Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Daptone Records ransacked

I know there are a lot of Sharon Jones fans around here, so I thought this would be of interest. This e-mail was posted on guitartown today.

Friends and associates,

As you may have heard through the grapevine by now, Daptone was broken
into last night. Unfortunately, there was a lot of equipment (mics,
pre-amps, monitors, turntables, guitars, amps, computers, etc.) stolen
and damaged. It is going to take us a while to go through everything
and take full stock of what was stolen, and we are not supposed to
touch anything until the cops come back to collect fingerprints so we
can only guess what's missing from some mic drawers and cabinets.
And, no, we did not have insurance. We had been shopping around with
different companies earlier this month but had not signed a check, so
nothing was insured. We are working on replacing the gate in front,
installing an alarm system, and getting insurance, but it is
President's day so it's not going as quickly as we would have liked.
Nydia's computer was stolen (which wasn't backed up) and the modems/
phone system was ripped out, so we'll be relatively out of commission
for a few days.

I would like to ask for everyone's help first in keeping an eye out
for all of our stuff showing up on ebay/craigslist/local music shops,
and secondly (and more realistically) keeping an eye out for good
deals on headphones, mics, pre-amps, etc. I could really use a heads
up on any kind of studio package for sale or studio equipment to be
possibly bought or borrowed as soon as possible. We have a session
scheduled for Friday to lay down some music for (I know this sounds
surreal) Rod Stewart, and I'm going to have to get the studio running
by then. I know I'm going to need to find headphones, cables, mics, and pre-amps by
then. I'm not sure what else yet.

Upon first glance we are definitely missing:
Fender Super Guitar Amp in case
Fender Deluxe Guitar Amp
A whole bunch of headphones and wires
Nydia's HP laptop computer
One Desktop MacIntosh Computer
One Purple Audio API style lunchbox with
four Purple Audio Biz mic pre-amps
2 Yamaha NS10 monitors
Vintage Harmony Rocket Guitar
One steel string acoustic guitar
Martin Tenor sax in a gig bag
Technics 1200 turntable
Ion USB turntable
Teac Receiver/stereo amp
Sony dual deck CD burner/player
All of our modem/phone system stuff was ripped out and taken.
A whole bunch of condensor and dynamic microphones (I still need to
figure out exactly what's missing)
The power supply for my Trident console was tossed and the board was
moved (probably not gently) so the status of that is still questionable.
A baldwin organ was tossed and is probably broken.
Lacie External hard drive

Over the next few days, as we sort out the rubble, we are going to
figure out what else we lost.

We are putting in a roll down front gate, alarm system, and finally
getting our insurance happening this week. We are also going to hire
a security guard to watch the house for tonight as the cops and alarm
guy seemed pretty confident that they will be back with a truck now
that they've seen what's in here.

Thanks for keeping eyes open for us. AND PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE
ALONG TO ANYONE YOU THINK MIGHT BE ABLE TO HELP US.

Thankfully, we all still have our health, ambition, tape machines, and
sense of humor in tact. You can slow us down, but you can't stop
us. Sleep well knowing we here at Daptone will continue to...

Keep putting Soul up,

Gabriel Roth

P.S. On a lighter note, it seems like the burglars did drop a few
items in order to lift Alex's old safe out of here, which was VERY
heavy, VERY unwieldy, and also VERY EMPTY!

1 comment:

ghoul said...

That's poo. Sorry for the break in and loss of your stuff, that really, really sucks.
Think of the good stuff and get your positive vibes back into the production. As you say, they can slow you down etc...
Best wishes,
Andrew.