I think it was the “Pat Benatar – Crimes Of Passion” album that did it. I was flipping through the P section in my record rack (yes she is under P not B) when I saw this.
When I was in junior high and living in Ann Arbor, this was a new album and I dug it. “Treat Me Right” and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” were absolute hits and I paid full price for my original. I probably bought it at the mall. It was great.
Some years ago I ran across it for a buck and put it in my collection. The end. I HAD loved it, and it’s a good album, but since I bought it I have never once listened to it. Why?
Every record collector evaluates the reason they collect once in a while. I have done culling’s before, removing the mistakes and experiments and poor judgement albums from my collection.
When I moved a few years ago I had a lot of crammed boxes of albums that I had to move and it was not fun. Handing over my collection to the movers was terrifying and I realized then that my collection was just too big, and vowing to do something about it… I didn’t.
Then came Pat Benatar.
I pulled out that album from the rack and looked at it and I had to admit there really was no reason for me to own this album. If I owned this album for another 10 years, what were the odds I would ever go to the rack and pull this album in particular and listen to it? Ultimately I guessed, never.
There was a point when I thrilled to add any and all records to my collection. I remember buying 2 albums from Hot Tuna in the very early days of my return to vinyl, and getting them home and listening to them (I think at that point I had about 25 records) and finding out, well, I didn’t really care for Hot Tuna. I had those in my collection for a long time before I took and sold them. I don’t know why I kept them that long.
I also bought a copy of “Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson – A Star Is Born”. That was a nostalgia record. I think I only paid a buck for it (will have to look back) and was excited to write about how I used to listen to this record, perhaps my first full dub of an album, on a cassette in my portable tape player when I went to bed as a kid. I wrote about it, I posted it… the end. I don’t really need to keep it anymore.
I think in my head I envisioned a huge collection of cool records.
It was comforting to buy records from my past and have them to talk about and when I started making videos for YouTube and the Vinyl Community I definitely bought albums that I grabbed more to talk about rather than to listen to. That was a mistake.
My short foray into buying all the Hipgnosis album covers was fun, for a while, then I had to admit to myself that this wasn’t why I was into records. Buying sometimes not so great albums to add to the collection and never listen to was not the way to go. I remember one day thinking I wanted to buy an album that I was after from Discogs and discovering that that seller also had a Hipgnosis album. I bought that album instead and never listened to it. Shame.
When I gave up the Hipgnosis collecting I lost myself for a bit, but that sort of self-reflection and reevaluation of why and WHAT I was collecting was good. I decided to only buy things I was certainly going to listen to, or wanted to have to fill holes in the collection, or were essential albums. I have stopped myself a few times now, standing with a record in my hand at Half Price Books and thinking to myself… really, is this the one that you can’t live without? Is owning it on VINYL essential, or will a download do, or a CD? I have surprised myself and walked away from “cool” albums that 5 years ago I would have bought without thinking.
It’s taken a long time to get here, but now that I’m here… time to review what I have in the racks.
I pulled some that were good albums that I just didn’t ever listen to and earmarked them for friends. I have a stack for taking to Strictly Discs, and some to go to Frugal Muse or Half Price books. Probably 2 boxes worth thus far.
That Kinks album above is one of my original vinyl records from the early junior high days. I think Abbey had it for a while and when I got back into vinyl it came back to me. The only song on it that I really loved was “Destroyer”. Hardly a reason to keep it for 40ish years.
Not surprisingly a good amount of the albums were from the dollar bin. I did spend the time to try and remove any price stickers that would easily come off.
That was the easy part. The first wave.
Next came the hard part. Duplicates.
The Aural Retentive 