Absorbed

For many people, squinting at the matrixes on the runout portion of 2,500 record albums to determine where they were pressed would qualify as court-ordered punishment. As would individually discerning the condition of those records and their jackets.

It most-definitely is not a job for the ADHD-afflicted.

As a guy with a really long attention span, it's not quite punishment of the court-ordered variety. It doesn't even suck. Being that they're mine, and that it's been over a decade since I've had fact-to-face contact with them, it's actually quite a pleasure.

It is also very time-consuming.

Let me explain.

I had largely forgotten them. They sat, packed away in cardboard boxes since the onset of the Great Recession. One of the lessons imparted by that misery was that possessions are for the solvent. The employed. To have space for things requires money.

And for too many of the ensuing years, money was mostly a rumor.

The boxes sat unopened until just recently. After years fraught with stress-related weight gain, sickness, unemployment, poverty and death, revisiting the flower of my youth, when I obsessively scoured the length and breadth of Chicago's record stores for soul, blues, rock, reggae, jazz, country and western and soundtrack LPs, has been—for lack of a better word—startling.

My passion burned hot.

The covers. The labels. The posters and the stickers and the iron-on t-shirt transfers. Reacquainting myself with the output of some of my favorite fated-to-obscurity bands: Green on Red, Fetchin' Bones, The Family Cat, Blancmange, the Windbreakers and the Silos.

Feeling the heft and the thick, rounded edges of the old vinyl and the sharp, unfinished edges of the newer evoked oceans of memories. Of youthful, uninhibited freedom. Of disposable income. Of turntables and apartments and parties and girlfriends. Of mix tapes and friends in a better, far less-convoluted time.

In a world untouched by the Internet, record collecting was a matter of visiting stores and crate digging. Thumbing through countess bins of vinyl. Of hopes raised—and then dashed—as the vinyl within a pristine jacket appeared to have spent several hours on the the Dan Ryan Expressway.

But the joy of unearthing a pristine copy of Ann Peebles' I Can't Stand the Rain or Syl Johnson's Total Explosion, or of encountering Bob Koester (R.I.P.) at the Jazz Record Mart on Grand, where he regaled me with a story of Howlin' Wolf and Sonny Boy Williamson as I was set to purchase Howlin' Wolf – Live in Europe 1964 were priceless.

As was recognizing a girl from the previous night's Graham Parker concert at Wax Trax and simultaneously striking-up a conversation and a friendship. Or of finding new, still-in-their-shrinkwrap Japanese pressings of Otis Redding's first five LPs at the same store.

The real miracle is that I remained ambulatory.

But it has changed. A few keystrokes on a computer keyboard eliminate countless forays to far-fetched record stores, where imbued with a lottery player's faith I sought copies of Paul Kelly's Dirt or the Ohio Players' Pleasure.

I rarely succeeded, but the search was the thing.

While the Internet has certainly made collecting more-efficient, there is no sense of hard-won satisfaction. Or of the rewards of diligence. No sweat equity. It's record collecting reduced to the same ordinary-ness one encounters in the purchase of frozen vegetables.

There is no context. No sense of rarity. No buoyant joy of discovery.

But I am lucky. Given the choice, I preferred my way. The old-fashioned way. It drew me into parts of Chicago I never would have seen otherwise. And the joy of unearthing a long-sought after record after so many fruitless trips rivaled the Christmases of my childhood.

The goal was always to build a comprehensive vinyl collection. One that would incorporate the multiple influences that went into the creation of the musical chili called rock and roll. Did I succeed? Who knows?

But I've had an absolute ball trying. 

Cold, Cold, Cold

Another decade, another polar vortex.

For the first time since Madonna, Prince and Bruce Springsteen ruled the pop charts, I was made privy to extremely cold temperatures. Wednesday, January 30^th greeted me with temps reading minus twenty-five (F), while Thursday morning—the 31st—revealed they had sunk even lower, to minus twenty-nine (F).

Ah, winter. The leaden air mass that sits upon us like a cruel older sibling evokes memories.

I share them here.

The eighties were cold. And no, that isn't a tacit reference to the Reagan administration.

