Binge and Purge column on AV Club

I don't know if folks have seen the recurring thread on the AV Club on a guy going through his CD collection, one by one, and determining what to keep and what to purge. It's really resonating with me since the era of his collection overlapped closely with mine, and we seem to have some similar musical touchstones (also around the same sized collection; he said his was around 2000, and I'm around 1200 or 1400 or so.)

In any case, I recommend skimming through it - he has eight so far in the series, and he's up to the Hs alphabetically, detailing why he is keeping and why he is discarding certain records - with the usual combination of artistic merit and sentimental values.

[www.avclub.com]

Well, hell, I'll take those Flaming Stars records he doesn't want!

This is indeed fascinating - it's a lot like the conversation I have in my head whenever I go through my collection to purge. Though I'm not nearly as ruthless as he is. I think when I retire from the music critic gig (currently scheduled for 2018), I'll probably do a major purge, as I'll no longer feel obligated to keep certain things. (Yeah, I know, Spotify and all that. I'm not saying I'm being logical.)



Post Edited (07-13-16 13:57)

I have done a number of low-level purges, every year or two, to keep my numbers hovering around 1000-1100 or so (i.e. the right amount to fit in the shelving I have in the built-in under my stairwell). Given the ratio, it's more "pruning" than purging. But it's not nearly so systematic as this guy.

My problem is that, when it comes to purging entire runs, I'm always afraid I'm going to regret getting rid of it/them. There have been times when I've gotten rid of stuff, only to rediscover it later. That's happened a lot of late when it comes to a lot of the 90s alt.rock I got rid of in the late 90s, and most of that stuff (I'm talking stuff like Lustre and Rein sanction, not Nirvana) isn't on the streaming services. It happens all the time.

I also usually can't be that ruthless when it comes to a band I really like. If I have six albums, but really only love three, I'll still keep the other three. Something about wanting a complete overview something something, even if I'm unlikely to listen to every album in a row (like I did as a teenager whenever I had less than 20 records).

I certainly sympathize. It is a lot easier to get rid of an outlier record, even a good one, than a mediocre disc by a band you otherwise love.

Exactly!

I try to look at everything as: "Yeah, it's good, maybe even great, but how often will I really l listen to it?" That doesn't always work, of course.

I'm trying to take hard looks at artists I've long loved whose collections have devolved into, "Buy the new one, listen to it a couple of times and file away." That actually worked for Steve Earle and Lucinda Williams - I dumped everything after Jerusalem for the former and everything after Brad Reno's favorite Car Wheels On a Gravel Road for the latter. It probably helps that I'm pretty much done with Americana/roots music, which I'm thoroughly sick of. It hasn't worked out so well for, say, Richard Thompson, despite that the last record I spun constantly was Mock Tudor and the last one I unabashedly loved was Mirror Ball.

Or Neil Young, though I'm always a lot choosier with him anyway - I don't buy everything he releases, and haven't bought anything since Psychedelic Pill. But I think the last record I really loved enough to play over and over is Harvest Moon, and yet I've got a ton of albums released after that.

Michael Toland said:

Quote

I'm pretty much done with Americana/roots music, which I'm thoroughly sick of

A bit of the ol' "a man works in a glass factory long enough, one day he's going to pick up a hammer" syndrome going on here?

Probably. That and indie rock are the coin of the realm for rock criticism these days, and I no longer have any use for either of them.

Undoubtedly, someday I'll give up the DJ gig, and when I do, I'm sure a lot of CDs will find their way out my door. Until then ...

I went through a period of no sell out [so to speak] from roughly 1994-2013. It was all about intake during that time. Int the new millennium, I began selling off "garage sale records" my wife bought at estate sales during the period where she sold in an antique mall. That changed in 2013. I needed a lot of money that year [and the next two] as I did a lot of vacation and concert traveling. And of course, when visiting all three Amoebas for the first time, I needed lots of scratch. So I sold off deep collections of artists I used to collect but largely stopped in the mid 90s. PSB. Depeche Mode. I found myself listening to the PSB and DM singles before pressing "eject" and was struck by the quality of the PSB B-sides, so I made a note to finally buy "Alternative" which I had never needed previously, since I had all of the CD singles. I soon found a copy of that in a thrift store for $1! Can't say I've missed the singles any.

I tend to have a narrow/deep focus on music collecting. Around 3-4K titles and about 15 years ago, I counted the humber of CDs I had [around 2.5-3K] and only 125 artists accounted for all of that! Maybe 15% of it was by artists I only have 1-2 titles from. Naturally, this is the first thing I want to get rid of, but it was good purging the 2nd rate synthpop os PSB or DM. The bands that predated them, even by a year in the marketplace [say, OMD] made a much more lasting impression on me and are part of my core collection of bands.



Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
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