EEEEEEEEEE!!!

I FOUND ONE I FOUND ONE I FOUND ONE!!!

Just look:

That is the unicorn for fans of Uncle Walt’s:  an original copy of their fourth and final album.  Recorded in 1979, just after the band had re-formed, it sat in the can for reasons unknown until 1988, long after the band had broken up for good.  I never have been able to get the story of why Walter shelved it, nor why he changed his mind and released it.

I looked for a copy for a long time without success, until a a conversation a while back with a buyer at Waterloo Records who also turned out to be a collector/dealer and an Uncle Walt’s fan.  I was moaning about how I was afraid I’d never find one, and he said, “Well, Heidi (Walter’s widow) and Steve Clark were selling these for a while and I think I might have a couple of copies.” I gave him my card and asked him to call or email if he found one he was willing to sell.

That was a year ago.  Last week I got an email saying “Hey, I found a copy of that cassette we talked about.  Are you still interested in it?”

I was interested enough to get myself down there two days later, ready to pay for what I expected would be an expensive collector’s piece.  My guy was there, going through an LP collection a couple were trying to unload on him (the collection, at a by-eye estimate, dated to about 1980).  I waited my turn, kibitzing the collection a bit, until he was done, and then he went off to the back to get the cassette from his desk.  In a few minutes, here he came with it, and I had my checkbook out, but he said, “No, just take it—from one Uncle Walt’s fan to another.”  I managed to stammer my thanks, since I certainly hadn’t expected that.

And I brought it home, dropped it into my cassette deck and ripped it to CD (twenty-year-old cassette tape is always a crapshoot, so I wanted to get an archival copy made soonest).  And now I have it, and it’s on CD where I can listen to it!

:: Insert more varieties of squee here ::