The Death of the Record Collection

it was *always* necessary to scan through every artist bin lest you miss some new release/import/oddity.

i don't feel like i have a process for finding music anymore, i just wander around the internet randomly and see what random strangers have to say. i don't feel like i'm living in the age where "everything is available" because there's lots of stuff i would like that i can't buy or steal anywhere. my wantlist hasn't gotten any shorter even as my "collection" has gotten exponentially larger. something like the vhs vault on archive.org, that's not necessarily music but that speaks to the spirit of our times - vast reams of unwatchable and unwatched crap, no ceiling, towering up into infinity. if anybody finds it it'll probably be some content id bot which will determine, rightly or wrongly, that the media in question belongs to some gargantuan megacorporation and remove it. that sounds more like an infernal jukebox than a celestial one to me.

If anyone has a digital copy of the Arditti Quartet's Takemitsu recordings for Fontec Japan, hit me up.

setting spotify's sound quality to the highest setting is, i discovered, a good way to nuke your phone's storage because the app is incredibly, staggeringly bad at actually really deleting stuff when you choose "remove download." this has been known for years but they won't fix it, god knows why.

Before the Internet, people like me and 5 others bought that Deconstruction record, listened to it twice, and sold it back.

anatol_merklich at 8:21 8 Mar 20

Spotify I use walking around on headphones or in the car, but the sound quality is a joke esp after I heard Tidal and (now) Qobuz

Not to be all save-a-Spotify, and I won't claim that this entirely equalizes the difference, but I wonder whether people who hold this opinion are aware that there is a setting in the Spotify app for adjusting the sound quality? If I remember correctly, it is not set to the highest setting by default (probably to save data use).

I'm very aware and also when you go through Chromecast via optical to a DAC it automatically goes to the highest quality

it's not even close to Qobuz 24 bit FLAC

that said it's fine for walking around, at work, car etc

just frustrating that Spotify won't offer a $20/mo. hi rez tier, because their catalog, search, discovery, basically everything else is so much better than any other service

Before the Internet, people like me and 5 others bought that Deconstruction record, listened to it twice, and sold it back.

heh I looked for this album on Spotify just the other day (unsuccessfully)

I had/have a challenging opinion that it has aged far better than the jane's LPs

I bought that CD. The only thing i remember is that song about the temple at karnak

ums: fair enough!

I don't own many LPs ( 50 possibly) but perversely I enjoy the limited choice, it means albums get played many times each and I really get to know them. that doesn't happen at all with spotify etc.

^ That's the main reason I still buy physical discs. (Mostly dirt cheap CDs though.) I seem to absorb them more fully in that form.

Also, that Vinyl doc upthread is a little bit fabulous. Thanks NJS.

OK, I finally watched that Alan Zweig documentary upthread ("Vinyl"), and it inspired me to do some pruning on my collection.
My current threshold is to keep stuff only if I rate it a solid 3 stars or higher in my discogs list. We'll see how well I can stick to that.

(full disclosure, the lower rated records aren't actually gone yet, they're just moved down to the basement for now)

aside from its vinyl content, that Zweig doc is a great museum of bygone Canadian hairstyles

i have been meaning to come back to this thread to express my love for the zweig doc. it was just amazing.

I'm watching it now for the first time, what an amazing movie.

It's interesting to think about the timing of the movie too - in 2000, at the nadir for vinyl. It wasn't long before records started to be cool again.

I saw it in a theater in Portland!

love the "NOBODY else has this record" bit where like 5 different people hold it up

My 30 seconds of glory from Vinyl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCAGSnsnkVA

I think Alan is shooting a sequel right now. (Not right now, obviously.) I believe it's supposed to focus more on the records than the collecting.

bygone Canadian hairstyles

Or for me, just bygone hair.

that is a really amazing...everything. i love that clip. that is extremely relatable, too.

phil that was YOU ????

who is the guy with the long hair ? was that your friend ?

That's me, late '90s, in my old apartment. The interview was actually about two hours, I think (some more got used in an alternate version, me talking about my crush on Susan Dey). I ran into Alan at a film a few months ago, and he said he was interested in an another interview for the sequel. But I've moved since then, now this, so I doubt it'll happen).

I'm not sure who that is before me. But let me be indulgent and post a clip of my friend Tim, wondering if owning 65 James Brown albums is unusual.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAleFzU9cb8

Yes! I love that clip.

that’s cool, clemenza. I’m kinda of scared to watch this documentary though, I’ve had to get rid of a lot of records in the past few years and lately it’s been making me sad. that Discogs thread too. *single tear*

(xpost) Tim's kind of a hero, beyond just being a friend. He saw the Festival Express show in Toronto in 1970 (but missed Joplin), saw the New York Dolls is a rundown strip club in 1973 (opening for Rush, or vice-versa), regularly comes up with malapropisms like Huey Newton & the News.

Brimstead: I've moved my records five times in my life. First two or three times weren't bad; the fourth time, 17 years ago, harder, and I had a lot of help; the fifth time--getting friends to help now is much harder as they get married and have families--was an ordeal. The guy that sold my house insisted I get them out of there before any showings, so I had to put them into a storage locker for three months, closer to where I was moving (so two hours away from where I was). When I got here, I had to move them into the house myself, about 5 trips in the car, 10 boxes each time. They're still in boxes five months later--just as I was about to finally order shelves, all this happened.

