A Matter of Records

I’ve been told that once you acquire three of anything, you have a collection. It all started innocently for me, but grew into an obsession as soon as I got into the business.

I guess it all started when I worked on a college radio station. It was a rather new station so it didn’t have much of a record library. The library was the recipient of all sorts of new promotional albums from the big companies, but even back in 1973 there were independent labels out there with stuff well worth listening to. So every week I’d go out and buy ten or so new albums that the station would never get, making my radio shows a little more underground than the other shows on the air.

Word got out that I was spinning the unknowns, and soon I was getting all sorts of promos sent to me at home. By the time I got out of radio all together I had amassed a collect of nearly 2000 albums, AKA expensive wall paper.

One of the disadvantages with the old 12 inch vinyl was that not only did they take up a lot of space, but they also weighed a lot. So when I decided to move all the way across the country to Oregon, I had to figure a way to get 2000 records out here with me. I knew my Subaru wagon couldn’t handle it, besides I had all sorts of stuff like bicycles, skis, computers and other stuff I had to drive out.

I gave away all my furniture, so all I had to worry about were books and records, which I decided to mail to myself. Fourth Class Book Rate was actually reasonable. I didn’t have my own address, so I mailed to my then love of my life who lived in Vancouver, Washington. A month later I bought my house here, so I had to pack them all from her house to my new home where I built shelves and had them in my living room.

Ten years later, she who is now my wife moved in with her two children. We called it the occupation. Just about all of my stuff was given away and replaced by her stuff. She didn’t like the ghosts of my former women acquaintances in the house with her, so any chair they could have possibly sat on went. I did get to keep the art, though.

So my house, no longer being a singles pad, I had to move all my records to a room upstairs that would now be my office. It was a cramped space with all those records. After her kids moved out I was able to take on one of their roomy bedrooms as my office, so the records moved again.

After that move I decided to sell a lot of the collection. The records were really getting in my way, so a collector from Seattle came down and took about 1500 of them leaving me with only 500.

This weekend my wife wanted to move her office down stairs into one of the guest rooms. We still want to have two guest rooms on the main floor, so I moved my office back up stairs, so all 500 records had to be moved once again. Now I’m thinking I should sell the remainder.

I would like to copy some of them onto CD. There is some rare stuff in the remaining collection, rare British imports and boot legs. I have a recording of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Johnny Winter jamming together. I have the works of Philip Glass on the Chatham square label. Almost everything Zappa ever did on vinyl. All vinyl works of Brian Eno, and I mean all, even things he produced in the early days like Lady June. Amazing Blondell…I could go on.

It’s such a hard decision, but I will never move them again.