Friday, January 20, 2006

What the hell does that mean?

Ok, record digging should be an understood term.. finding records through much searching and legwork. Not merely walking into a store but digging shit up, therefore making what you find (when you find what you seek) all the more interesting. Uprooting the store and dusting out the corners is a better way to look at it. If this is a thrill you can't really understand, then you're probably not a collector of anything and i feel sorry for ya. Maybe, a little... envious? Nah.

At Home..
Well...... Let's say that i spent a good 13 years (+/-) buying records extensively. As much as i like to understand and pore through a genre, i never limited what i was buying to genre. Ever. So, in the years before i got diagnosed with ADD, i was gleefully bouncing around record stores and salvation armies, picking up stuff that looked interesting, that i'd heard of, read about, seen on another band's "thanks" list, knew the label, etc. etc. etc. So while i'd go out buying records with friends and they'd find 2 records that they wanted, i'd often buy 20. Now, i'm not an idiot (clinically anyhow), and i know how to look for bargains as well as knowing my tastes. I didn't just buy anything, but instead did a lot of legwork learning, reading, and of course, listening.

You can imagine what this does to living quarters... and it makes sense that i'm thinking that my next tattoo will involve crates somehow. Record storage went from plastic crates to industrial shelving, then to specially-made unfinished wood shelving for records. I had basically stopped accumulating records when i knew that i was building walls around myself- my old apartment was like a room which threatened to compress you from three sides.

So now what? Well, i'm further processing and listening, hopefully selling what i now know i don't need. But archiving and preserving are both very important for me. Not only musical history, but my life thus far; records that held importance at different times might have more attachment now than ever before. (Yes, yes, i know.... how very John Cusack/"High Fidelity".... i read the book years after this started.)

So this blog (my first) is about going through my record collection. I'd like to see what i remember and how i react to certain records. Of a 1000-1500 piece collection (that's 12"/LP only) i think i can remember many of the instances of when and where i got them. All in all, that's why i want to do this-- in the past 7 years many of my stores have closed down, gone entirely online or just died. Ebay is definitely nota bad thing, but a big big part of digging for me was the people and the circumstance. Where you got records, the stories you developed, and what you remember and took away is what i want to focus on. Today record collecting is so internet-driven that i would hope to bring a bit of personality back into it-- even if i keep saying i'm a reformed collector.

There's still personality in the wax.

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