In other words I am primarily a utilitarian collector - I don't have all that many recordings that are valuable in and of themselves, but the music they contain is valuable from a historical standpoint, and of course, a personal one. It is also very broad because I have been a professional live and radio DJ for most of my adult life and I have a lot of things because I have had to, not necessarily because it's my favorite.
I seem to be accumulating recordings at the rate of about 2,000 a year in my present capacity as entertainment journalist and music fan, so extrapolated out, in 35 years I would have close to 90,000, which seems like a reasonable number. I have friends and acquaintances whose collections go into the hundreds-of-thousands, but they just strike me as huge blobs with which their owners don't really have much of a personal relationship. I'd rather have a more purposed collection that represents both my own interests and a general sense of recorded history than just a shitload of stuff. But maybe I'm jealous.
My collection is in alphabetical order by artist, and then chronologically within a given artist. For various reasons, I have separated out a reggae/Caribbean section, a blues section, and a classical section.
All multiple artist collections, soundtracks, etc., are also in their own section, which is quite large. I have a separate section for box sets, which are too unwieldy to file with the regular CDs, and separate sections for CD singles, vinyl 45s and vinyl 12 inches, and I have a traveling DJ collection of about 500 records and CDs separated out.
Okay, this group of CDs from the main collection takes up about 15 inches - there are 43 of them. (Please recall that many 2003 CDs aren't yet filed.) They are:
Lordz of Brooklyn - All In the Family
Los Amigos Invisibles - The New Sound of Venezuelan Gozadera
Los Hombres Calientes - Vol 3
Los Infernos - Los Infernos
Los Lobos - The Neighborhood
Los Lobos - Colossal Head
Los Lobos - Good Morning Azatlan
[Los Lobos box set, filed elsewhere]
Los Mocosos - Shades of Brown
Los Straitjackets - Sing Along With...
Los Super Seven - Canto
Lost At Last - Lost At Last
Lost Prophets - Thefakesoundofprogress...
Lothar and the Hand People - Presenting...
Lotion - Full Isaac
Lotus Crown - Chokin' On the Jokes
The Loud Family - Plants and Birds and Rocks and Things
- Slouching Towards Liverpool
Loudhouse - For Crying Out Loud
Loudspeaker - Supernatural
Loud Sugar - Loud Sugar
Joe Lovano - Flights of Fancy
- Viva Caruso
Love - Forever Changes
G. Love and Special Sauce - G. Love and Special Sauce
- The Electric Mile
Laura Love - Fourteen Days
Love and Rockets - Hot Trip to Heaven
- Sweet F.A.
Love Battery - Between the Eyes
- Dayglo
- Far Gone
- Nehru Jacket
Love In Reverse - I Was Dog EP
- I Was Here
Love Tractor - The Sky At Night
Lyle Lovett - The Lyle Lovett Collection
- You Can't Resist It
- I Love Everybody
Lene Lovich - Flex ... Plus
The Lovin' Miserys - Happy As Hell
Low + Dirty Three - Low + Dirty Three
Nick Lowe - Basher: The Best Of
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Mark Saleski
I imagine most of you feel like my daughter did when I explained much of this to her over the phone the other night. She was polite about it
no way man...i dunno about you the bit in High Fidelity about record reorganization totally struck home. i live for this stuff.
by the way, ever had a chance to see the movie Vinyl Confessions by Alan Zweig? freaky (and somewhat depressing) stuff.
2 - Craig Lyndall
My friends all think I am a freak because I have amassed just under 1000 cd's to this point. Please tell me you get a lot of promotional stuff that has landed on these shelves. I would hate to have to figure out what it would have cost me to have that many CD's.
3 - Chris Wilson
I will only be impressed if you have:
A. "The Omen" soundtrack
B. Bay City Rollers Greatest Hits
C. any KTEL album
4 - Eric Olsen
I seek not to impress, only to edify:
No to "The Omen"
yes to the Bay City Rollers
yes to KTEL, among others, "Body Moves: Electric Boogie"
5 - Mark Saleski
i built this rack a couple of years ago..thinking it would last me for quite a while.
apparently, i was wrong.
6 - Eric Olsen
Craig, I'd guess I did not pay for 25%, but I also have a lot of used, especially vinyl, and I have always been a careful shopper. I have spent a lot over the years, though, especially in the '80s when I was DJing full time and not getting too much free.
7 - Eric Olsen
Very nice Mark, that's exactly the kind of thing I need, except floor to ceiling on all walls. This is a possibility at our house if we ever finish the basement.
8 - Mark Saleski
i have an even worse problem with books...man, they're everywhere!
i need to buy an old abandoned library.
9 - BRICKLAYER
I recently went to the local big box entertainment megalomart, and purchased another cd shelf thingy myself, and for the first time in several years, have almost my entire cd collection in one place (it has been relegated to our unfinished basement, amongst the detritus of Christmas gifts past-anyone want a smoothie machine-broken stuff, cleaning supplies, and yes, mouse kibble. This was prompted by Brick Jr's growing stronger by the day sense of curiousity, and ability to ambulate at a disarmingly quicker rate. And yes, it was unnerving for both Mrs. Bricklayer and myself to see the little one carrying around a Cannibal Corpse cd in one hand, and a Snuggle Puppy in the other, albeit for different reasons-hey, I like to keep my stuff in good shape, and the kid has got to learn about the world someday anyways, right? Well, when I finally had my collection all in one place, on 3 different shelf thingys, I realized I must now have well over 1500 cd's (by using a similar, if much less scientific process, as Mr O's), and I realized I own a great deal of crap (bet you don't have Pete's self titled debut, "Pete".) And I have some cool stuff too (Earache's "Grindcrusher" comp from the early '90's-yeah! And the entire Jawbreaker catalog-sweet!). But, I had been telling myself I had less than a thousand cd's, somehow trying to justify my compulsive spending thefts on half.com, and assuage my guilt at spending Brick Jr's college money on the "I shot Andy Warhol" Soundtrack and completing my entire Anthrax catalog in all formats quest. But now I see that I am but a slight scratch on the collections of many others, a small blemish on the used disc of the universe. I am pasty white and pale in comparrison to the greatness, depth and breadth of your collections! I bow down to you with envy and awe. Now, I must leave you to pursue my venture to secure all of the Replacement's concert bootlegs on 8 track. Oh, and Mark, that shelf rules, dude!
