As the Record Collection Gets Pared Down…

I think for as long as I’ve been alive, I’ve owned phonograph records.  45’s, LP’s, 78’s, rock, pop, R&B, C&W, this format, that format.  I’ve had crates and boxes and tubs of the vinyl and styrene sonic software.  I’ve listened to them over and over again.  I’ve  bought them at garage sales and record stores and record swap meets and on eBay and GEMM.com.  The discs have come from Albany and Schenectady and Troy and Boston and Austin and Toronto and London and Sydney and a thousand other locations.

My record collection grew from a few 45’s stored in a small plastic “record tote,” to several file cabinets in a room in my house that was rededicated into a vinyl storage facility.  I wrote two record collector’s guides, and I was a featured columnist for Goldmine – the music collector’s biweekly – for ten years.

And now it’s time to clear them all out.

It’s not that I don’t like listening to music any more.  There’s 5,000 songs accessible on my iPod, and I still have my prized Technics SL-1200 MK2 turntable hooked up to my computer, so that I can make more home-made iTunes off my vinyl.

But when I look at this collection, as it’s grown all over my house like kudzu on a telephone pole, I realize that there’s more vinyl in my house than I ever need in my life.  And then I saw Alan Zweig’s “Vinyl” documentary, a film in which he interviews some of the most anal-retentive record collectors and borderline hoarders – the person who has 50,000 albums in a two-room apartment and has to move his vinyl from one spot to another just so he can use his bathroom; a person who wants to make sure every record is cleaned properly, so he listens to each one alphabetically, then wipes clean both sides of the record (I think by now he’s up to the letter “J”).

It was too much for me to take.  I never wanted to be that person.  And I was getting MIGHTY CLOSE to becoming THAT PERSON.

I had to do something.  And fast.

After I stopped working for Goldmine, my record purchasing habit dwindled.  Whatever songs I wanted, I could easily download through iTunes; I could rip the songs from my CD’s into MP3’s, and I could even transfer my vinyl records into MP3 format (I hooked up my Technics turntable to my computer, using it as an alternate audio input device).

Then I sold whatever records I had that contained some sort of monetary value.  My first pressing of Nirvana’s “Love Buzz” on the Sub Pop label.  My 3-LP set of George Enesco’s Sonatas and Paritas (arguably the most collectible classical album ever).  My red vinyl promotional copy of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”  Out the door they went, in the door the cash came.

Now it was down to two separate and distinct entities.  The records that I needed to keep – and the ones I never listened to, not in years and years.

I started boxing up the records I never listened to.

And depending on my mood that day, a fresh box of 45’s went over to Salvation Army – or it went to Goodwill.  Whatever they can get for these records will help their charitable operations.  That’s more important to me right now.

Besides, even though I’m getting rid of the physical specimens, I still have the audiophonics – whether duplicated through iTunes, or transferred from my vinyl copies into mp3’s – so even though I don’t have that 45 of Stevie Wonder singing “Sir Duke,” I can still hear the song if I want to fire up my iPod.

And believe me, a music storage device that’s smaller than a pack of cigarettes is a lot easier to manage than an entire bedroom full of records.