MY OBSESSIVELY-COLLECTED MUSIC LIBRARY |
It all started in 1979. I was sixteen, still
listening to classic/hard/progressive rock*, when my best friend
started bringing over lps from weird bands like
The Damned and The Sex Pistols. I guess I
wasn’t ready for it, because the only group
that won my favor was The Stranglers,
probably due to the fact that they had guitar
solos and the more complex arrangements I was
used to. Then The Vibrators started turning me on to the "attitude" and the two minute wonder of punk. By 1982, I was
bored with the old stuff and plunged into a full on conversion to the likes of |
Adam and the Ants
Buzzcocks
The Clash
The Jam
The Only Ones
Piranhas
Radio Birdman
The Ruts
Sex Pistols
Spizz
The Stranglers
Undertones
Vibrators
X-Ray Spex
XTC |
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devouring any release I could get my hands on,
including all the b-sides and rarities, usually
at exorbitant prices. I got all that could be had
by these bands in a few years time, but a couple
band catalogs took me nearly ten years to
complete. Example: The song Traffic Light Rock
by XTC, only available on a British 10"
vinyl compilation called Guillotine. It was around
the time I finished the collections that
everything starting coming out on CD collections.
Oh well, it was the journey, not the destination,
that was fun. By the way, I get frustrated using
the term punk. Most of the groups that were
signed in the late 70’s already had distinct
styles, adjusted them a bit to fit the
"punk" mold, and by 1980 were off in
completely individual musical directions. Two of
my favorite albums from this period, All Mod
Cons by The Jam, and Drums and Wires
by XTC, exemplify this perfectly. Not punk, yet
when compared to the greater world of popular
music, these bands were still definitely in a
group to themselves.
Then in 1984, when I was getting a little
restless and eager for something new, a college
classmate used the term Hardcore. Huh? Hardcore?
What’s that? So I dove into |
Adolescents
Agent Orange
Alley Cats
Black Flag
Channel Three
Circle Jerks
D.O.A.
D.R.I.
Germs
Husker Du
Kraut
Minor Threat
Minutemen
Saccharine Trust
Suicidal Tendencies
T.S.O.L.
Youth Brigade |
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which was
exhilarating but didn't stick with
me as much as the old British bands. A few years of doldrums followed,
but fortunately I had missed some key groups with big catalogs to devour and
I picked up on
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The Damned
Oingo Boingo
Talking Heads
Elvis Costello
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with The Damned ultimately proving to be one of my all time
favorites (and most difficult to collect). Also, Costello
made for a very intense period of
musical adoration. I was just high on
the stuff. It also taught me a lesson in keeping
an open mind. For reasons unknown I didn’t
pay attention to Costello back in the early 80's, so I
figured there must be a lot of other great bands
out there I hadn’t tried. Beginning with
Stiff Records alumni, moving on to other bands I
had missed, and finally opening up to the
"New Wave" I had previously dismissed,
I took a look backwards in 1989 and found |
That was when the CD format was starting to
become widespread, so it was a good time to raid
the vinyl bargain bins because all the shops
started blowing out LPs. I got a lot of great
music on the cheap; stuff I wouldn’t have
chanced as an expensive CD. I did the rarities
collecting by mail order bit, too, to get all the
tracks not available in the local shops, and by
1993 had complete catalogs of all the groups I
cared about. I decided then that I didn’t
want to become a slave to the turntable and the
dying medium of vinyl (even though I consider it
a superior sound) and made definitive listening
cassettes of the lot, and Hi-Fi VHS archival
tapes of all the stuff I didn’t have
evidence was easily obtainable on CD (a total of
about 150 cassettes and 20 6 hour Hi-Fi VHS
tapes). Then, sold the lot of the vinyl, which
was painless enough. By 1993 I was thinking maybe
the kind of music I like is going to be relegated
to the past and I’m not going to like
anything new. Then I heard people talking about
"alternative" and I wondered what
"alternative" was and spend the next
four years with the likes of |
Amps
Belly
Blur
Frank Black
Breeders
Bush
Cracker
Cranberries
Elastica
Everclear
Face to Face
Failure
Foo Fighters
Fountains of
Wayne
Goo Goo Dolls
Juliana
Hatfield
Johnny
Bravo
Letters To
Cleo
The Lemonheads
Limblifter
Nada Surf
Nine Inch Nails
Nirvana
No Doubt
Orbit
Pixies
Posies
Possum Dixon
Radiohead
Reacharound
Rust
Sleeper
Smoking Popes
Soul Asylum
Stone Temple
Pilots
Sugar
Sundays
Throwing Muses
Mike Watt
Weezer
Paul Weller |
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and another round of musical intoxication bliss.
