[78-L] Why we collect

[Ron L]

He never once mentioned going to the police.  Hmmm.

Ron L

-----Original Message-----
From: 78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com
[mailto:78-l-bounces at klickitat.78online.com] On Behalf Of soundthink at aol.com
Sent: Monday, January 12, 2009 11:50 AM
To: 78-l at klickitat.78online.com
Subject: [78-L] Why we collect

The only difference between me and this poor soul is the kind of music we
collect. And that I still have all of my stuff. But I'm sure I'm not the
only one to view his/her collection in this fashion.

Cary Ginell

The Stranger
December 22, 2008
MUSIC
Dispossessed
How I Lost Most of My Music Collection-and Nearly My Mind
by DAVE SEGAL

T his past August, I moved back to Seattle from Orange County. An ordeal for
anyone, moving for me means shipping about 2,500 pieces of vinyl and thrice
as many CDs, which took about a week of long days to pack. For this trip, I
arranged for the Los Angeles moving company Eagle Express to haul my
belongings up from Costa Mesa, a decision that ranks as my biggest regret of
this-or maybe any-year.

Eagle Express's supervisor, David Gomez, assured me that the delivery would
take two weeks max. In fact, it took almost a month, and when the slack
mothertruckers finally arrived at my Capitol Hill storage facility, it was
clear something had gone horribly awry: Expecting around 60 boxes full of my
music collection, there were instead only 15.

One of the movers, Adam-who, I later discovered, was actually an employee of
West Coast Van Lines-initially expressed confusion about the missing boxes.
After much agitated questioning, he said he'd had to unload some of his
cargo due to weight issues. Incredulous, I demanded he call Eagle Express to
find out where my goods were. He made a call, speaking to Gomez in Spanish;
during the shor
t conversation, Adam became increasingly angry and then he hung up. Adam
said something vague about a warehouse in the L.A. area. I called Gomez but
couldn't get a straight answer from him. Their stories weren't jibing, and
my records were gone. I cursed Gomez in a vicious tone I hadn't used since
George W. Bush became president in 2001.

I felt as if I'd gone in for a routine chiropractic visit and left the
office with three of my limbs amputated.

T hat's the thing about collectors, according to Seattle psychotherapist
Gaelen Billingsley: "Many collectors feel synonymous with the objects they
collect and use them to derive or define a sense of self. Though they may
not have any objective value, objects collected are seen as uniquely
interesting or valuable to the individual collector. Thus as collectors
accumulate large numbers of valuable items, they construct the sense that
they, too, are valuable by association, i.e., 'The more of this great stuff
I accumulate, the more I matter.'"

Obsessive collecting, she explains, "tends to arise out of one (or a
combination) of the following three basic human needs: the need for a
personal self- definition of worth, the need for a sense of life purpose (or
meaning), and the desire for immortality."

Damn, Ms. Billingsley. It's like you peered directly into my mind.

I'm as guilty of this dubious behavior as anyone. It's neurotic. But my
excuses go far beyond the identity aggrandizing, the phallic substitution
and surrogate dick-waving. I actually do have legitima
te reasons for accumulating so many records: One is for DJing, which I've
done with some frequency on radio and in clubs since 1996 (and I will always
prefer to spin vinyl for such gigs). In fact, I had to turn down a juicy DJ
opportunity soon after I returned to Seattle because I lacked the crucial
weapons from my vinyl arsenal.

Another reason is research/reference. As a music journalist, I regularly
relied on my extensive library to help me to write reviews and features. My
collection also served as a resource for friends looking to expand their
knowledge. As I've told my friends many times, my collection and my
knowledge are here to be used. So, like Bill Withers sang, use me. (Sadly, a
huge music collection does not always work as an aphrodisiac.) Fourthly, a
megalomaniacal urge to know almost everything about almost every worthwhile
musician can be a dangerous thing, I've discovered-especially when it comes
time to move. Fifthly, almost every record and CD has a complicated network
of memories and associations attached to it. Losing as many items as I did
feels like having several key scenes excised from my autobiography.