10 - Mark Saleski
the outer part (the 4x4's) used the be the frame for this art thing i build...but i resurrected it. the silver-lookin' thing that runs vertically in the middle is a big 'ole threaded rod. i tell ya, spinning the nuts into place was no fun.
if i have to move i'm just gonna bust out the sawsall.
11 - Eric Olsen
Mark, I again bow to your manly constructivism.
Bricky, as been said in other contexts, it ain't the meat, it's the motion. No one on earth would tell you that 1500 isn't a substantial collection (I share your enthusiasm for "Grindcrusher" - ah, when the bloom was on the grindcore rose and stuff - and for Jawbreaker, but I love some Anthrax and don't much like others, and Cannibal Corpse is completely beyond my ken), especially one lovingly - not to say obsessively - compiled. And for this I salute you (sung in the voice of '80s hair-metal guy in the beer commercials) "Mr. Obsessive CD collector, yeah!"
12 - Craig Lyndall
Kids are never too young to hear "Fucked with a Knife" by Cannibal Corpse for the first time. I am not sure what Snuggle Puppy will look like when it is all said and done though.
I am now inspired by Mark's shelf. I will build a shelf unit for my CD's. I think I will design it soon and make it a springtime project. I have always sucked at building things, but I think it might pay off if I get it done.
13 - Mark Saleski
you all shouldn't think for one second that i'm good at building stuff. shelving is about as far as it gets.
though with this project i at least figured out ahead of time that the 1x4 spanning that distance wouldn't take the weight, thus: the threaded rod solution.
the great thing about it is that it's pretty cheap to make.
14 - Eric Olsen
As Raggedy Ann once said, "Thank goodness for threaded rods."
15 - Jim Carruthers
Vinyl Confessions by Alan Zweig
I actually know a couple of the people in that documentary (it was mostly filmed in Toronto) and worked with one guy (and he is even more creepy in person).
One of the things I really like about iTunes and MP3s is they free me from filing (which I am horrible at). I don't have as large a collection (about 4K vinyl / 4K CDs / boxes and boxes of cassettes I keep intending to throw away / 60 GB MP3). With iTunes, I just type into the search box and whoot, there it is.
For shelving, I defer to the Ikea $40 Billy bookshelves. And the floor in piles. Beside the DVDs. And books. The vinyl is mostly in a hotel lobby mail shelf "rescued" from a building undergoing renovations. Twelve feet long, 36 inches high, two levels. And old milk crates pre-metric.
16 - Eric Olsen
I have been putting off actually thinking about these sort of meta issues, but I can see now it's pretty important. I certainly envy the storage and access benefits of MP3s, but I can't imagine the process of conversion. Of course I could just start adding them to the mix as I did when I finally broke down and got a CD player in 1990, but then you have to take into account the packaging and info, which I would miss.
17 - Mark Saleski
yep, i don't ever see myself going completely digital. it's pretty soulless, from my point of view.
(as i sit here thumbing through the photos in the Brigitte Bardot compilation i'm listening to...)
18 - Craig Lyndall
CDEX is a freeware program that a friend of mine edited so that it will run automatically when a CD is inserted into a drive, and rip it down to the harddrive in MP3 format. If you are interested in doing something like that to start a conversion process, I can send it to you. I am almost done with my own collection so I could even let you know the easiest way to get started.
19 - Eric Olsen
That's a tempting offer Craig, but right now I can't imagine taking the time, and you're still talking about a vast amount of computer storage space. But maybe... I sure like the idea of "automatically."
20 - Mark Saleski
...then there's the issue of why a person would trade sound quality for convenience.
but that's a whole 'nuther can 'o worms.
21 - Craig Lyndall
Well, when you have a 900+ cd jukebox on random never playing the same song twice, you will see why I would be willing to trade a bit of quality for the convenience factor.
22 - Eric Olsen
Okay, usual suspects (you know who you are): I'm very curious simply because I hae no idea. How many CDs, records, etc do you have? Vague generalities are fine. So far, the numbers are in the range I might have expected. How many in that shelf, Mark? We can convert feet: 32 per foot CDs, 80 per foot for vinyl.
23 - Craig Lyndall
Oh yeah, and making mix CD's for friends, etc, is a breeze.
24 - Mark Saleski
that rack holds around 2000 cds. when i put it together and had it fully loaded i went through the same approximation step you did.
i also have about 1200 lps and another 500 or so cassettes (of which about 200 will be 'converted' to cd when i get the dollars to buy a cd recorder).
25 - ClubhouseCancer
Anybody else but me trying to shed jewel cases? I've taken about 1500 of my discs (so far) and transferred them to those 132-disc album book things, including all the paper from the packages. Be advised that you have to get albums that have square envelopes for the discs, not those roundish ones that won't fit the paper.
This process is tedious but saves a lot of space. However, it is sooooo tedious (State of the Union tedious. Democratic Presidential debate tedious. Merchant-Ivory marathon tedious. DMV-line tedious.) that the project has been abandoned until further notice.
Any thoughts from anyone who's done this?