BERKELEY, Calif. — “Storage Wars” cast member Kenny Crossley recently placed the winning bid on an abandoned storage locker, only to discover it contained nothing more than the unsold inventory from failed punk rock label Lookout! Records, baffled sources report.
“I have no fucking clue what any of this shit is. During the sneak peek, I counted at least twenty boxes labeled ‘Green Day’ and ‘The Donnas’ that someone covered with sharpie dollar signs, but so far all I’ve found are a bunch of worthless stickers and half-size records from bands I’ve never heard of. It’s no wonder these guys went out of business,” said Crossley while rummaging through a garbage bag full of crumpled overdue invoices and cease-and-desist letters. “How am I supposed to make back the five hundred bucks I just spent on this garbage? I guess my best bet is to see if Operation Ivy fans are in the market for a stack of bounced royalty checks.”
Scotty Belton, scene veteran and cashier at a local record store, thought of Crossley’s misfortune differently.
“Dude, do you have any idea how rare this stuff is?!” said Belton after inspecting the haul. “This seven-inch is one of only a hundred pressed before the band broke up after their first house show, and this Swollen Boss Toad T-shirt looks like it was hand-drawn and is probably one-of-a-kind. These are definitely the most obscure punk artifacts I’ve ever seen. I mean, like nobody is aware that any of these bands even existed. I offered that normie fifteen bucks for all of it. If he’d had some Fifteen stuff, I could have done twenty-five bucks.”
Co-founder of Lookout! Records Larry Livermore offered some advice to the dejected Crossley.
“If it were me, I would toss all of that junk into the bay. There shouldn’t be anything of value in there,” said Livermore while writing another book about Lookout! Records. “And on the off-chance you do find some hidden gem, expect an unpleasant phone call from Billie Joe Armstrong’s army of lawyers.”
At press time, Crossley was attempting to track down the previous owner of an answering machine cassette full of angry customer messages to see if he has any interest in buying it back.