For reasons known only to itself, the weather pattern shifted and brought Arctic cold to the upper Midwest on three separate occasions during the decade: 1982, 1983 and 1985. In a cosmological fusion of the real estate maxim location, location, location and the more-general one that states timing is everything, I was able to participate in all three.

Arctic cold is extremely efficient. It does in a few minutes what non-Arctic cold takes an hour to do. Sadistically, it freezes and then numbs one's flesh, providing a prickly burn as it does so. Accounts that include phrases like “a thousand tiny razors” are not far off.

Add wind and the process is exponentially accelerated. The sensations are deepened. Accountants steeped in cost-benefit analysis applaud wildly. It is very, very efficient.

My first immersion experience with Arctic air occurred on January 16, 1982. I had taken it upon myself to head into the city for some record shopping. Being young, I instinctively knew the emergency weather warnings being issued about dangerously cold temperatures did not apply to me.

They were for other people.

Dressed as I would for any other winter's day, I set off downtown. All was well until the trip home.

Waiting on the Fullerton El platform (so named because this particular conveyance is elevated above street level, thereby exposing patrons to the full effect of any and all wind), I became aware of a painful, incessant chill.

Surprisingly, the sneakers I wore did little to insulate my feet. My ears were on fire thanks to the ability polar breezes have for reducing human skin to pin cushions.

At least I hadn't inconvenienced myself by wearing a hat.

One of the more amusing qualities of Arctic cold is its ability to provoke profanity. As I stood on the El platform completely exposed to the minus forty-degree wind chill, I could do little but hop up and down and spit “Fuck!” from between my clenched teeth.

Yes, it was cold.

And thanks to a perversion of generosity, the fun wasn't over yet.

Since this was Saturday, the bus that would normally take me to within a block of my home was not in service. Which meant a one-mile walk into the same westerly winds I had combated on the El platform.

No alcoholic, no junkie and no crackhead ever went to the lengths to satiate their addiction than I did that day.

God smiles on us in many ways. On this day, he—or she—had decided to teach a young man about vulnerability. About exposed skin's sensitivity to polar temperatures. About hats.

While I had successfully avoided the social embarrassment that goes hand in hand with having the beautiful young women who frequented record stores on Saturday mornings from pointing and laughing at my hat hair, I had risked permanent (and painful) skin damage.

After arriving home, I inspected my ears for the small, white patches that indicate frostbite. Finding none, I dove into bed. I minimized pillow-to-ear contact for fear they would snap and break off.

There were other experiences, most notably December 24, 1983 (minus twenty-three with steady twenty MPH winds) and January 20, 1985, which bottomed out at twenty-seven below with similar wind speeds.

But chastened by my El platform experience, I limited my exposure. If I wasn't attending a holiday party or periodically starting my car, I was inside. The way God intended. So instructive was the Arctic cold that I only needed to suffer it once. 

Regrettably, Jack Daniels, Stolichnaya and Heineken couldn't say the same.

My Record Collecting Nightmare

There is a monster lurking in my basement. It is an evil, insidious, sprawling, clutching thing. To those fortunate-enough not to have glimpsed its contents, it appears completely benign. Innocent, even.

But to those who have, it is a wretched and heinous beast; a honey-do list ignored until it rages, sullen and violent. It is the mouth of hell itself. In this context, ignorance isn’t just bliss. It's a cornucopia of rapture.

You see, I am the owner of a vast music collection. One gone out of control. I have boxes and boxes containing thousands of CDs and cassettes and records. They occupy an entire corner of the cellar and only fitfully yield their contents.

Their mass exceeds the available space on my cranial hard drive, requiring that I catalog it/them. However much of an ordeal it is, I am optimistic this will prevent a fourth copy of Tom Verlaine’s Dreamtime from finding its way into my collection.

To ensure the results are letter perfect, I have refreshed myself in the fine art of alphabetizing. The basics are easy: drop the articles ‘a’, ‘an’ and ‘the’. Bands that assume the name of an fictitious individual (i.e. Alice Cooper) are filed under the first name and not the surname.

Conversely, solo artists employing a made-up name (i.e. Bob Dylan) are filed under the assumed surname, and not the first name. And band names which incorporate a member’s name into that of the band’s (i.e. the Alan Parsons Project) are filed under the surname. Simple.

