Warped 0.2
Written by Jakie Day & The Go All-Nighters Tuesday, 22 September 2009 03:42
“They got a name for the winners in the world. I want a name when I lose.”
- Steely Dan
Grad school just started this week, but the penny pinching began months ago. With hopes to balance out my upcoming money sheet, I started doing math I hadn’t previously known existed, and delved further into the underpinnings of the American tax return than I would have ever wished upon a human being: All just to save a couple extra zeroes.
Despite the harrowing financial trauma that prepping for school has brought alongside me, I am grateful that this all came at a time where I feel rather contented about my vinyl collection. What? What’s that you ask? How on God’s rotating blue-and-slightly-green-tinged orb can I feel content as a vinyl collector?
It’s true, and a bit of a hard concept to swallow – even I have a hard time swallowing it, but as anyone realistically knows, sometimes - when things ain’t so opulent – one’s gotta sacrifice. Even if it means on giving up on perhaps the best part of vinyl collecting: “The Hunt”, which just so happens to be the topic of today’s business.
The Hunt (which is by no means anything more than an offhand colloquial that I will proceed to describe extemporaneously) is a big hard lead ball of desire, subject to fluctuating weight and temperature that sits in the middle of your gut. It is the manifestation of one’s realization that with patience, dexterity, and a frame of reference, what is desired can be obtained. It provides the inertia in a collector to always learn more about what they are collecting, so that they can determine better the value of what they are collecting, so they can collect more efficiently and place even more personal value into what they are collecting. To the point, it’s best understood as that raging excitement of visiting the record store at the end of the week, thrilled about what you might find that others did not or could not.
Now I realize I may very well be talking out of my ass in the above paragraph, so I think the concept of the hunt is better served with a direct example.
Take, if you will, the fact that I have a violent fetish for Jazz from the 50s and 60s. Jazz serves our purpose very well here due to the fact that Jazz record values are most often very easily defined, and in terms of igniting a collecting fetish, very, very dangerous due to the 6-degrees-to-Kevin Bacon nature of interconnectedness between players and record labels. When I started collecting records, jazz records were some of the first I ever looked for beyond some of the easy-to-snag 70s pop (Billy Joel’s “The Stranger”, Elton’s “Madman Across The Water”, etc.). Due to my own personal history and interaction with jazz, especially on an academic level, it didn’t take me long recognize that I was going to become an avid, and particular jazz collector.
Naturally after buying certain jazz records, I wanted to expand my collection. So I began to research different record labels like Blue Note, Impulse, and Prestige, finding all along the way little tidbits of how to determine a record’s origin, pressing, etc., and the interconnected histories behind the players. Subsequently, while I started off recognizing and appreciating Miles and Coltrane, the research led me on to players whom I cherished even more like Charles Mingus, Bill Evans, Horace Silver, and the ever-classy Cannonball Adderley. As my collection expanded, my knowledge of jazz history expanded, and vice-versa. The snowball continues on and on to this day, with my tastes becoming both more particular and shrewd as I rack up the catalogues of groups and players.
The ultimate iteration was that I developed the special mutant power of being able to evaluate the value of many a jazz record on site. I’ve seen several individuals who, while they might not have considered themselves collectors or considered particular records interesting, passed over records of tremendous value, most likely due only to a void in their frame of reference – which is the most significant “Hunt”-powered tool one can develop: Know what you want to collect. You’ll find some amazing gems, and ultimately save yourself a lot of money and potential grief.
Taking the concept of The Hunt and turning it to your advantage is something that honestly only comes from experience and regular visitation of your local vinyl emporiums, and the sooner you can get started the better. It’s all about cutting down on time and upping your efficiency as a hunter. Over time you’ll start to develop muscle memory for the shops you visit, as well as discovering the eventual idiosyncrasies that every shop carries that one only finds through constant perusal. For example at one shop, used Terry Callier records sat tucked in the soul and R&B section, but any new or reprint Terry Callier records were actually categorized in the new jazz section, which was separate from any of the other new arrivals sections.
On an elementary level, if you or I wanted to start collecting, one first off has to identify where you’re going to build your collection from. Now if you’re reading this you probably don’t need me telling you that local
Now before I send you out I’m going to be very honest with you, and don’t take this the wrong way, but as you start collecting you’re ultimately going to become a bit of a loser. Being a black wax vanguard requires diligence, patience, and sometimes demands a fair bit of anti-sociality – and while being a collector has begun to gain more and more credit in the right circles – admitting into it is a dead-giveaway that you are to be earmarked as “one of THOSE people.”
And yet, it’s perhaps the greatest favor the world could do you in terms of the applying mind’s-eye stereotypes. Vinyl collectors have stalwartly cut into the earth that they are some of the most introverted, socially awkward, impatient, rabid and awkward personalities on this plane. And there-in lies the rub: Few immersed in the world and business of vinyl expect for any kind of collector worth their salt to be able to hold a conversation where they don’t just shoegaze for fifteen minutes. Be sociable in this pursuit, open and casual, and you’ll blow people’s minds, and open many more doors for yourself.
And you know what that means kids: More of the good stuff.
