On the Fourteenth Day of 2024: OCD Record Collector

First of all, I needed to incorporate about twenty titles into the collection from the records I acquired from my big brothers who find themselves without turntables. Next, I had to reorder the collection to be in proper alphabetical order. If you look closely at the photo above, you might be able to see that my Flaming Lips boxsets are in the first, topmost storage box on the left, where the A records should go. That cannot stand. An easy fix would be to simply trade places, to swap the browser box on the right with the F letter box on the left. Problem solved. But then we have a new problem, a symmetry problem. That will not do, either. And since this is the album storage vibe I have chosen, that of placing records inside of individual boxes as opposed to long shelves, there was only one solution. Because these boxes full of albums are super heavy, and because the boxes on the bottom have wheels and cannot be moved, I had to take all of the records completely out of the first four or five boxes and move them into their new homes. I was also able to incorporate two new boxes, not pictured, which I placed on either side of this existing set up, so the A and B records went to the far left and the WXYZ’s to the far right, and that created a little bit of space for the collection to grow over the next year or so. It was 17 degrees yesterday and the two or three inches of snow had turned to ice. There was no driving anywhere. There was hardly any walking anywhere. I was home alone, so I spent a number of hours putting my record collection together and listening to music.

New developments:

• Pablo Cruise is out. Terrible music.
• Boz Scags is out. Badly scuffed up record. No Lido Shuffle for me.
• The Little River Band, Greatest Hits, is out. “Reminiscing” is a great song. The rest of it floats none of my boats.
• AC/DC, Fly On The Wall and For Those About To Rock–out. After Back in Black I stopped listening to AC/DC and I never went back. These used copies of these records hold absolutely no magic for me.
• Redundant copies of Fleetwood Mac, Rumors and the Tango record–out.
• Van Morrison’s Moondance–pretty significantly scuffed up–out.
• Airborne Toxic Event–why do I have this record? I have no idea.
• Finally, Billie Eilish, When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go. Now, here’s a record that I really like, one that I have admired for a long time, but never purchased. I got a used copy of this record on beautiful green vinyl, a copy with nary a scratch or a mark visibly on the vinyl, but that nevertheless sounds like poo. It’s crackly and poppy, scratchy, and it skips in track two in the same spot each time. The noise artifacts are just too distracting. And I paid $20, that’s right, $20, for a used copy of this record. It’s going back. If I can’t find a clean pressing, this record will be worth having on CD. Such a weird, nutty album. And I find Finneas and Billie to be absolutely adorable and extremely talented young people.

My friend Stephen, who owns my new favorite neighborhood record store, Daily Records, with his partner Emily, told me once that when he was young he used to spend hours just looking at the spines of his CD collection on their shelves. I admit that, even at 59, this is something I still do, with my CD collection downstairs and this vinyl collection in my writing room. Maybe not hours, but I will, from time to time, find myself just staring at them, as if they were a great painting or something, a great work of art. They are that, I think, and much more. My record collection has more power in my imagination and in my memory than any other material possession. Music has marked every moment of my life.

If you are wondering, and you are not offended by a Michael Jarmer Writer Guy product endorsement, the boxes above are manufactured by an American company called Simple Wood Goods. I love these boxes. They’re expensive, as boxes go, but I dig them and I love these acrylic, blue transparent dust doors.

The rest of my day on the 14th was spent in the studio, revising and recording and doing rough mixes of some new songs for the Project MA album, due out sometime this spring. Trust me, I will keep you posted. And my family got home safe and sound around midnight last night from the airport after a trip to Oakland, California. Thankfully, a friend with a four wheel drive truck picked them up and drove them home to me!