The point is, even after all that, I'm glad I've never had to sell them. Last November would have been the perfect time to do so--their value was as high as it'd been for a long time, and I would've saved considerable cost, effort, and space. Couldn't do it. If you have to do so for financial reasons, that's completely understandable. I have another friend who sold all his, even though I'm pretty sure there wasn't financial pressure to do so, and I get the feeling he regrets it.

Curious as to what happens with vinyl when all this ends. I've never understood all those $35 reissues to begin with--will there still be a market for with all the economic fallout. I expect my own collection will be worth half whatever I would have got in November, if that. But I still have them, and that's good.

"will there still be a market for them with all the economic fallout?"

If you have to do so for financial reasons, that's completely understandable.

yeah, essentially. i never got rid of anything that was super important to me but there's a lot of stuff i wouldn't mind having back.

My 30 seconds of glory from Vinyl:

I'm delighted to learn that the same bearded guy bopping around with grade schoolers to Los Campesinos (as linked the '00s poll results thread) is the same as the guy in the documentary who says how self-conscious he is at parties and how he feels more at home in the record store.

I'm reminded of my much-beloved fifth grade teacher who would later indulge my early morning visits to his classroom to talk about music, after I'd moved to the junior high wing. He loaned me a couple of his records and made a tape or two for me (he tried to convert me to classical with Schubert's Death and the Maiden—that took a few years to click!). Then when I was a freshman in high school (1993/94), he was killed in a car accident, 40 years old. I was invited to go to his estate sale and pick whatever records I wanted, at a dollar apiece. I felt a combination of giddiness and guilt you might expect. Still have some of the 35 or so records I took home that day, including the copy of From Genesis to Revelation that he had loaned me. I always wondered what his life had been like outside the classroom.

I've wanted to see more of Zweig's documentaries (Curmudgeon, especially), but they seem hard to come by.

That’s a really sweet story, Jesse

That's a sad story...having the records is a great way to remember him.

Seems odd, I know. I was able to get rid of some of the introversion via teaching, but just in general, I have a much easier time cutting loose and behaving like an idiot around kids than around adults.

Alan has done quite well since Vinyl. I think he's five or six films since then, and one of them, When Jews Were Funny, won Best Documentary at TIFF. I don't know if there's much distribution in the way of streaming or DVDs, though.

Finally watched the Zweig doc. Enjoyed it immensely, even though it was kind of a bummer. I am totally not joking/patronizing here, but I am glad that Zweig is still around because I felt oceans of sympathy for the man... maybe not least because he looks very very much like a similarly lovelorn old friend of mine.

I miss making tapes.

That was Harvey Pekar, right??

The pain I felt as that dude dumped his records in the dumpster. Ugh.

Yeah, that dude with the crazy eyes was Harvey Pekar.
The guy trashing his collection caused mixed emotions for me: an impulse to go find that dumpster and pick through the contents before someone else could + jealousy at his obvious liberation. I mean, if your house were to burn down, how big would your rebuilt post-fire collection really be?

if your house were to burn down, how big would your rebuilt post-fire collection really be?

I have often thought about that and the answer would be zero physical media and whatever MP3s were on the latest backup drive I store at a friends house.

I would have a ton of fun trying to find all those dollar records again... no way I’m paying retail for Rumours; half the fun is hunting for that great bargain copy.

My friend Scott interviewed Alan Zweig for Records, his upcoming not-a-sequel-to-Vinyl.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWeV_D7dSrg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mny7a14gi6s

Alan sometimes rambles a little bit, but you know that from watching Vinyl. He interviewed us two and another friend last month for the film--we talked for about three hours, but I don't expect more than 30 seconds to make it into the finished film. Alan says his objective this time was to focus more on the records themselves--the music--than the mindset and habits of collecting.

My guess is the film will play here on TVO, after--if they're up and running by then--playing either Hot Docs or TIFF here. No idea how someone from the States or Britain would eventually get to see it.

Thanks a bunch for this!

(Have already listened to a few audio podcasts of you and Scott, clemenza, particularly your year-in-review ones if I remember right--not to overly derail from the thread too much, but these alphabetical-by-film-title Clipography Zoom videos on this channel look like a lot of fun.)

I actually saw Vinyl in a theater! I'm part of a record group with Alan, hopefully this will be viewable at some point

Oh sweet!!

Thanks, Craig. I think it will be, somehow, sleeve--Alan has a couple of his films on U.S. Prime.

have been to the local store a few times lately, it's the only place outside the grocery store I go

I've noticed it's more full than it was before Covid hit. Maybe just small sample size but it seems like people are getting into it more now that we're not supposed to do anything else.

i enjoyed this interview with Alan Zweig. rewatched VINYL last night and it's just as amazing as ever. has anybody figured out how to watch RECORDS? it seems like you might have to be in Canada.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_9DXjQnx2Q

https://www.tvo.org/video/documentaries/records

full doc there. i didn't know this existed, thanks!

does the video not play outside Canada?

“Playback Denied : Location” :-(

VPN time I guess

in that interview, AZ mentioned he was featured on this podcast, That Record Got Me High, which might be worth checking out.

https://www.thatrecordgotmehigh.com/s6e301-neil-young-tonights-the-night-with-alan-zweig/

i'm going to look into getting a VPN i guess

just one more thing i wanted to share: AZ mentions in the youtube interview i posted that he went so far as to hire a private detective to track down the K-Tel guy from "vinyl" so he could interview him for "records." but apparently he was unable to locate him; AZ claims the last time he saw him was when doing the original interview.