Then I took a break like I do sometimes (like
when I'm broke) and started up again the summer
of '98. The next few years intake included more of that "post-alternative" sound, and my introduction to modern power pop. Blinker the Star and Splender in particular being huge stand-outs:
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Age of Electric
Apples in Stereo
Bad Religion
Frank Black & the Catholics
Blake Babies
Blinker the Star
Cardigans
Tanya Donelley
Dovetail Joint
Dynamite Hack
Eve 6
Jason Falkner
Filter
Guster
Kristen Hersh
Idlewild
Lit
Live
Marshall Artist
Marvelous 3
Neve
New Pornographers
Offspring
Oleander
Owsley
Pocket Size
Semisonic
Shooter
Silverchair
Sloan
Splender
Sponge
SR71
Joe Strummer & the Mescaleros
Super Deluxe
Supergrass
Sweet 75
Talk Show
Trinket
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Spring 2003: I finally finished digitizing all my VHS copies of
archived vinyl; about 400 CDs. Ten years in the making,
from archiving in 1993 to finishing digitizing in 2003.
Halle-frickin-lujah! And with the CD era of music I wasn't as much of a completist
on the rare b-sides and such. If I could find them new or local at a fair price, I'd buy them,
but no more overpriced mail order collectible stuff this time. Fortunately, I was
able to pick up all that remaining out-of-print esoterica for all these newer bands free, with Napster.
Those are the type of songs I feel justified in downloading, when at that point the collectors are making money and not the bands.
Also around this time, two music friends, Alex Cahill and Joe Field, started making some great recommendations.
One group leads you to the next, like a "family tree" of bands, which is always fun.
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A Camp
Burning Airlines
The Chords
The Doves
Engine Down
The Fire Theft
The Grays
Hey Mercedes
Cliff Hillis
The Hot Snakes
Houston
Jawbox
Jawbreaker
The Life and Times
The Merrymakers
On
Righteous Boy
Rival Schools
Schatzi
The Shazam
Some Girls
Spoon
Sunny Day Real Estate
Superdrag
Year of the Rabbit
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2005/2006: I discovered 90's-00's neo-prog rock, plus other surprises in there, too,
ranging from emo, techno, to what I call "neo-dramatic", and good old noise rock.
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Autolux
Bloc Party
Brain Surgeons
Dredg
Enon
Jets to Brazil
Loud Family
Lusk
Maximo Park
Metric
Neil Morse
Porcupine Tree
Replicants
Sam Roberts
Rocket From the Crypt
Saves the Day
Sci-Fi Lovestory
Shiner
Spock's Beard
Teenage Fanclub
Transatlantic
Vines
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2007/2008: I busted a huge move. I let go of my old meticulously maintained
wave file archive (which grew over 400gb) and converted it all to 320kps (1/4 compression)
MP3s with the reliable LAME encoder, hand named and tagged every file, applied
album art, and built my itunes library of 10,000 songs (that's selective songs, not blanket covereage for every band).
True, it could have all been downloaded with tags and art (legal or
otherwise), but this is the same collection I have been mothering since vinyl and old CDs. I've done a lot of normalizing of levels
and other geek subtlties over the years, so it was a labor of love. I still have my custom burned 1998-2008 CD collection,
but it is relegated to playing on an "old fashioned" CD player. How time flies.
I have also burned the complete itunes MP3 collection as CD data disks (thematically in the autobiographical order, of course)
on about 130 disks, which are great for long play in the car. I have yet to buy an ipod. Anyhow, the standout discoveries this time are the
genre-chamelion group Oranger, and the impossible to classify Minus the Bear.
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Jane Air
Ken Andrews
Army of Anyone
Jon Auer
Blackfield
Braid
Jon Brion
Channels
Cloudsmen
Creeper Lagoon
Eyes Adrift
50 Foot Wave
Kay Hanley
Jellyfish
Joy Circuit
Lost Dogs
Minus the Bear
Oranger
Phantom Planet
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If there are any groups
I’ve not mentioned that would most likely
appeal to a fan of all the above, feel free to
e-mail me c/o jeff@fatherandsontoon.com
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