Someone else posted a question that got me thinking about my collection and indeed what was I doing in a vinyl collectors group. Almost all of the folks in this group are currently collecting vinyl. They are obsessed with it whereas I haven't bought any vinyl since 1987 but have been an avid collector almost all of my life.
So the question asked was this... “Just curious. Who intends to eventually stop collecting. I'm 65. years old now. Although I tend to buy more CD s but I really love records and have lots , of them and course still want more.. I'd like to slow down, but it's almost like an addiction. One does have to start thinking of their own mortality. although I hope I'm not going anywhere anytime soon. .Thoughts?”
My initial response was the following... I stopped collecting when I retired and turned 65 five years ago. I'd accumulated nearly 15,000 albums in all formats since my mid teens and the past few years I've been exploring and enjoying my collection. Lots of singles too and I also spent many years in the late 70's and through the 80's spinning records at parties, weddings and in bars which was part of my obsession. Especially the bars.
I read a lot of the comments from the many people who responded to the question and started thinking about my collection and how I have gone about putting it together. First of all I was always about the music and not the format. When CDs came along and initially replaced vinyl I was all for it. I didn't run around buying up all the vinyl I could find. I moved to CDs and even replaced some of my vinyl albums with the CD version. This went on for years and it has only been in the last ten years or so that people suddenly started getting obsessed with vinyl especially since the downloading and streaming phenomenon began killing off CDs.
As I said, I was all about the music. I was collecting music and not vinyl records or CDs or rare items. I was into making mixes and I needed source material. I collected music. Later I also downloaded music and added that to my collection. Most of those nearly 15,000 albums I mentioned that were in my collection were downloaded. I also digitized almost all of my vinyl and CDs or downloaded versions of those albums. I put those albums into iTunes and used that program to create playlist that I converted into CD mixes. Long before that I was making individual mixes one at a time recording albums directly from the turntable to the cassette recorder. Now I copy mixes from iTunes into a new directory, balance the sound volume of the songs, maybe do a little editing of the file and then copy them to a flash drive to play in the car or Bluetooth speaker. I also copy them from iTunes to my iPod. I have 1.54 TB of music on my hard drive and I have made several copies of my collection on portable drives.
So the guy was asking a question about what to do with his collection as he got older and wanted to know what others in the group were doing. I made the decision to stop adding to my collection. To stop buying. To stop downloading. The last few albums in my collection were from early 2017.
I still love to hear new music and I never stopped doing that but now I have a subscription to the Spotify streaming service. Each week I check my music websites such as AllMusic for new releases and then I pick out the ones I want to hear and put them in My Albums in Spotify to listen to later. I've accumulated a large group of albums that are very handy for me to hear whenever I want on my stereo, my laptop, my tablet or my phone. I also put a lot of my mixes on Spotify but that is a whole different post.
So I'm not like most of the people in the vinyl group and I really have never cared about records the way these other folks do. They collect for the sake of collecting. They have an idea of what is rare, what is "necessary" to include, etc. If I don't like the music or the group then it I don't get it regardless of how "important" it is to some people. There are many groups that others would feel is essential to a rock music collection that I would never have and that is because I wouldn't listen to it, I wouldn't put it on a mix, and it would only be taking up space.
Well, enough of this rant for now.
Here are the albums in the stack and the year it was released. All of these records I acquired very close to the year they came out.
- Little Feat - Waiting For Columbus, 1978
- The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced, 1967
- The Jam - Snap, 1983
- Tommy James & The Shondells - Crimson & Clover, 1968
- The Beatles - Revolver, 1966
- Bob Dylan & The Band - The Basement Tapes, 1975
- The Beach Boys - Friends / Smiley Smile, 1967/1968
- Buzzcocks - Different Kind of Tension, 1979
- The Clash - London Calling, 1979
- Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent and The E-Street Shuffle, 1973
- U-Roy - Dread In A Babylon, 1975
- The Long Ryders - Two Fisted Tales, 1987
- Wilson Pickett - Greatest Hits, 1985
- Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, 1970
- R.E.M. - Murmur, 1983
- Jefferson Airplane - Volunteers, 1969
- The Beatles - Abbey Road, 1969
- The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street, 1972
- Ornette Coleman - Body Meta, 1978
- Burning Spear - Garvey's Ghost, 1976
- Chocolate Watchband - The Inner Mystique, 1968
- David Bowie - Station To Station, 1976
- James White & The Blacks - Off White, 1979
- Various Artists - No New York, 1978
- Patti Smith - Horses, 1975
- Talking Heads - Remain In Light, 1980
- Pere Ubu - Dub Housing, 1978
- XTC - Drums and Wires, 1979
- The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out!, 1966
- The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1967
No comments:
Post a Comment