The first kid in line at this year's Musos Corner 'May the Fourth' sale is called Banjo.
He has been camped outside the store since Sunday afternoon, April 30, when he showed up with a blanket, a battery pack to keep his phone charged, and his guitar.
His music teacher back home at Maitland thinks he's mad to spend four nights on the street, but the custom Gibson guitar he has his eye on was too enticing to risk missing it.
The sale has become a main event on the city's musos' calendar, when the local music shop slashes prices by as much as 90 per cent for top quality and rare instruments and production equipment.
Last year, Banjo rocked up at 2am on sale day only to find he was 26th in line. This year, he wasn't going to be beaten.
"Hang on, I'll go and get Number 2," he says with a smile when I dropped by on Monday afternoon, jumping up from his improvised camp site at the door where he'd been plucking on an acoustic guitar watching the passing parade of shoppers and gym rats headed to the all-night fitness centre next door, "He's just inside playing a piano."
(Another of the campers who arrived on Tuesday, electrical engineer Sam Spencer, said a few of the fitness set had cast a second glance at the little band of the faithful hanging out for a bargain. He was set up in a camp chair, tapping away on a laptop designing audio systems for his start-up between facetiming his four-year-old at home with mum; 'Are you coming home tonight, Dad?' he laughs, 'Not tonight mate, Dad needs a new keyboard!')
Number 2 is Sam Rush, a local musician who has sat in with a few bands and has been keeping himself busy with a book of standards and the occasional run to Coles for a hot chook and a loaf of bread. It is his first May 4 sale, but he has heard about it for a while. He knows the bargain hunters are keen and the bargains are too good to pass up.
He has his eye on a custom Strat worth a few thousand dollars that he's hoping he can nab for only a couple hundred.
He and Banjo have been chatting and jamming the hours away. The Musos Corner crew have seen it all before and check in as they pass in and out of the store. This will be the 12th annual May 4 sale, inspired by the late Andrew Lindsay, a stalwart of the Newcastle music scene who passed away last year after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He was 51.
"It went off so well the first time we did it and we just kept going. Now we get people ringing in March asking if we will have the sale and people come in asking when it will be," Andrew's mother, Sandra Lindsay told the Newcastle Herald last year. "They all love it and I love it."
"I had heard people start lining up days in advance," Sam Rush said on Tuesday, "I was doing a gig on Sunday so afterwards I thought I would see if anyone was around and Banjo was here."
"I was only here seven hours before the last sale," Banjo said, smiling, "I thought I'd give it the full stretch this year."
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