Auckland Record Fair – Plus DJs, and a Special Guest Vendor

Attention music collectors! Announcing the Auckland Record Fair This Saturday February 11th, Freemans Bay.

An essential date in the music lover’s calendar is fast approaching: the Auckland Record Fair, with the next instalment happening on Saturday February 11th.

What’s especially cool about this fair is that it’s not just for collectors. Of course there will be a huge selection for vinyl, CD (and even cassette) devotees to dig through, but it’s also a celebration of music in a wider sense, bringing together a genre mashup of DJs – and a very special guest vendor.

DJs playing on the day are:

Blind Mango Chutney (the 95bFM Jazz Show, and Blind Mango’s Jazz )
Miss Dom (the 95bFM Jazz Show and Miss Dom’s Vinyl)
Johnny Dambuster
Selectress (Bass FM)
Dujon Cullingford (Dujon’s Digs)
With more to be announced…

The special guest vendor is Steve Braunias, respected journalist, and author of Cover Story: 100 Beautiful, Strange and Frankly Incredible New Zealand LP Covers. Remarkably, Braunias will be selling some of  the records he bought while researching the book, so this is a unique chance to get your hands on some rarities. .

The fair is organised by Taranaki music legend Brian Wafer, who describes it as “A Record Love Convention.”

Brian Wafer’s record shop and label, Ima Hitt (founded in 1980), were responsible for numerous local releases – such as those by New Plymouth legends Sticky Filth –  as well as international imports. He has also organised too many gigs to mention, and as musician and  Peter Jefferies says in his AudioCulture profile of Wafer, “the number of posters he has and continues to put up around the city, is a work that will probably remain in progress for the rest of his life.”

The Auckland Record Fair vendors are congregating from the Far North, Bay Of Plenty, Waikato, Taranaki, and of course Tāmaki Makaurau, bringing all sorts of sounds on all sorts of formats: 12 inch, 10 inch, 7 inch, CD and cassette. Some, but not all, vendors will have EFTPOS, so do bring some cash.

Follow the Auckland Record Fair on Facebook

So what on earth is in the collection of special guest vendor Steve Braunias?

He tells us, “A lot of great music has been in New Zealand, but so too has a lot of the worst music of all time in any country. I collected a great many terrible New Zealand records during the five years I worked on my book Cover Story: 100  Beautiful, Strange and Frankly Incredible New Zealand LP Covers. In all I collected about 600 records and around a third will be for sale at the record fair in Freemans Bay, but some are so bad that I might have to pay customers to take them away.

There are also rarities, curios, and some genuinely actually really good records. This is my first time flogging vinyl at a record fair but I’ll also be there on the look-out. The sub-title of my book Cover Story reads, “Volume 1.” That was meant as a threat and I am thinking about making good on that threat with a second volume – of 100 beautiful, strange and frankly spiritual New Zealand LP covers…of Christian music. Good Lord! See you at Freemans Bay.”