What makes a good record collection?
What makes a good record collection? This is a question I have probably given TOO much thought to over the last year or so as I have built my 'new' old record collection.
There are SO many ways to approach this question.
Growing up, my 'collection' grew almost completely unself-consciously and organically, if by that you accept that I was influenced in my selections by a multitude of competing sources. From the age of about 12 or 13, I was reading The Rolling Stone (increasingly) regularly, and Crawdaddy and Creem and New Musical Express and the Village Voice irregularly. My musical tastes were guided or misguided by the usual combination of critics, AM and FM radio listening, new records at friends' houses - my friend Andy had an older brother who played in a 'Jug Band' and whose musical tastes seemed very sophisticated to me when I was in fourth and fifth grades. During this timeframe ca. 1968-1970 I think I was introduced to Country Joe and the Fish, Janis Joplin, The Doors, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, The Band, Santana, and many others. Although these were seminal listening experiences for me, they were hardly 'formal' or very thorough introductions - Andy and I listened to snatches of songs before his brother and their friends threw us out of their shared bedroom. We would go outside and throw a football around on the street corner, and later I would recall hearing one record or another when I read about them in the Rolling Stone. I would also visit my friend David's house on the upper west side and lie on the floor and listen to his older brother's new records. I remember hearing the Rolling Stones' 'Angie' for the first time this way and agreeing with David that the Rolling Stones were washed up, had gone soft, and had lost it completely. Angie? Really, come on, that wasn't Rock 'n' Roll. Or so we thought at the time.
And of course, the radio was playing all the time. And my parents always bought us the latest Beatles records, God Bless Them... For some reason, even then, they felt that this was important to supply me with. So I heard each new Beatles album from 'A Hard Days Night' on as they were released...
As I got older, and my allowance grew, I would buy records myself. My listening habits were fairly eclectic, but tended towards mainstream singer song writers like James Taylor and Carole King, folk rock groups like CSN&Y, soft rock pop stars like Elton John and, of course, The Beatles. This was really before Bob Dylan dominated my life - I was listening to Simon & Garfunkel instead. Occasionally, driven by some persuasive rave in the Rolling Stone record review section, I might branch out and try something a little different. For instance, I remember taking a chance on Ry Cooder's 'Paradise and Lunch' and Little Feat's 'Feats Don't Fail Me Now' and being blown away by both disks from the same trip to the record store. And I had a small number of heavier rock records like Led Zeppelin's first three disks, and a best of collection of the Rolling Stones, and a few others.
So anyway, one day, I'll catalog that old, weird collection.
This was in the seventies, and during college and grad school my collection grew increasingly more slowly as I concentrated instead on studying, figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, and trying to figure out dating...in no particular order.
By the eighties, my record buying trips had almost completely petered out, alas. As a young underpaid architect in NYC, I had precious little extra cash for records and spent what I had on food and clothes and I don't know what. By the end of the decade, I began to collect CDs and thought my record buying days were behind me.
Now, beginning about two years ago, I have contented myself to build a new collection, built from different roots. At first I thought my collection would be comprised only of garage and psychedelic rock of the 60s and 70s. But as collections grow, I re-discovered, you long for other sounds. And when you read that so and so was influenced by such and such when he made this or that record, well, you need to seek out such and such.
And so it goes.
So, what makes a good record collection? There are many different kinds of collections.
Some collections aspire to be as inclusive and eclectic as possible and the collector collects whatever whenever. Of course, most of us have limited resources to greater or lesser degrees and so we might begin to try to focus our collecting to make it feel, well, less random.
Some collections are very broad and include rock, and folk and jazz and classical and spoken word and many time periods.
Some collections are more specific and very deep and completist and aspire to aggregate all the releases of whatever number of favorite bands.
Some collections are specific to a genre. Or an era.
Some collections are histories of rock, or histories of jazz, but from a personal perspective.
Some collections are autobiographical and each record is related to a specific moment or person in the collector's life.
What makes a good record collection? There are no rules. Is a bigger collection better than a smaller one. Maybe. In some ways, yes, but it depends, of course, upon the collection. A small, jewel like collection of treasures can be just as great as that 7,000 record mega collection of everything.
Every time I come across a new record that for some reason calls to me, I ask myself, why? Why does this belong?
And I guess the great thing about building a record collection is that you can change the rules as you go along.
Or simply not have any rules.
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