A s the weeks passed with no sighting of my precious cargo, I became
increasingly ill with anger and toxic vengefulness every time I pondered
Eagle Express's botched job. For a while, I was phoning Gomez every day,
furious over my enormous loss (fuck a 401[k]; those records were my
pension!). When he did pick up, Gomez would profusely apologize in heavily
accented Engli
sh and vow to try to find out what happened to my stuff. Rinse, repeat,
rage.

Over the next four months and dozens of (mostly unanswered) calls and many
empty promises later, I still can't get a satisfactory response from Gomez.
At one point, Gomez said that Adam had tried to escape into Canada to avoid
the law on some charge, and that a truck with my boxes was somewhere near
the border. My calls to West Coast Van Lines went unreturned.

I've pretty much resigned myself to never seeing those lost records and CDs
(and the dresser I'd owned since I was 9 and some other less important
items) again. Now I just want monetary compensation-and Gomez's head on a
pike. Trouble is, I don't know any lawyers in L.A., and even if I did, I
have no stomach for dealing with them. And, foolishly, I didn't insure my
belongings-after moving five times in as many years without incident, I'd
become complacent. (This, too, ranks in the top five of my Regrets Hall of
Shame.)

Y ou should have seen my friends'-especially fellow collectors'-responses to
my situation. Their faces would slacken with a mixture of disgust and
disbelief, and they'd gasp for a bit until they could utter words of pity
and consolation. It felt like I was witnessing my own funeral every time I
broke the news to somebody.

After I told Jason Pettigrew, an ex- Alternative Press magazine coworker and
fellow music obsessive, about my travails, he said, "I would be getting
background checks on the individual 
movers and start brutally murdering their family members at random."

Obviously, a loss of this magnitude prompts much reflection (and many nights
spent dreaming of flying to L.A. to seek revenge). After the shock,
disbelief, and the barely suppressible rage had (mostly) subsided, I began
to ponder the significance of music-and its physical manifestations-in my
life. Maybe my obsession with it wasn't that healthy. Certainly, even after
my moving disaster, I still possess more recorded music than, oh, 97 percent
of the population. I am definitely not wanting for things to listen to. By
any "normal" standard, I owned way too many CDs and LPs.

And yet the knowledge of all those rare records (how will I ever find those
Bernard Parmegiani and M. Frog Labat LPs?) and obscure, limited-edition CDs
and boxed sets that I'd gathered over the last 29 years and that are now
dispersed to who knows where continues to gnaw at me-every hour, every day.
"Normal" is boring and mediocre. I didn't get where I am today-for better or
worse-through sensible moderation in my listening/collecting habits. When
music is your religion, as it is mine, losing reliquaries of it can damage
your soul and threaten your sanity.

Among the items missing from my collection: my entire stash of hiphop vinyl
and two-thirds of my hiphop CDs; all of my world-music CDs (including 16
Fela Kuti and all of my Sublime Frequencies discs); all of my highbrow,
20th-century composer stuff; my cherished Soul Jazz Records CDs;
my20soundtracks; rare psych-rock LPs by Friendsound (the LSD-inspired side
project by some Paul Revere and the Raiders members); little-known
Kraut-rock classics by Exmagma and Et Cetera; Bernard Szajner's imaginary
soundtrack to Dune done under the moniker Zed; Kraftwerk's first three
amazing albums, all of which they stubbornly, foolishly refuse to officially
reissue; TONTO's Expanding Head Band's Zero Time, with two separate covers;
that sweet 100 Proof (Aged in Soul) LP on the Motown composers
Holland-Dozier-Holland's Hot Wax label.... Someone could open a decent music
shop with those fugitive goods-and then promptly go out of business.

Yes, I can get back a lot of the AWOL titles, provided I devote considerable
time and money to the endeavor. Hell, I've already begun to replenish my
collection as thriftily as possible. I've been rifling through the used bins
at Jive Time, Everyday Music, Wall of Sound, Sonic Boom, and Easy Street
with the kind of diligence that would impress DJ Premier. Also, friends have
come through with loans, burns, MP3s, gifts, condolences, and sympathy.

