Boundaries

12-11-09 Boundaries

I am considering superimposing “boundaries” on my collection. I do not want it to ever get any bigger than 25,000 titles. Already, I can not remember everything of what I have. I have been using a Palm Pilot list for about a decade – and sometimes the batteries run out. Last weekend, I made $18 worth of “mistakes” by buying stuff I already had, because I couldn’t “check my Palm”. I thought they were good titles, and I didn’t want to “leave them there” – so I bought ‘em, got home and found that they are already in my big list.

I suppose I could pull the 7” list out of my big “A-Z”, and that would give me a little more play, but – do I include 12” singles in that, too? Uh, doesn’t bear thinking about it. I like my lists complete. I do break them apart in the Palm, CD’s together, vinyl together…

It just sort of galled me (a small bit) that I bought 6 cool singles for $3 each…and I already had ‘em. I can probably find good homes for these 45’s, I must say (or I could try to upgrade my existing copies?)

But I really don’t want to get too many titles. I like to try to remember everything. 25,000 is a good number of titles to say, “I think have completed my collection”. I’m 51 now – so how much longer I am going to be in the game is in question. I do want to try to listen to everything before I shuffle off. My hearing is a real consideration, too. I want to try to listen to everything before my hearing gets too much worse. Why is my hearing bad? All those John Cale concerts, I’m afraid. Those were so loud. I am only beginning to understand just how loud those shows actually were.

I’m in the high 23,000’s at present. I can add 1,000+ more titles to my collection before hitting 25,000. I can say it wouldn’t be to hard to eliminate some titles from my collection in order to obtain more titles. I have seriously over-collected for decades – many artists have the dictum “Every title, every variant” (Frank Zappa, Split Enz etc.)

So, winter of 2009 – I am already seeing a conclusion to my collecting mania. As Steven Wright says “You can’t have everything – where would you put it?” The ultimate taboo had always been classical music. I suppose it could occur – se3lling rock records in order to make room to buy classical records. But – so far I’ve stuck to 20^th century composers – Glass, Reich, Riley etc.

45’s is the area where I have the most to learn. Tons of singles never on LP’s / CD’s. Tons I never knew about. I could easily see the next 1,000 titles to my list could be 45’s. It always feels like something snaps into place when I get a particularly good 45 that seems to answer some sort of cultural / musical question that is stuck in my memory.

So, plenty more to write about – though that’s not always obvious. I am considering make 2010 be a “70’s” year – as the 40^th anniversary of 1970 is upon us. Perhaps not strictly, but…as a starting point. Also, must see what Strange Days magazine does – I just loved their “Time Machine: 1969” lists!

- Ron