Keep It Fresh

It’s a great feeling growing a record collection. Sure, it’s great growing a CD, cassette, 8-track, phonograph, etc…collection as well. But for the purpose of this long-winded post I’m talking about vinyl.

I had records as a kid and in my early teens, but for about 16 years my obsession was with CDs. From 1992 to 2008 I was only buying those small, circular things that came in jewel cases as that was the main way to get it. At least if you weren’t just a passive listener that was fine with the world of pop or classic rock music that was pumped out by radio. I was not. I had very particular tastes in music, so buying CDs was the way to go. Plus, I loved owning music. I loved going over the album art and lyrics and the “Thank Yous” in the liner notes. Finding out what gear the bands used and endorsed. That was my thing(and still is.)

Of course in the early 2000s digital music was becoming the thing. CD sales dropped because it was just easier downloading from your phone and storing all your music right at your fingertips. I dabbled in downloading albums, but it never took the place of snagging physical media. And just when you thought we heard the death knell of CDs and physical media thanks to iTunes, a bunch of hipsters revived vinyl(leave it to the damn hipsters.)

Folks started buying records again, and Record Store Day was born which brought back the love for brick and mortar record stores. The place that many of us spent our misspent youths in. The gathering place for the weirdos and loners, and those with small but tight knit friend groups. The owners and their stoned and hungover staff became our surrogate parents, guiding us to what was hot and what we missed decades before. “Well if you like this band, then check these guys out from 30 years ago.” They developed road maps for us to follow the musical bread crumbs, which led to us getting our minds thoroughly blown and rewired all because of these concert t-shirt wearing, junk food eating, college-age wizards that likely still lived at home. Record store clerks and owners were the Buddhas in our zip code that helped us find who we were through the drop of a record needle.

Needless to say, record stores are sacred places to me.

In 2008 I bought an AT-PL120 on a whim and on a Chicago trip shortly after purchased a handful of jazz records at Jazz Record Mart located at 27 E Illinois St(RIP). That started me off on my second vinyl journey after not having bought a record since 1987(the last one being Judas Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance from Butterfly Records.) According to my Discogs page I’m currently at 1,294 albums, though that doesn’t include the stack of classical records I have downstairs. So the number is well over 1,300 now. I sold and traded in at least a couple hundred over the years. I think I’ve pared the collection down enough that everything I currently own is stuff I wouldn’t get rid of.

With big collections comes the problem of things getting forgotten. A lot of the time I tend to have a stack of newer albums upstairs and listen to them for weeks. I’ll eventually take them downstairs to where I keep the majority of my albums(most are down there, while I keep soundtracks, jazz, hip hop, and vinyl boxsets upstairs.) I’ll put them into my record shelves(alphabetically, of course) and then grab 10 or 12 albums I haven’t heard in a while to listen to for the next couple of weeks.

I try to do that, that is.

But I would typically just get stuck on three or four albums and listen to them for three weeks. I’m trying to change that, though. Since January I’ve been pretty consistent in grabbing a baker’s dozen from the library and then making a concerted effort to listen to them all in the course of a week or two. Then take them back down and put them away and grab another stack. With so many records there’s a wide variety to listen to. Also, since the soundtracks and jazz are upstairs I do tend to pull from those more. On average, the jazz collection probably gets the most love as it just fits my brain more than anything else these days. But I’ve always prided myself on how vast my tastes are and my love of genre-hopping, so the newfound habit of hitting the collection more often is me trying to get back to that.

The latest pulls from the collection are below:

---

I think the whole process of collecting records is as much just loving music as it is kind of an OCD thing. I’ve been this way since I was a little kid. Keeping all my Star Wars, Transformers, and GI Joe toys in their very much intact boxes that they came in and meticulously putting things back where they need to be. I always loved opening my closet and seeing the Snowspeeder, Y-Wing, and Degobah boxes neatly put away and easily accessible. It’s no different now at 51-years old when I put records back in their respective spots in the record cabinets. There’s a sense of completion that comes with that. But like my toys as a kid, I don’t buy vinyl just to put it away and not touch it. I play the records and enjoy them greatly. I never understood why someone would buy things only to keep them untouched. That part of collecting and OCD isn’t in me. I played with my toys and built worlds with them. I didn’t beat them up, but I sure did play with them. And I play my records. A lot.

That’s why I’m making a concerted effort to play as many of my records as I can. And since I’ve started doing this more consistently I’m finding albums I forgot I had, or ones I haven’t listened to in years and re-discovering their greatness. It also helps making my record area downstairs more inviting. Posters on the walls, stereo set-up down there as well, and just a cool vibe. I’ve made it a spot I quite enjoy.

Listen to your collection, as much as you can. Enjoy those spins. Brick n mortars forever.