Y ou'd think this would be the opportune time to switch to a more digital
approach to music consumption. It should be, but my analog por vida attitude
dies hard. I can't help thinking that vinyl is the ultimate musical format,
with CDs second, and MP3s a distant third. Daily, hourly, megabytes of
great, obscure audio get uploaded to YouTube, the torrent sites, and blogs
like Mutant Sounds (mutant-sounds.blogspot.com). And that's great for everyo
ne, except maybe for copyright holders. But I'm not clever enough to DJ with
a YouTube video, and torrent sites often misidentify releases (which often
sound shitty, anyway), and, honestly, I don't want to rip off musicians.
That and the whole physical-artifact factor: I don't think I'm alone in
thinking that the gatefold double-LP version of Miles Davis's Bitches Brew
will always hold more allure and aesthetic value than that album reduced to
1s and 0s in an iPod.

That being said, I now have over 2,500 songs on my iTunes at work, but they
don't seem like they're mine so much as my computer's. And that somehow
bothers me. Were some benefactor to replace all of my missing songs on the
planet's biggest hard drive, I would be grateful, but still would not feel
as fulfilled as if I could regain the actual releases. I'm firmly in the
rearguard with regard to Serato/iPod "upgrading," and my tragedy hasn't
nudged me into the 21st century. Not yet, anyway.

Besides, I've become addicted to the thrill of the hunt for music. So much
of my life's been spent in record stores, digging through bins, swapping
info with clerks and fellow music nerds; to stop now would be as hard as a
lifelong smoker ditching his cigs in middle age.

So I continue to obsess over musical products, compulsively. While most
people in my circle scheme about getting drunk, high, laid, or by with the
least amount of effort, I spend my idle moments figuring out the most
efficient way to rebuild my shelves-full of Acid Mothers=2
0Temple and Muslimgauze releases-and hundreds of other treasures without
which my life seems terribly diminished. Most (straight) guys in my circle
try to score pussy; I strive to re-score Pussy Galore's Sugarshit Sharp
12-inch (okay, and some pussy; I may be a geek, but I have other needs,
too).

If anything, my obsession with record collecting has only intensified
following this catastrophe. It's as if I need to be physically immersed not
only in the sounds, but also in the vessels from which they emanate. I crave
the totems that announce to my visitors (and the world) that my taste is
impeccable. Sorry, but your thousands of MP3s on your hard drive can't
compete with an entire room jammed floor to ceiling with wax. Anybody can
say he digs Nurse with Wound; but if you show me a shelf in your pad
groaning with their releases, you've earned more respect in my eyes.

S cott Giampino-who books shows at Seattle supper club the Triple Door and
DJs soul, funk, and R&B under the name Self- Administered Beatdown-also
recently lost the bulk of his long-accruing collection. In 2004, his house
burned to the ground, and he and his family lost almost everything they
owned. Giampino estimates 2,500 out of 3,000 records were damaged in the
blaze. (Although he notes, "Oddly, virtually all the CDs in the house
survived. Irony!")

Eventually, Giampino's sense of loss diminished, so maybe there's hope for
me. "I tried and still try to be rather 'Zen' about the entire
owning-objects thing now," he s
ays. I dunno: It's hard to be Zen when I want to get all Bruce Lee on the
mugs responsible for decimating my collection.

"My attitude has changed in the fact that I am much easier to let things
go," Giampino observes. "I sell way more records now than I used to. I used
to hoard stuff, like any compulsive collector, but now I have a much
mellower attitude toward it. It's twofold, with one part being, 'Hey, it's
just stuff, easy come easy go,' and the other part is, 'Hey, if I really
need this copy of "insert album title here," I can pony up the dough and buy
it.' I'll find it again, the philosophy being: Sure, I have to pay more, but
it's (usually) obtainable, somewhere."

I f anything positive has resulted from my tragic loss, it's that I've
become more appreciative of what I do have now. While I will agonize for
years over several vanished gems, others will not be mourned, as my memory's
not flawless. Hell, I've forgotten about more music than most people have
heard or will hear. That's not braggadocio, but simply factual reportage of
an obsessive-compulsive music critic's life. It's a curse wrapped up in a
blessing.

Like many of my ilk, maybe I do view my collection as a bulwark against
mortality-or at least a tangible legacy of my existence on earth. Forget
leaving a good-looking corpse; I want my survivors to gape in awe at shelf
upon shelf, crate upon crate of my music stash-a monument to monomania. It
would be nice if they listened to the things, too. 0A
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