imomus | The aesthetics of record collecting

I scrolled through an I Love Music thread recently entitled Take a picture of your record collection and post it on ilm -- a sort of cut-price, homebrew, Anglo-styled version of an older, prettier ILM thread about German DJs and their living rooms. It got me thinking about the aesthetics of record collection. Mostly, to be honest, about how ugly record collections now look. It wasn't always this way; take a look at this clip from the 1998 film Tokyo Eyes:

[Error: unknown template video]

Ten years ago this scene -- in which choosing the right record assumes almost mystical importance, and dancing to minimal techno stands in for sex -- seemed as cool as anything in early Godard or early Carax. Now it just looks naff. Something has changed; 90s Retro Vital has turned into 00s Retro Necro. Rather than minting it by re-releasing everything ever recorded, record labels are now laying off staff, record retailers closing down branches. Nobody wants these bits of plastic any more.

The difference between the two I Love Music threads is striking -- there's still some glamour in the German DJs' magisterial collections, whereas the homebrew Anglo collections are unremittingly ugly; I couldn't helping thinking of them as repositories for something dead. The difference is something to do with the way Berlin acts as an ice box for the cool subcultures of the past, and the peculiar job these DJs have; while the rest of the recorded music industry may be collapsing around them, their job is to enact the playing of records in public places. They are, in other words, part of (and earning their evident cash from) a form -- a weird hieratic, shamanic profession -- which has survived the cull of the rest of the music industry, a performative artform of social encounter.

Musicians have weathered the same storm by switching their focus to live shows and giving their music away free online. It's very telling, I think, that the new Apple Air Mac has no CD drive. That's not just to save space, and not just because Apple wants everyone to buy everything through iTunes (though naturally that helps). It's a gesture very much like the one Jobs made in 1998 when he introduced the iMac without a floppy disk drive. Music on plastic, now, is as dead as data on plastic was then. It's all up in the air.

Which leaves us with these unsightly shelves stacked with plastic. Those of us who aren't André Galluzzi can't look at our record collections in the age of mp3 without seeing a drain on our resources and our time -- a storage curse. What might, in the days when John Peel still had black hair and could squeeze into tight shorts, have looked like a dizzyingly diverse and contemporary world of future listening possibilities now looks like some kind of enormous obligation imposed on us by the past, an obligation we will never begin to fulfill (by acts of listening which would devour the rest of our lives) and don't have any intention of even trying to.

I have a recurring nightmare these days. I'm staying in some exotic place, living out of a suitcase. The time comes to go home, but -- with mere hours before my flight -- I discover a whole shelf, a whole cupboard, a whole room of stuff I've forgotten to pack. There's no way it'll all fit into my case, but there's no way I want to leave it behind either. My anxiety mounts, and I wake up with a start. Thank God, it was just a dream! Or was it?

I can still get a thrill looking at the reggae sleeves at Hard Wax in Kreuzberg. I like living in Berlin, a city which preserves with immaculate style the memory of a time when an enormous and eclectic record collection really was something to base all your subcultural capital on. But let's not kid ourselves -- most of this plastic was incredibly ugly. Even if it didn't look that way then, it does now. Space is tight, and life is short. Let's ditch the junk -- as ecologically as possible, naturally. And yes, that includes the Momus CDs.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

dzima.livejournal.com

Thanks for reminding me of Tokyo Eyes, I can't believe it's been such long time since it was released. Now I have to find it and watch it again.

I'll have to sell my modest collection of 600/700 cds soon too. Though I would never part from my instruments, my affair with them will last a lot longer.

From:

silkov.livejournal.com

yes. i like it too

From: (Anonymous)

Noo, why is the future always anal? Smoother lines, minimal. Nothingness is always new. Bloat! Bloatism is the new Bling. Silly Stuffism is the new digital. Otherwise people just pump what they save into 'investments' like the property ladder. Let's waste! Guy Hands, EMI hedge fund uber-master is pleasing share-holders with his sacking of staff (while they spend about 2.5 million just pulping unsold plastic). But will it really mean that the quality improves?

Employ people just to cough, Guy. Bloat like a big fat Pharaoh of musical lunacy.

From:

funazushi.livejournal.com

We're on a bit of a purge at our household and I see Yoko viewing my record collection as wasted space. It has been many years since someone has helped me cart all these crates to my next abode. Somehow I think of them as some kind of inheritance for my children, that they will think their dad was incredibly cool for having all these records. Then I think of my friends dad whose whole house was lined with records, complete collections of Elvis from the 50's. He would spend hours cataloging them in the early days of the computer, only for his wife to tell him she would burn them all when he was gone.
I went to Japan in the early 90s with a handful of Captain Beefheart CDs that I was determined to understand without having ever had a cd player. I came back with a trunk load of Brazilian imports that I think you can only get in Japan and maybe Brazil. When I moved back to Toronto I was burglarized twice, losing my complete cd collection. This is when I began to see the pointlessness of collecting music. I still have the records but now most of what I listen to is on the hard drive. Will I have to move those crates again? I don't think so, my next move will be in a pine box but it is getting to be more difficult to convince the people around me that I should hold on to them.

From:

count-vronsky.livejournal.com

nice :) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqv9djr5oOg)

I was digging through my old records last week and came upon this Nona Hendryx (http://www.amazon.com/Nona-Vinyl-LP-Stereo-Hendryx/dp/B000XI44A6/ref=pd_bbs_5?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1200708195&sr=8-5) lp. Still sounds ahead of her time 25 years on. Transformation (http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=80720281) (still a stunning looking woman and commanding stage presence in her 60's too)

From:

ganatronic.livejournal.com

I don't know, but I do think that vinyl collections are less unsightly than DVD collections. Those are nearly always situated in plain sight next to televisions, often in living rooms. And I just think they are tacky and ugly. DVDs are too wide and covered in distinct colors and logos; too loud and readable from long distances. Vinyl has a softer appearance.

And I remember threads of "post your computer space!" Those always depress me. Wires and off-white plastic, coasters and jewel cases. These bogs where people spend so much time. I try to keep my workspace to a chair and my lap.

From:

imomus.livejournal.com

I know a man here in Berlin who has thrown away all his DVD boxes and replaced them with neutral, grey, uniform plastic boxes with the titles neatly printed on the spine. I'm not sure if it's better; the decontextualization strips too much meaning away from the objects, ugly though they may be.

Page Summary

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags