The aesthetics of record collecting

[imomus]

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:

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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.

Comments

[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.

Faster, Guy Hands, Kill Kill!

[(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.

Albatross

[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.

[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.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

For me, nothing can ever replace the ritual of putting on a record (or even a cd at a push). I remember when I was when I bought pretty much each single or LP album and cd, (can't say the same for each mp3 I downloaded, nowhere near the same attachment there!) and I have thousands! for me it's like a diary of my past. And I still buy 'em. Vinyl sounds great, as do cds, more so than lossy formats such as mp3.

There are still people who like to own 'the original' of things, however irrational it may seem - the packaging of cds and Lps in your hand to peruse while listening to music. Zappa called this the 'Fondlement & Fetishism Potential [F.F.P.]' in his prototypical 1980s idea of abolishing record distributionltogether and replacing it with music downloads (see http://www.brendastardom.com/arch.asp?ArchID=719 )

without music collecting in physical form we wouldn't have the joys of crate digging - or the shared musical discoveries and experiences from travels in all parts of the world (instead of browsing e-mule )- notably vinyl vulture /verygoodplus, or LJ forgottenalbums ( http://www.vinylvulture.co.uk/pages/carboot1.htm http://forgottenalbums.livejournal.com/ )

Personally i don't think there's much to be gained by this rush to have a million tracks on an ipod or hard disk just to save some space in the living room. And of course you lose the lot when the appliance breaks or is stolen. I don't find collections of culture , be it books or music formats, in any way ugly. Sounds like some 'lifestyle' nonsense to me!

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

oops - "I remember when i was " = WHERE I was...

Re: Albatross

[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)

[(Anonymous)]

ahh yes, Northern Rock. finally subjects of relevance...

[(Anonymous)]

apologies. the note was intended for momus.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The fall of rock music is much more important than the fall of a bank called "the Rock". If history teaches us anything, it's that cultural events tend to be more significant than economic ones. But it you want to look at the balance sheets and judge it that way, rock music has earned more for the UK in the past 50 years or so than Northern Rock has. So it's more significant even in those restricted terms.

[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.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

my brother is a vinyl fan. He owns decks and plays old school drum & bass and jungle. You can buy all this shit on cd, infact you can download it on lossless mp3 and still mix it on MP3 decks. Why bother with vinyl still after all this time? "Its warmer than cd and mp3" apparently. I can fit 3000 songs in my pocket. Youd need an entire room to do the same, for what? "A warmer sound"?

vinyl covers could also count as artworks in themselves I suppose, but do you love the artwork so much youre prepared to have to share a room with your music collection?

I find vinyl fanatics real bores. The sort of people whos entire personalities revolve around their music as opposed to their personalities informing their musical choices. "Yeah man, music is my life". I cant tell you how many times Ive heard people say that. The cult of the DJ is a relic of the 90s and its whole super-serious authenticity vibe is so fucking naff.

[kineticfactory.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that there will be no more Momus CDs?

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

"without music collecting in physical form we wouldn't have the joys of crate digging - or the shared musical discoveries and experiences from travels in all parts of the world "

"Super-serious authenticity" got here before I did it seems.

message in a bottle

[niddrie-edge.livejournal.com]

I hope that Paul Morley in his Pop What Is It Good For? (http://www.bbc.co.uk/musictv/pop/popwhatisitgoodfor/) piece on BBC4's Pop Britannia season has awakened something in someone for the entry point to the big weird world out there that a pop song can provide and will encourage them to process that awakening again with the basic music theory, attitude and fashion. Maybe the concept of the life changing pop hit is as exotic now as Ride A White Swan was for Paul back in Stockport.
Pop Britannia's idea tonight was that the History of British Pop has been a debate between Art and Commerce.

[(Anonymous)]

I used to make fun of vinyl fetishism as being a sort of misplaced nostalgia, of people in love with a hobby, rather than in love with music. I embraced CDs as being far more democratic. (While you can arguably get superior sound from a pristine LP, you certainly couldn't with any equipment I could afford.)

Nowadays when I haven't had a physical music collection for about 5 years, I kind of yearn for the return of the aestheticized elitism of vinyl. A big shelf of half shiny half scratched bland CD jewel cases looks tacky. A wall of endless vinyl has the aura of a medieval library. The same romance that bookshelves still have for me.

(On a related note, computers and piracy have also killed much of the aura around collecting comic books and vintage console games. I still occasionally see people trying to unload their massive collections of NES cartridges on ebay. It's rather hard to justify owning such a collection when it's fairly straightforward locate a torrent that while give you ROM dumps of every game that has ever been made, with the option of playing the games on superior modern hardware.)

[(Anonymous)]

"Personally i don't think there's much to be gained by this rush to have a million tracks on an ipod or hard disk just to save some space in the living room."

Could have something to do with most young, first time homeowners not being able to afford a living room.

[kiplet.livejournal.com]

I feel oddly in tune: just last week we pulled down the shelves of CDs and DVDs and videos from the living room and replaced them with shelves of comics.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

thats just replacing old junk with new junk...

Scan the comics and save them to your hard drive! (then send me them by email) ;)

[(Anonymous)]

Collecting old consoles and games is something I can understand, because when it comes to games, the tactile experience is so important. Not the actual insertion of the game (which can be compared to the experience of playing a vinyl record) but the feel of the controller in your hands, the actual act of playing the game.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The cult of the DJ is a relic of the 90s

Wir sind 100% d'accord sur ce point, mein freund!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm actually pondering that right now. In theory there'll be a new album in Septemberish, but it could be released in various different ways -- including wrapped with the book -- and I'm trying to figure out what does and doesn't make sense.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

A Japanese curator said to me the other day "I really love your album "Oskar Originals". And of course that was never an album physically -- it's a download page on my website with mp3s (http://imomus.com/audio.html). So that -- and the existence of Paypal -- make me wonder whether you really need to do the hard copy at all.

Pro: I like the sleeves, and I like the advances record labels give, and I like the fact that it's compulsory, not voluntary, to pay for the plastic.

Con: all the stuff above, really, and some more. But if it's and / and, why not?

[(Anonymous)]

You can modify old game controllers to work with modern computers. I spent $40 on a USB NES controller, for instance. Google around and you'll find them.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh yeah, I should have thought of that... I still have a few playstation->usb adapters lying around. Used them for hooking up a bunch my old music game controllers to my computer.