Music fan 'completes' "perfect CD collection". Is that possible for you?

Yesterday Ned shared this status on FB by a friend of his. I then shared it and so did others and the guy added me. I asked him if i could share his post on ilm and he was happy for me to. Here is a link to his post

One of my favourite/most eccentric customers came in today. "I've come to say goodbye, I didn't want to just disappear. I've finished. I've got my CD collection perfect"... He had a CD rack of a certain size that he could not exceed so he had to sell back in a CD every time he bought one. Every CD had to be a jewel case with a maximum of 5 bonus tracks and in "factory conditions". It's the end result of 28 years of work and trial and error. With that he was gone...

Andrew then went on to say

I think it was around the 250-300 mark... Mainly 60's and 70's stuff and a slight touch of early 80's... He also had a Rock Albums book that he studied religiously.

He did start with records but a big fan of the Compact Disc from the point that they came out. He made the switch and never looked back

At one point it was an old our price bag but it moved to a checked affair. They were folded into a perfect square. The notes were folded into a perfect square. His voice was monotone and his eyes would burn though you. If a cd had even a speck of dirt on it he would say, "that's got filth on it". He was very particular about the way you took a cd out of it's box. He walked with a silent shuffle....

The thought of a perfect collection intrigues me yet I find it an impossible idea. I couldn't limit to 2000 albums nevermind 250-300. Plus it would mean losing those albums I love that are imperfect and have flaws.

Could you imagine your perfect collection? What size would it be? what would be in it?
The best albums in each genre you like? An exhaustive collection of albums in one genre? Albums/singles that represent a time in your life?

Obviously for non album fans this can include 7"s/12"s/CD Singles.
Not digital files though as it's not quite the same having a perfect ipod (or is it?)

Nobody knows what makes up his collection sadly. I would love to know.

with a maximum of 5 bonus tracks

Nice! Is this because 5 bonus tracks is his maximum tolerance for imperfect songs being tossed in?

Who knows. Might be an OCD thing? I'd also love to know what albums he *removed* over the years.

I also wonder if it was different editions of albums he removed with each remaster or if he just thought an album was inferior to what he had in the rack?

Update from Andrew

It was sometimes different versions if he liked the remaster but often it was also different albums from the same artist, he took a lot of time getting Bob Dylan right. "I've got Bob Dylan sorted now".

seriously, this story just gets better.

Also he HAD to stay away from digipacks. If we ordered something from overseas and it was a digipack he wouldn't be able up take it...

because it didn't fit nicely in the rack. Funnily enough lots of people hate them for the same reason. I always liked them as I hate jewel cases.

He doesnt know what record guide book he used as his bible. But he referred to it all the time

I was always so fascinated by him and his dedication to the project. What is he going to do now and also what was his rock book that he used as a reference point? He used to say, "my book gives it 3 stars"...

Some book of rock, definitely not spin or trouser press... It must have been so well thumbed... Also he has no tv and no Internet...

it gets better

He also attends church and would sometimes return stuff with "bad language"...

I wonder if this guy is also assembling perfect collections of anything else- books, clothes, art prints etc? I aspire to this kind of lifestyle of perfect elegant instagram photo asceticism, but I don't have the self control and will probably just continue filling my house with second hand tat until I die or run out of money

I guess 250-300 CDs isn't really that ascetic, but relatively

Since he has sever OCD then It may be the case he does that. Or he may only have the CD selection and nothing else. Nobody knows but I'd love to. Only thing is that as great a story as it is an article could set up ridiculing and I'd hate that. However I would love to know more.

It sure makes a change from people hoarding everything of course.

makes me think of this article about Lawrence from Felt and his record/book collection, I find this kind of 'glamour in difficult circumstances' very inspiring

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2005/jul/08/1

my OCD runs the opposite way. i try to run through as much music as possible every day. it drives me nuts thinking about how i'll probably listen to at least three albums i've never heard before until the day i die, and yet still come nowhere close to experiencing even just a single percent of all the great stuff out there. (the fact that more quality stuff gets released in a day than can be heard in a day all but ensures it.)

granted, to maintain that kind of consumption, no, i don't bother with a physical collection (outside of the occasional true love purchase), so it is different. but the idea of "finishing" music exploration and spending the rest of one's life within a limited collection seems impossible. kinda wish i could hack it though, i do like the idea in the abstract

the mental illness of thinking there's a definitive canon taken to its logical conclusion

This is potentially the biggest cratedigger-friendly weekend news since the tracking down of Geeshie Wiley. Picturing somebody playing Doctor McCoy and drawing some blood serum to cook up a record collecting "antidote," wondering how many would line up to take.

Guy sounds like a Jon Wurster character

mental illness indeed ha ha ha

I don't think anybody was laughing at mental illness.I sure wasn't.