But musical entities rarely acquire their names in consultations with Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Which is the reason we encounter grammatical pretzels like Booker T. & the M.G.s. Or …And You Will Know Us by the Trail Of Dead…. Or T. Rex.

So. What’s the standard for band names that contain a member’s entire name except for the surname? Do I pretend it’s there and file Booker T. & the M.G.s under J for Jones? Or pretend that Booker is a stage name and file them under B?

Is D for damn good an option?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter whether I can find my cherished copy of Melting Pot or not. I mean, who among us can enjoy music while suffering the ravages of a pounding headache?

Moving on, could you point me to the rule for bands whose name begins and ends with ellipsis? Does the article still get deleted, even if it’s part of a quote? Or does the integrity of the quote matter? And what of the integrity of the band?

Or, for that matter, this project?

Maybe I should ignore a decade of being tobacco-free and fire up a Marlboro. Or ponder what happens when a band is known by one name in one place and another name in another place. I mean, the aspirin’s paid for. Right?

And what of Elvis Costello & the Attractions, who invariably end up under E instead of C? Shout “Hey People! That’s not his real name!” everywhere I go? I can tell you, nine out of ten people tend to dial 911 soon afterwards—especially in enclosed spaces.

Memories.

You’d think my record collection would be done tormenting me by now. Or at least showing signs of tiring. After all, have I not lovingly cared for it over several decades? Kept it dry and away from extreme heat and direct sunlight?

Does it have even a wisp of an idea how difficult that was in the southwest?

Not a chance.

This can mean only one thing: Tyrannosaurus Rex. Yes. Them.

The band which gifted Western civilization with the phrase hub cap diamond star halo is in cahoots with the record collection monster, hell-bent on twisting and mangling my sense of organization into something grotesque and unrecognizable.

I desperately search the Internet. Front to back. Side to side. And top to bottom. Where oh where is the protocol for bands who are officially known by a contraction of their original name that appears to be an individual’s name—but isn’t?

Does a rule even exist? A theory? How about a guesstimate from Bush number-two?

Was Marc Bolan so consumed by career and chart position that he gave no thought whatsoever to the alphabetizing woes of poor, besieged record collectors who want only to efficiently locate the fruits of his musical labor?

This conundrum wrapped in an enigma is further complicated by the fact their name is sometimes hyphenated (T-Rex) and sometimes includes a period (T. Rex).

I ask you: in a mass-produced, standardized world where even our fruit is genetically engineered for uniformity, can we not agree on one, single, best-practice spelling for these grammatical terrorists?

I won’t even consider the trauma Alice Cooper solo albums could provoke.

Insights from a Record Collection

We are very much the product of our times. Or so my record collection told me after I exhaustively cataloged it. Coming of age in the late-sixties and seventies as I did, it is not very surprising that my largest collections are from the likes of the Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.

What is surprising is that despite my continued interest in pop music, I have but one artist who released a debut after 1990 whose collection numbers in double figures—PJ Harvey.

In the twenty-one years since the beginning of that decade, history would suggest that I would find at least a couple of bands whose career I would follow into a double-digit CD collection. Yet it hasn’t happened.

Why? Do bands have shorter careers now? Less-frenetic recording schedules? Am I too old? This question gnaws at me because I am as enthusiastic about the New Pornographers or TV On the Radio as I am about Led Zeppelin and the Temptations.

First off, it’s an ADD world. Both fans and musicians become bored more quickly than was the case in my youth. Another reason is that record companies are not as likely to shepherd an artist through a sales or creative slump as they once were. Bands must arrive at a label fully-formed and produce immediately, which means that for bands not named U2 or REM, they must do their growing and experimenting (ahem) off-the-record, which also means fewer releases.

Number two, taking years between releases is the norm, not the exception, these days. This is especially true of established artists. To put things in perspective, consider that the Beatles dropped thirteen LPs in a little over six years. Kind of puts the three-albums-a-decade megastar aesthetic into perspective, doesn’t it?

Finally, I am old. After forty-some years of listening to pop music, it gets harder to find something that doesn’t sound derivative. Just as one generation heard diluted impressions of Elvis or Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley in everything that followed, I am likely to hear echoes of the Stooges or Nick Drake or the Velvet Underground in much of what has come since.

But harder doesn’t mean impossible.

