Confessions from a Vinyl Junkie #12225
“Life is not so idiotically mathematical that only the big eat the small; it is just as common for a bee to kill a lion or at least to drive it mad.”― August Strindberg
I have been thinking deeply about collecting “things” since the eruption of the LA Fires. Underneath the true horror of lives being lost and ruined, and the resultant (and caused-by) cataclysmic climate issues, lies a deep question about how humans tent their lives, and what they fill said tents with. Ancient books like the Torah and The Tripitaka talk about the power of living nomadic lives, lives not anchored by “things” and instead freedom of self, spiritual and physical, through freedom of movement and freedom from consumption. But that is not the way our capitalistic democracy tends to train us how to exist; and having a hoarder/collector gene does not help the search for the Shekhinah or the obtainment of Nirvana.
I am a record collector. I am and have always been a record collector. I have collected other things along the way as well, baseball cards, paintings, and (still, very much) books. But the main focus of my collecting habit is records. William Burroughs always said that a habit does not happen over night but instead after years of chipping and fueling. It has been years, and I am addicted.
Film director Kevin Smokler was making a film called Vinyl Nation, a documentary about this most recent era of vinyl adoration that we are living through. He came to interview me about record collecting, with one of his first questions framed like this: “There is a perception that record collectors are boring, unattractive types of humans. We are getting the sense that this is not true…that the modern record collector is a hipper breed of cat (I am paraphrasing here, but something like that). Do you think that this past held belief is true?”
My answer: “Of course we are boring, miserable types. Boring to the core.” And I started to tell a few stories of times I walked amongst fellow collectors. At an ARSC conference, for example. ARSC being the Association for Recorded Sound Collectors, where at 40 I was one of the younger participants, loving each and every seminar, may it have been a deep dive into Gull Records, a 1920s label known for their poor quality pressings, to new innovations of recorded archive storage and distribution (for the record: I love being an ARSC member). Another moment was in the late nineties at the first Terrastock three-day music festival in Providence Rhode Island, curated specifically for that type of record collector who loved the psych/folk/weirdo music of the 60s through 90s. I was telling Kevin a story of a specific conversation I had between the Tom Rapp set at the festival and the Silver Apple reformation set…telling him of a tussle I got into with Jim O’Rourke about the sequencing of a Boredoms record…when Kevin cut me off to ask another question. “See,” I said, “I am so boring that you don’t even feel like hearing my answer about being boring.” I made the final cut of the film, by the way…check it out (I am at 1:20:00).
Why am I so damn attached to these “things”
When record collectors meet, the first question is generally: how many records do you have? For years, that seemed like a great question. But at one point, my answer of 13,000 seemed really stupid (while true, which includes my singles and 78s). No one needs 13,000 records. And even if the need was there, anyone can procure 13,000 records cheaply: start buying up Sing-Along-With-Mitch records and Christmas records, throw a hefty bulk of old classical and operatic records that stock the thrift stores near you, whisk in some Ernie Ford, Pat Boone, and gnarled boxsets of the Dorsey Brothers. Those alone can be a super cheap way of starting a massive collection, albeit a shite one. Size is not everything (not around this, at least)…and is a pretty dumb initial way to judge a person’s record collecting prowess.
Fellow record collector and Tompkins Square Records founder Josh Rosenthal changed my perspective during one eve listening session. The power is not in the number, it is in the quality (obvious, right?). If you don’t love something: get rid of it. Purge. It is freeing and glorious. He had just rid himself of a slew of records; purging the collection empowers the collection, makes it stronger with a deeper focus on the great records without the less loved ones cramming their way in between. Since moving to Marin, I have rid myself of over 1000 records. I have not missed ANY of them.
With this recent Los Angeles catastrophe, talking to a dear friend and fellow collector who escaped his burning house with 6 boxes of choice platters from his huge and glorious collection (and he escaped with more than most), it highlighted the senselessness of the habit, the stupidity of “thing hoarding” in general. What is the end goal anyway? Joe Bussard was famous…legendary…for being one of the biggest 78 collectors in the world. He had records that no one had, which collectively told a one-of-a-kind story of American music recording history. People doing reissues would call him to borrow his records to master from because he was the only one who owned many of what they needed. Others flocked to his house, hoping to be invited to his basement where he would play some of the rarest classic pre-war blues records in the world. When he died, his family threw the collection up for auction…back into the wild they go, except with high high high price tags that only certain collectors out there could afford. His legacy is selling in pieces to the highest bidders.
What is the point?
Over the past week I have gotten rid of over 100 records, and I am gearing up for a lot more. Digging through boxes of records in the basement that have not been played since we moved in 2018…pulling out records I before would never have thought to throw in the outskie-pile: early David Johansen solo records, underground “classics” like The Index and Love’s Black Beauty. Sure, they are fine—in some moments great—but am I going to listen to them as much as I would ever listen to The New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground, and early Love respectively? No way. Get rid of them.