In fact, in my poorly worded sf scenario, this type of behavior is viewed as the "cure" for garden variety record collecting.

I know a guy who said he decided he would restrict his physical collection to artists who were already established that way, while buying digital versions of stuff by new (to him) artists. Seems like a version of the same quest for finitude. I think he only listened to his digital library anyway, which makes it seem like the new physical media are like sacrificial offerings to the old rock-god altar, ritualized denials of lost faith. A lot of the RSD product seems that way too.

there are definitely people out there who will only buy vinyl from the 60s & 70s, or cds from the 80s & 90s or digital post napster.

I'd bet the guys book is one of the Rolling Stone record guides.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4a/NRSRG1983.gif

That was what I was thinking

He's English though which makes me think otherwise. But Andrew doesn't know.

It sounds as if he's had the book since the 70s though so who knows. Maybe there was only RS books back then? Andrew says it wasnt trouserpress or spin for sure.

Actually I was just about to say it was the original RS Record Guide in Red.

I find it odd that the range of CDs in his collection is 250-300. He seems too particular to not say exactly how many CDs were needed to complete the perfect collection. 50 cd variable when you're only talking about 300 max is a significant percentage.

it has to fit his CD rack, brian. That's part of his OCD

One of my favourite/most eccentric customers came in today. "I've come to say goodbye, I didn't want to just disappear. I've finished. I've got my CD collection perfect"... He had a CD rack of a certain size that he could not exceed so he had to sell back in a CD every time he bought one. Every CD had to be a jewel case with a maximum of 5 bonus tracks and in "factory conditions". It's the end result of 28 years of work and trial and error. With that he was gone...

Sorry for another bogus sf scenario but now imagining this guy as some kind of "Flowers For Algernon" savant who was saying goodbye before he regressed back.

it has to fit his CD rack, brian. That's part of his OCD

But he won't buy digipaks as they're not consistent, so presumably he only takes standard-format CD cases, so 50 is a huge variation. But it's probably unclear memory on the part of the reporter, not vagueness on the part of the subject.

Misread that as "it has to fit his CD rack brain."

I get that it has to fit his rack, but it's odd to me that he never mentioned exactly how many CDs he had in his finished collection. I assumed the specific number would have been part of his regular remarks to the clerk.

Basically, I just want to hear more about his collection. If we don't find out and don't poll it, did it really happen?

Haha, exactly. But maybe there will be a blog: My OCD Older Brother's CD Collection.

if you ever hang out on the Steve Hoffman forums, you'll notice that every once in a while a regular poster will suddenly vanish from the discourse. he'll be in the middle of a heated Pono debate and he'll excuse himself for a seemingly minor interruption ("BRB, I think I hear the FedEx guy at my door"), and then just...silence, crickets, radio static. as the weeks pass and he fails to respond to your PMs and emails, you begin to get seriously worried: did this guy die or go to jail? so you start a thread about him on the Off-Topic board (Hey, does anyone know what happened to ThePruneDuke67?) and literally 30 seconds later your thread has been deleted and Steve himself has sent you a PM: 'Hush, child, he is beyond our reach: he has acquired the entire MoFi catalogue and now he is on a higher plane'. so you keep your mouth shut and act like nothing happened because how can you second guess Steve Hoffman? but eventually all of your friends have been spirited away to audiophile heaven and you realize that you are literally the only person contributing to the Toto Album By Album thread (by now you've exhausted the proper Toto albums and moved on to Steve Lukather's solo career) that's when you decide you need a new hobby.

^Best Post Ever

Maybe that was God and his CD rack is the universe, finite but unbounded and full of stars.

Guy sounds like a Jon Wurster character

Absolutely does.

yeah Andrew isnt sure how many there is or what is in it . He said he will sign up here though and will try to remember more to tell us.
I think it's a great story and hope he can get an article out of it.
As brian and others say we really need to find out what is in it and a pic would be amazing.
unregistered that is a great post!

I think I've reached a point in my life where I can nod as I'm reading these anecdotes but I can not romanticize this behavior, and the entire enterprise sounds revolting

This is basically an idea for a novel which I have been sitting on for ages, maybe I don't have to upbraid myself for not writing it anymore

make a film instead

Whatever the format, it will be a vast improvement on High Fidelity

haha I bought the book years ago but never read it and when the film came out i didnt bother with it either. Not sure if I will ever read it.

Hello, this is Andrew, the guy who made the original post on facebook... David would be overwhelmed if he had a computer!!!!!

I think I've reached a point in my life where I can nod as I'm reading these anecdotes but I can not romanticize this behavior, and the entire enterprise sounds revolting

― mh, Monday, April 20, 2015 9:46 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why?

