What a dope weekend! On September 24th Discogs arranged its international record fair series Crate Diggers in Berlin. Naturally I was very excited to take part as a vendor and crate digger. The whole event was very organised (a big shout-out to the super friendly Discogs staff and Prince Charles) as we walked in, we were greeted and guided by the Discogs staff. After getting settled in our booth, it was nice to walk around the market place and meet other vendors from around the world. To my surprise we were the only independent record label at the record fair. Honestly I found that to be very odd as Berlin is filled with several new emerging imprints…

The highlight of the fair, at least for me, were the independent vendors from Berlin. These vendors (mostly 60+) were selling second hand vinyl in almost mint condition. I spent roughly a good hour going through old Soviet bootlegs of American primetime hits. I also managed to get my hands on some actual Russian “ribs” (Музыка на рёбрах)! I had heard of these sorts records from my grandparents, but had never actually ran into one. For more: check out this dope documentary on the 1950’s Russian black market for gramophones (sorry in Russian only).

We reached the peak around 17:00 as people began turning up more and more. I was positively surprised by the warm welcome we received as an independent label. The visitors had a lot of questions about our new releases, possible represses and events.
The record fair was from 12:00 to 20:00 followed by a killer after-party with Theo Parrish and Marcellus Pittmann at Prince Charles.

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