There are fresh recombinations of elements that make for new and exciting music, and unique and original visions. And the inspired refining of existing formulas is happening every day. You’re just not likely to hear them on the radio (which for all intent and purposes is dead as an outlet for rock music).

Finally, I/we have changed. Fifty-somethings aren’t very likely to get together and talk about the new Strokes album, are they? Which sadly eliminates the biggest source of the music we enjoyed in our youth—our friends and word of mouth.

Whatever the reason, these are the post-1990 bands and artists I have collected the most releases from:

10
PJ Harvey

9
Pearl Jam

8
Beck
Bjork
The New Pornographers
Stereolab

7
Guided By Voices
Moby
Mogwai
Nine Inch Nails*
TV On the Radio

6
Foo Fighters
Goldfrapp
Mercury Rev
Ride
St. Etienne
Lisa Stansfield
The 3Ds
The Verve

5
Athlete
Blur
Built To Spill
Cat Power
The Chainsaw Kittens
Low
Luna
Massive Attack
Pavement*
Wilco
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
You Am I

* released debut album/EP in 1989

I Am a Music Magnet

I have more records than Guinness. More CDs than Citibank. And more cassettes than even a third world flea market could ever hope to unload.

I’m a radio station waiting to happen. My girlfriend has threatened—on more than one occasion—to make my embarrassment of musical riches public on Hoarders: Buried Alive.

This is only because Intervention is off the air.

How did this happen? How did a generally neat and organized person like myself end up with a sprawling, immovable mass of record albums, compact discs and cassettes? After weeks of careful and considered scientific investigation, I have come to this conclusion: It’s grandma’s fault.

Grandma was the silver-haired enabler who placed the gateway drug of a transistor radio into my innocent, eight-year-old hands one Christmas. Two summers earlier, it was through her well-intentioned, grandmotherly largesse that I received the first of my long-playing phonograph albums, the soundtrack to A Hard Day’s Night.

A deliberate pattern of exposure and indulgence had been set. It should be obvious that with adult influences like these, I didn’t stand a chance. I was at risk. It wasn’t long before I was displaying the behavior of a musiholic.

I knew the weekly Top Ten like my classmates knew their multiplication tables. I was in the world’s most hard-to-iron shirt (my mother’s words) the second it was out of the dryer because it resembled one George Harrison wore on the cover of Beatles VI.

I memorized song lyrics with a facile ease I could never locate when it came to committing Bible passages to memory for Sunday school. I organized primitive karaoke and air guitar sessions with fellow obsessives in the neighborhood, lip-syncing to Beatles’ albums as we played our "guitars".

This soon evolved to actual singing and the strumming of wooden planks, on which we had drawn tuning pegs, strings, pickups and volume knobs with magic marker.

In the parlance of the day, I was a scream. Little wonder my parents so rarely sought entertainment outside the home. And come to think of it, where’s my check from Rock Band?

Then there was the radio. The plastic Pandora’s Box that was to complete my undoing. It measured roughly seven inches by four, and if memory serves, was made by Crown.

It was in the slightly-garish style of early-Japanese electronics, with a cream-colored body, red accents and lots of fake gold trim. The click that sounded when I thumbed the volume dial was practically a prison door springing open.

WCFL and WLS were conduits for the electrical charge of Beatles’ harmonies, the fuzz-toned defiance of Rolling Stones’ riffs and the ache of Levi Stubbs’ vocals. I couldn't get enough. Unbeknownst to her, grandma had provided me with 24/7 access to my favorite drug.

Despite the rampant overstimulation of my tiny physiology, I could and did grow tired. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, In the Midnight Hour and Ticket to Ride were my usual lullabies. If not quite borne on the wings of angels, I drifted off to sleep to a honking horn section and James Jamerson’s bass kicking-off the latest Motown smash.

I also went through batteries like John Mayer does girlfriends.

There’s a line from a song which says “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.” And for better or worse, that is a perfect description of my formative years.

While I struggled with the complexities of math, science and grammar, I effortlessly came to understand the myriad of influences that shaped the music I love. If the definition of passion is what we devote ourselves to without thought of remuneration, then this was, and is, mine.

Best of all, I now understand I am not a hoarder. I'm an archivist.

Hear that, honey?