike now sells records from his home on rockaroundrecords.com. Potential buyers can ONLY buy records from that Web site, even though he resides in Austin. He enjoys it more this way, calling it the right decision because he has lower overhead and more free time to hunt for records.
“In the last few years, my collection has expanded dramatically.”
“It was my lifelong dream to open a shop. I accomplished that and after a while was ready to move on” Mike says, as his two dogs play-fight in his apartment. One is named Sadie, as his girlfriend wants to name all her pets after Beatles songs.
Mike regularly sets up a table at the Austin Record Convention and recently took a chance at doing a show in Dallas. He says that Dallas used to have a successful record show, but they haven’t had a good one in a long time. Austin has about 300 dealers while Dallas has only 10-12. “From a buyer’s standpoint, I found nearly nothing for myself or to resell in Dallas. The advantage was I sold a shit-ton since none of the other dealers had good records!” It’s clear from looking at the pricing of his albums that he could raise prices a decent amount and still sell a lot.
He tells me that he typically reduces prices 10% each successive day of the convention and most people don’t even haggle because things are priced fair to begin with. Mike does some buying at conventions, will occasionally look for deals on Ebay, and goes on trips around the country to find records. While he typically doesn’t pay more than $20 for any given record for his personal collection, he’s twice in his life splurged $100 on things he couldn’t pass up.
“I don’t spend my money on anything else. It’s all I care about” he says.
Mike buys entire collections regularly. There are three levels of divvying up what he purchases. The cream of the crop goes to his personal collection if he doesn’t already have it. The next level is offered for sale through rockaroundrecords.com. And the final level gets sold on consignment at various stores in Austin. Even the bottom level is strong enough that it sells quickly.
“I’m happy where I’m at. As long as I can find them, I can sell them. And my personal want-list is always growing. So I’m always looking for leads. Always looking for records.”
Words by Zack Teibloom. Photos by Mary Rehak