I do listen to everything before making my decision, which has also reintroduced me to parts of my collection that have been underappreciated. I am now on a major Tangerine Dream kick, thankful that I have the foresight to collect their original pressings in the 90s—the golden age of record collecting—when they were procured for dollars here and dollars there. I am also loving my Jazz Messengers original press vinyl that I had not brushed off in years, while also finding joy in the brutal noise of Hijokaidan, whose earliest records I bought off of Bruce Milne and Au-Go-Go records in the late part of the last century. Is it not that I don’t want to have records around, I just want to pare down and focus only on records I love (and there are many, be assured). Get the collection down to 5000 records…and then get it down further.
Some of the records I am ridding myself of are for sale on my discogs store. Take a look. I AM OPEN FOR TRADING! But I am being very very picky for all the reasons above.
And yes, I am still buying, albeit more thoughtfully than before. I am an addict. I am a time-old, boring, pathetic record collector after all. I have been since I was days old (and my brothers gave me their Monkees records) and it is not something I plan to shake. Because there is nothing…nothing…like throwing the needle onto the groove of a great record and knowing that the next 20 minutes are going to be just beautiful.
Like a Snap of a Carrot: Shipwreck Stories with Patrick Tayluer
Crazy stuff from the archives of the Library of Congress. Patrick Tayluer must have been a true character, and has shipwreck stories that he tells as if he was there…putting in to question the facts as known: “All right, Scully, put the end of this twine around your neck and see what you can do.” He got over the side and into the water and the twine round his neck, he swam ashore. But my God, had you have seen that man as I saw him when I got ashore, you would have taken sympathy on any poor devil who had to swim through that pumice stone as he did.
An Incredible Curation of Out Jazz Videos
Thanks to Brian Turner for pointing me to this collection of videos of the kingpins of free jazz and other, out sounds. Warning….there are hours of incredible viewing here.
The complete quote: “There was a minute in the 80s where I was definitely doing too much Bolivian marching powder and just being a fucking lunatic and [it was] also coming at the time in a young actor’s career where they’re too old to play the roles they’ve been playing, but they’re too young to play the roles that will last you the rest of your life, which are really the great ones. And you can kind of feel it. I love music so much, as evidenced by this talk and all of that, that I got it into my head that maybe I should think more about music and I cut a demo with Toto.” (I am sure everyone’s goto band to colab with)
It would have been Sam Cook’s 93rd birthday today. With Cook having a classic song of his, A Change Is Gonna Come, hit the English charts recently and a fantastic mini doc directed by Jeff Zimbalist as part of his series Remastered series, the legendary singer proves to be still very much part of the public consciousness. Happy Birthday Sam!
The trailer for the Presence was recently released, and it looks like a formidable horror film from a classic director who has not dipped his toes in the genre very much before. The interview is great….looking forward to the film’s release this week.
People thought records would ruin radio and that films and movies would be the end of civilization as we know it. But there is not enough talk around the horror that newspapers brought to some when they started getting bigger circulation and readership. This is a fantastic article and I love the beginning quote from Charles Baudelaire:
Every newspaper, from the first line to the last, is nothing but a tissue of horrors…And it’s this disgusting aperitif that the civilised man consumes at breakfast each morning … I do not understand how a pure hand can touch a newspaper without a convulsion of disgust.
Drinking Wine (I-III)
By Tao Qian1
****HAPPY 138th BIRTHDAY JOHN JOSEPH BECKER (here are his pieces Abongo & Concerto for Violin and Orchestra)
Translated by Arthur Sze from the excellent book The Silk Dragon II
David, I reached the same "have to shed" moment a few years back, seeing a few years older than you. Over a six year period I sold or donated LPs to take my collection down from 8,000 to about 1,000, many from the Lomaxes, others from Townes Van Zandt, Lightning Hopkins (managed by my dad for about 10 years). A lot went to Waterloo Recors who were then bulking up their used vinyl. I kept my blues and folk items also. I regret letting some go (Who Will Save the World? - The Mighty Groundhops, my Magma items and a few others but not enough to go try to re-acquire them. I also forwarded your piece to 3 friends who are collectors, one with over 100,000 LPs (still buying), the other two probably come in @40,000 (both are still buying). So, in my case, I think I'm cured as I rarely buy anything, just dig around and play something I already have. Good luck paring down
I don't collect vinyl, but I do collect CDs and have come to the same conclusion that I need to purge some of my stuff. It's fun to obtain more and more of them, but it's even better to appreciate what I have. That still won't stop me from buying new ones, of course, I'm just going to be pickier.