My CD collection is "done", too, in that I'm not buying CDs any more. It has been reduced, through gut-wrenching emotional labor, from a peak around 7000 or so down to about 1400 (one rack, but it's a big rack).

But if I had to choose between never hearing anything but those 1400 CDs and never again hearing anything made before tomorrow, I'd go with the future without a hesitation or qualm.

xp This kind of thinking in myself, and in some others I know, can be part of an end-run of a weird quantified lifestyle. It's hard to explain, but imagine it's similar to the idea of video game players thinking that there's a universal, objective numerical value that can be given to aspects of a game and some are "wrong."

Having a very honed personal aesthetic is one thing, but referring to a single tome as canonical and then refining around the edges to create the perfect collection is not "perfectionism" but perfectionism as it exists -- a highly critically and emotionally-charged response based on exclusion that is an attempt toward the creation of objectivity.

The customer in question here is listening intently to the music and coming up with his own conclusions, I would hope, but I'm also reminded of the people who "collected" downloaded music in the early days of mp3 trading. This was really evident on my college campus where people would have folders upon folders, meticulously organized in whatever way was deemed "correct," of all these albums deemed important.

I know I questioned more than a few people I knew about why they were cataloging all this stuff they obviously weren't even listening to regularly and was met with complete blank stares, because the collection and its purity was the purpose, even if they didn't understand it. They'd admit that they only listened to one or two songs off of half the albums, but the idea of deleting the non-singles they didn't listen to was crazy.

best of luck to this guy, though! this is my baggage, and nonsensical to me, now, and not a judgment on his lifestyle

A college roommate of a friend of mine would only buy and listen to albums that got five stars in the David Marsh Rolling Stone Record Guide.

Welcome, Andrew! Any more anecdotes about the guy? Any idea of what is in his collection? is it mostly lots of albums by certain artists or bits of everything? I can imagine it being limited to say 20 artists

it's all Sun Ra

As he "completed" Dylan I wonder how many albums that was and which.

I wonder if he liked punk, even.

He definitely did not like punk rock! Steely Dan and Lynyrd Skynyrd were a few he was working through recently. He HATED the new Lynyrd Skynyrd album and made the mistake of buying it recently... He would walk with a silent shuffle and could appear at any point in the shop in silence.

What about the prog rock or heavy rock end? Sabbath, zep,purple, genesis, king crimson, yes etc?

did he ever buy any music mags? or did he purely rely on his book?

What about the prog rock or heavy rock end? Sabbath, zep,purple, genesis, king crimson, yes etc?
Based on the guidebook he seems to be using, I would say no.

what is in the guidebook you think he uses?

beatles, stones, who, dylan,the band, steely dan, fleetwood mac etc?

Yup.

Other stuff too. The original RS Record Guide (Red) had photos of the Five Star Albums scattered throughout. such as the flag that was original cover of There's A Riot Goin' On.

well i can get behind the sly 5 stars

I think I have 10% of the records I would need to have to complete a vague personal canon (plus I have lots of stuff that would not fit within this anyway). I have been buying records for about 25 years. So the remaining 90% - assuming I don't slow down for boring adult reasons - would only take me up to the year 2240. Given advances in cybergenetics, that sounds doable. However, by the time I'm midway through my third century, it will be about five times as long as it is now since the birth of rock and roll. Assuming a steady rate of 5-star releases, I may be on a hiding to nothing.

doesnt sound possible

Easy.

http://www.cca.org/d/complete-music-collection.jpg

B-b-but what record guide is that based on?

The Complete Betelgeuse Record Guide, 7th Edition. They have a *very* short Earth section, but I couldn't find copies of anything else they listed.

"it's all Sun Ra"

perfect.

Think Andrew should reveal album titles one by one and see who can guess the guide.

he doesn't know though unfortunately! He said he might have the guys phone #. Should he phone him and ask? or even get an interview?

The original RS Record Guide (Red) had photos of the Five Star Albums scattered throughout. such as the flag that was original cover of There's A Riot Goin' On.

that book was my bible for a long time, and every one of those photos was a holy grail.

Mine, too. Studied it just as much as any other text freshman year.

Should he phone him and ask? or even get an interview?
Sure, but please be gentle. Send in Ned, maybe.

Oddly, I didn't care much about the Rolling Stone guide growing up. This, though, I wore out:

http://covers.openlibrary.org/b/id/6620858-M.jpg

maybe it's this lol
https://musiclistenersjournal.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/blackmusic2.jpg

shakey i want that now!

I was totally unaware of it until just now. never heard of this "encyclopedia" series before

needs more updates

my ex stepdad used to have a collection of cassette tapes lining his walls in his apartment

it was p fucking cool