From Crate Digging to Digital Archiving: 50 Years of Musical Discovery

How a teenage train journey to Hillbrow Record Centre shaped the philosophy behind the South African Rock Encyclopedia

In 1975, I was catching trains from Boksburg to Johannesburg for one reason: the legendary Hillbrow Record Centre. Not for the hits displayed at eye level, but for the bargain bins tucked away in corners, the overlooked gems that most browsers would skip past. I was sixteen, armed with pocket money and an unshakeable belief that the best music was always hiding in plain sight.

I had no idea I was learning a philosophy that would, fifty years later, shape how I approach digital archiving.

The Art of the Dig

Those early crate-digging expeditions taught me something fundamental: the most rewarding discoveries require effort. You can’t just scan the surface; you have to dig, flip, explore. You develop an eye for the overlooked, the undervalued, the forgotten. Most importantly, you learn to trust your curiosity over conventional wisdom.

The Hillbrow Record Centre wasn’t just a shop, it was a university of musical archaeology. Every bin held potential treasures: import singles that never made local charts, B-sides that outshone their A-sides, albums by brilliant bands that never got the recognition they deserved.

I still remember two specific finds from 1975 that perfectly capture what I was learning about musical discovery. “Revelations: A Musical Anthology for Glastonbury Fayre” was a sprawling compilation from the 1971 festival featuring everyone from Gong to The Pink Fairies, a sonic snapshot of a cultural moment I’d never experienced first-hand. “Flash Fearless Versus the Zorg Women Parts 5 & 6” was pure sci-fi rock opera madness, featuring John Entwistle from The Who and Alice Cooper in a concept album about space battles.

Neither would ever trouble the mainstream charts, but both opened doorways to entire worlds of music I didn’t know existed. The thrill wasn’t just in finding these records; it was in understanding their stories, their context, their place in the larger musical narrative.

But Hillbrow wasn’t my only hunting ground. Back home in Boksburg, Cat Ballou Records and Jeans shop became another treasure trove. It was there I discovered “Glass Top Coffin” by Ramases – an Egyptian-themed prog-folk masterpiece that most people had never heard of. These local finds proved that musical gems weren’t exclusive to the big city; they were everywhere if you knew how to look.

From Vinyl to Virtual

[Cue montage music and spinning calendar pages]
So anyway, after a quick 22-year detour involving the usual, you know, military service, marriage, kids, the soul-crushing beauty of corporate life, let’s pick up in 1997…

By October 1997, I was ready to translate this passion into something new. The internet offered an unprecedented opportunity: I could create a space dedicated to “the obscure and trivial in Rock music” that wouldn’t be limited by physical shelf space or geographic boundaries. My first website was born from the same impulse that once drove me to catch those trains to Hillbrow: the need to share the hidden gems.

Little did I know that 1997 would also mark the beginning of my involvement in one of music’s greatest rediscovery stories. The search for Rodriguez was just starting to gain momentum (more on this later), and what began as personal curiosity would eventually transform into a global phenomenon that reshaped how I understood the power of musical archaeology.

But platform choice matters when you’re building an archive. I chose WordPress.com deliberately, not just for its flexibility, security and reliability, but because I understood the difference between preservation and performance. While others dump their musical discoveries into Facebook posts that vanish into the algorithmic void within hours, I was building something permanent, searchable, and properly organized. Social media is where knowledge goes to die; websites are where it lives forever.

But I had a problem. How do you recreate the serendipitous joy of vinyl browsing in a digital space? How do you capture that sense of discovery, that reward for exploration?

The answer, I realized, wasn’t to fight the medium but to embrace its possibilities while honouring the spirit of the original experience.

The Rodriguez Circle

In 2013, fate offered me the perfect bridge between these two worlds: a job at Mabu Vinyl, the iconic record shop that would soon become famous thanks to the film “Searching For Sugar Man.” Working there felt like coming home, surrounded by vinyl, talking music with fellow obsessives, helping customers make their own discoveries.

But it was my involvement with the Rodriguez story that truly crystallized my understanding of what I was trying to build online. Here was the ultimate “hidden gem”, an American musician who’d become a folk hero in South Africa while remaining virtually unknown in his home country. The story embodied everything I’d learned about music’s power to transcend boundaries, about the importance of preserving overlooked histories, about how the most significant cultural moments often happen in the margins.

The Rodriguez phenomenon sparked the creation of the South African Rock Encyclopedia. Suddenly, I had a mission that went beyond personal passion: preserving and sharing the hidden history of South African rock music.

The Digital Record Shop Philosophy

Today, the South African Rock Encyclopedia operates on principles I learned in those record shop aisles fifty years ago. It’s not clinical or template-driven. Like the best vinyl shops, it’s a bit messy but reasonably well-organized, with multiple ways to discover the same treasure. I respect my visitors’ intelligence and reward exploration rather than demanding everything be obvious.

When someone complains about not finding something they didn’t bother to search for, I remember the customers who expected record shop staff to magically produce exactly what they wanted without any effort on their part. The real diggers, the people who appreciate music’s hidden stories, know how to use a search box. They understand that the best discoveries often require a little work.

Explore The South African Rock Encyclopedia Archives & Offshoots

The Bins Never End

The tools have changed, but the mission remains the same. Instead of flipping through vinyl crates, I’m now digging through archives, interviews, chart histories, and forgotten press clippings. Instead of hunting for rare pressings, I’m preserving rare stories. Instead of arranging records on shelves, I’m organizing knowledge in ways that honour both accessibility and serendipity.

Every page on the South African Rock Encyclopedia is designed like those old record bins, organized enough to be navigable, chaotic enough to surprise. The navigation cards work like album covers, giving visitors immediate visual cues about what they’ll discover inside. The search function rewards curiosity. The interconnected content ensures that following one thread often leads to unexpected treasures.

Fifty Years of the Hunt

Looking back, that sixteen-year-old catching trains to Hillbrow was already practising digital curation principles: preserve what might be lost, share what deserves wider recognition, trust that others share your passion for the overlooked and undervalued.

The medium has evolved from vinyl to pixels, but the collector’s heart remains unchanged. Whether you’re flipping through bargain bins or browsing website categories, the thrill of discovery, that moment when you find exactly what you didn’t know you were looking for, remains one of life’s great pleasures.

The South African Rock Encyclopedia isn’t just a website; it’s a digital record store where every page holds the potential for discovery, every search might uncover a forgotten gem, and every visitor is invited to become a fellow crate digger in the endless bins of South African rock history.

The hunt continues. The bins are just virtual now.

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The South African Rock Encyclopedia exists because of community – just like those old record shops where knowledge was shared between collectors. This online resource was made possible through the tireless, passionate, and consistently accurate contributions of John Samson, Kurt Shoemaker, Tertius Louw, Shiloh Noone, Benjy Mudie, Marq Vas, Leon Economides, and many others who understood the mission. Special mention must go to Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, whom I first met during the Rodriguez search, and who became my co-founder of the South African Rock Encyclopedia. Like the best vinyl finds, the most valuable discoveries are always better when shared.

Some of the Sounds That Shaped My Journey