The Shed on the Web

The banjo; Wonderful instrument of tool of the Devil?

I spotted this in the Geography room at one of the kid’s schools – It says:

The only thing better than a banjo is two banjos and a pair of robot arms to help you play them at the same time.

I showed it to Sarah but she wasn’t impressed but then she is banjophobic!

Imagine you could play duelling banjos by yourself!

A few years ago the Grateful Dead released a box set of recordings from their 1969 run of shows at the Fillmore West in San Francisco. These shows were recorded by the band on a 16 track machine, the first album to be recorded on one. Some of the music recorded over the four nights was originally released on the bands first live album the legendary Live/Dead. Recordings of those shows, of various qualities, have long circulated amongst deadheads but the news of an official release of the entire collection had people leaping for joy!

The only problem was that the 10 disc collection was to be a limited edition of 10,000 copies and to add extra spice to all of this if you pre-ordered you got an 11th disc, containing more music from the same era, as a bonus. So the set became an instant collectors item and right from the start silly money was being spent by some who had missed out on buying copies on ebay.

Well last week a copy went on sale on ebay.co.uk – someone in London was selling his copy and it was noted with interest on my Dead group Eurotraders. The estimate that was touted was probably somewhere in the region of £250 – so i decided to watch it and see what happened.

It started at £85 and quickly progressed to around the £200 mark where it stayed for quite sometime. However by the time the final hour came round it was sitting at just over £280 and then in the dying seconds the price jumped over the £300 mark finishing at £310.50. The seller offered free postage which was decent of him!

So there you are, now my problem is deciding if I want to keep my copy or sell it and raise some much needed cash. I mean I would want to be thought of as a breadhead would I?