By New York Post (U.S.) | Created at 2024-12-23 20:58:52 | Updated at 2024-12-26 18:30:31
2 days ago
Brian Gorsegner appears to be your average punk rocker-turned New Jersey dad, but in truth he’s really an alt-rock Indiana Jones — an urban archeologist bent on recovering long-lost relics of the rock and roll that changed his life.
A music booking agent by day, Gorsegner has spent his nights — and weekends — for more than two decades combing through the basements and attics of aging punk rockers, their families and obsessive fans, such as himself, sleuthing for forgotten artifacts.
And in November, the 41-year-old unearthed a treasure trove at an old house in Queens — finding the original case for Johnny Ramone’s favorite guitar, an instrument which sold for close to $1 million at auction in 2021.
“To a lot of people it might not mean a lot, but for me or fellow collectors it’s like finding the Mona Lisa buried in a bunch of trash. It’s crazy,” Gorsegner told The Post.
As with most of his finds, Gorsegner was put on the trail of Ramone’s guitar case by word of mouth — this time when an old NYC rocker reached out to share stories about being friends with the Ramones, the Misfits and other seminal punk bands from the ’70s and ’80s.
After swapping stories, the rocker told Gorsegner they were moving and planning to empty most of their house into a dumpster, but welcomed him to peruse the piles of old musical gear for something he might want.
The house had fallen into disrepair and Gorsegner had to claw through the place with a crowbar at times. He was able to pry 45 records and posters, and old setlists from cabinets until he stumbled upon the guitar case — and knew he’d struck gold when he saw “RAMONES” stenciled across it in white paint.
“I’d seen it before. There’s a pretty famous photograph by David Godlis that he took of the Ramones playing at CBGB’s in ’77,” Gorsegner said, referring to the legendary East Village punk club where the likes of Patti Smith, Madonna, the Talking Heads, Mink DeVille and Blondie got their starts.
“The photo has their gear all laid out on the stage. And they have these like, really great looking, hardware store-like stencils on them. So I knew as soon as I saw the case that it was one of those original cases,” he added.
Having all but forgotten it, the old NYC rocker went on to recall a Ramones show in 1978 or ’79 where the case’s latch broke and Johnny pitched it into a dumpster behind the club. But the rocker needed a case, and Johnny said to grab it if he was willing to repair the latch. So the rocker did, and went on to use it for years.
“This thing was in the trash four years before I was born,” Gorsegner said. “And now, going on 50 years later, here it is, almost getting ready to hit another dumpster. That kind of excitement is why I really just got so into doing this stuff.”
Gorsegner was able to use Godlis’ photo to verify the case — a tear on its leatherette covering perfectly matched one on a case in the 1977 photo — and after talking to some sources determined it was likely the case Johnny’s famous white Moserite guitar came in when he bought it that year.
“This definitely fell under that category where it’s like, ‘My God, all these years people walk past this house. And this thing is up there,'” he said. “You know? Who f**king knew that it was just in the attic in a house in Queens, where it sat for 40 years collecting dirt and grime.”
“When you make those discoveries, it’s just the coolest s**t in the world.”
While it was one of his best finds, Gorsegner has more than 20 years of hits under his belt dating back to when he first started scouring for punk rock artifacts in the late 90s.
He fell in love with the genre when he was 13 and started playing in bands of his own. By the late ’90s he was working in a screen printing shop alongside a number of other rockers supporting their music — and a “competitive” memorabilia collecting scene sprung up among the group.
But Gorsenger took it one step further, and was soon buying entire collections off people who had seen the ’70s and ’80s punk scene firsthand.
“I found if you pay people right and you treat people well, and if you’re just genuinely enthusiastic about whatever it is you’re out there doing — and not doing it to make a buck or whatever other slimy reason that tons of people do this kind of stuff — you know, word travels, and you build relationships,” he said.
Over the years he’s crisscrossed the country times — he now takes his wife and 11-year-old daughter under the guise of family vacations — following down leads and tips about collections or caches of artifacts that might be up for grabs.
Some of his best scores include fan mail a 15-year-old Dave Grohl wrote to the band Necros requesting stickers and D.C. tour dates; an early Beastie Boys concert poster hand-drawn by the band; and metal spikes from the Misfits’ leather jackets that one of their fathers machined at his factory job.
But Gorsenger’s favorite finds are posters and flyers that bands made when they were young and looking for a start, or high school kids in love with the music as he once was.
“They were these bands that nobody cared about. And they were making fliers at their high school Xerox machine, and they were screen printing their own T-shirts,” Gorsegner said. “Even the Ramones. Like, you don’t think of them as like stenciling their own guitar cases. But there was a time and a place where they were doing just everything themselves.
“The fact that 40, 50 years later, those original artifacts, these cut and paste fliers, and the fact that the original mockups still exist in someone’s attic somewhere, that is just mind blowing to me that it never got left in a copy machine. It never got a beer dumped on it. And that is truly an artifact in my opinion.”
“When you peel poster off a telephone pole on the Bowery in 1978, that’s not supposed to still be around,” he added.
Gorsegner loans most of his collection — the size of which he said is difficult to quantify — out to museums, university exhibits or other institutions. Sometimes he sells things, but always reserves items for people under 20 at discounts in hopes of jumpstarting a new generation of punk passion.
“When I discovered punk when I was 13 and I started playing in bands it became my entire life. It saved me in high school. Like, I don’t know that I would have made it through a lot of stuff if it wasn’t for those bands and that scene,” he said.
He’s even written and published a book — “Ancient Artifax” — documenting his collection alongside interviews with people who made the music and saw it performed.
As for the Ramones case, Gorsegner has no plans to sell or loan it out in the near future, but expects one day he might let it go.
“I hope to keep things until they’re ready to pass on to wherever they’re supposed to go,” he said. “But that Ramones case will be a difficult thing for me to cut loose. Largely because of its historical significance and the fact that the Ramones are the greatest band of all time, and everyone should agree with that.
“But also because of the thrill of finding it. It’s not just something that I bought on eBay. It’s something that I like found in the wild. And that memory, it’s like getting that present that you’re hoping to get Christmas morning. You never forget that.”
