With the summer vacation really and truly upon me, I find myself sinking into a comfortable and reassuring routine. I have concocted a few projects for myself, none of them earthshattering, but enough to fill a few hours in the morning before declaring my day’s work over and vacation resumed. Mostly, my time off is being spent in the very happy pursuit of record collecting, organizing, and listening.
At least it’s a happy pursuit for me. I am not the slightest bit puzzled as to why the acquisition, cataloging, and enjoying of recorded music—CD, vinyl, downloads—would be such an immensely satisfying activity. It’s a reassuring celebration of my independence, of my moderate but palpable affluence, of my having things just as I want them. As a kid I could never acquire enough records to satisfy what was already a raging itch. My problem was twofold: a lack of funds, and a lack of access. I was limited to my allowance (such as it was) plus the money I earned as a bag boy (a.k.a. courtesy clerk) at the Applewood King Sooper’s. Furthermore, I couldn’t go very far, being a kid and kept on a reasonably short leash. Even after I had acquired a driving license and a rundown but serviceable car, I wasn’t given carte blanche to go driving all over metropolitan Denver just to suit myself. That was sensible of the parental units but it caused me a certain amount of grief.
Most importantly, it kept my consumerist imagination in check, which considering my threadbare finances was undoubtedly a good thing. I really had no idea just how much stuff there was out there. My horizons were limited to the monthly selections from the Columbia Record Club and the meager pickings at the local Target. I did what I could under the circumstances, but that wasn’t much.
But as adulthood progressed and finances improved, both my horizons and imagination progressively widened. It took a while for me to realize that most of the old limitations were evaporating. Oh, there remain checks and balances—I have neither infinite income nor storage space—but on the whole, if I want it, I can have it. And I know where to get it.
And boy, do I get it. Complete this and that, CDs just for the fun of it, trips to Amoeba Records over on Haight to trawl through the vinyl bins, auction combat over choice tidbits on eBay: I do it all. I make regular trips to GEMM and MusicStack; I know the big retail web sites; I have established friendly first-name relationships with antiquarian and rare record dealers. I know my stuff these days, the difference between a proper Living Stereo 1S/1S and some flimsy thing pressed in the later 1970s, all about blue backs and six-eye and two-eye and desirable SRs versus drab Golden Imports.
I’m not a fanatic about vinyl vs. CD; I love ‘em all indiscriminately. My itch is for completeness, comprehensiveness, scope. Whatever it is, I want it. Yet I’m fortunate in that I have a built-in mechanism that has (so far) protected me from landing myself in the poorhouse from injudicious CD, vinyl, or hi-fi equipment expenses. I know when to stop; the urge drains away. For the present. Then it comes roaring back again.
Do I listen to all those records? More than one might think. Maybe not each and every one of them. But I might need that one some day, or that one, or that one. So I get them—and I get them now, not later. That’s because where records are concerned tomorrow may never come. Current stuff goes out of print so fast. Choice vintage LPs get snapped up by other collectors. Sometimes it feels like snatching fireflies out of the air. Grab ‘em before they vanish.
It’s mostly for fun, but some recordings make pretty darn good investments. I bought the complete Glenn Gould box when it came out, and now my $300-ish purchase is worth upwards of $1500. I’m hanging onto my complete Heifetz box for the same reason, not to mention my big huge Karajan EMI boxes (2 of them) and the 1960s DGG box. They’ll all skyrocket in value once they go out of print, which should be any minute now. But the odds are I’ll never sell them. Prying a record out of my hands, never an easy task, has grown all but impossible as I age and come to treasure each and every one.