Monday, June 29, 2009
Autobiographical??!
I had a (n enforced!) afternoon off work today. Ah...I'll do some tidying up, maybe read a little, then pop to the shops and get dinner ready for when Mrs Japanther comes back from work, I thought.
Halfway through the afternoon I thought, I know, I'll just re-organise my entire record collection quickly, i've been meaning to do that for ages.....cue, two hours later with me splayed out on the floor with stacks of unsorted vinyl around me. It's now more of a mess than when I started as I've just shoved it all back hastily in order to get dinner ready in time (still not done it yet!).
As we can't ask these kind of things in the EOTWQ, I'll ask here. How does it go in your place? Alphabetical? Genre? Chronological?Most played?Shove the embarrassing ones in the corner?
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Alphabetical for CDs, split into artist/band, compilations and classical but with some oddities. For example, the reggae covers of Bob Dylan are filed with Dylan rather than with compilations.
DVDs are divided in to music/other with no further attempt at order.
DVDs copied from my old VHS collection are split into feature film/documentary and then alphabetically by title.
Vinyl is in a different room and in total chaos. The covers are so much easier to flick through in vinyl so it doesn't matter.
Books are closer to the Dewey system, being by subject but there are two sets of shelves in the back room reserved for "unread". They move up to the bedroom when I read them.
What do you mean, embarrassing?
Indecisive and contrary as I am, I use a structuring system similar to Borges' chinese encyclopaedia of animals..
from top row to bottom:
-boxed sets and duplicates of albums made redundant by boxed sets
-House/Dance music and acid jazz. LTJ Bukem compilations.
-Verve and Columbia releases, except Bill Evans and Miles Davis
-Jazz albums from obscure labels not otherwise mentioned
-anything by Miles Davis (except boxed sets)
-Impulse, Atlantic and ECM releases (lots of nice bright colours!)
-Black and white labels- Blue Note, Riverside and OJC, plus Cannonball Adderley
-African, Cuban, and eastern European music. Kip Hanrahan albums and a Fania sampler by Gilles Peterson.
-Bill Evans and 'Spill compilations
-Trip hop, Breakbeat, Compost releases, Classical music
-Ninja Tunes, Hip hop
-Antipodean indie, The Smiths, and all other albums belonging in the bottom row.
That's quite easy with only about 600 cds, not sure how I'd deal with some of the 'Spillers mega-collections though..
I don't bother to categorise my CDs as the iPod does that for me. Nor DVDs, since I don't have that many.
I have a large collection of films taped off the telly, which my son helped me to catalogue about 10 years ago. Each tape has 2-3 films and is numbered; there's an alphabetical list of films that tells me which number tape each film is on. I probably haven't watched any of the tapes since the cataloguing was done, and next time I move house I expect they'll go in the bin.
Books WILL be alphabetical for fiction and Dewey for non-fiction when I get my new bookshelves...which I was hoping to do this fortnight while I'm on holiday but my new (and roomier) car hasn't appeared yet, so I haven't been able to go to IKEA to get them. At the moment the books are sort of in order, but they're in lots of different bookshelves which are all over the place.
Blimey! I had to do a double-take then to be sure I hadn't already commented ... it turned out to be Mnemonic up there!
My version:
Alphabetical for CDs, split into artist/band, compilations and covermounts but with some oddities. For example, the cover CD of New Boots And Panties is filed with Dury rather than with compilations.
DVDs are divided in to music/other with no further attempt at order. Erm, yup: check!
My old VHS collection is split into feature film / music /(invariably sports) documentary and then alphabetically by title.
I haven't copied any to DVD yet, so the old taped-off-the-telly stuff (Anyone remember Centrepoint?) still has the remnants of a stickered number index.
Vinyl was last moved around this room by DarceysMam in a cleaning frenzy, and is in total chaos. The relatively small quantity is easier to flick through in vinyl, but it still bugs the hell out of me, and I can now feel a procrastination alphabetising project coming on!
Books are by author (fiction) or subject (non-fiction) but there is a cupboard by my bed reserved for "unread". They move downstairs from the bedroom when (actually "if I ever") read them.
Hmmm.
Oh, and tfd? IKEA?? Never again. We get every piece either made to order - Support your local craftspeople! - or from Scartop.
Oh, and the shelved-from-floor-to-ceiling area reserved for CDs is now overflowing. I may have to resurrect the old (yes, IKEA) revolving tower for the next 400 or so. It is currently holding a combination of CD singles, DarceysMam's old (embarrassing: you got me!) collection, and blank CD-Rs.
Sorry, DsD, but I have so many books that it's got to be cheap, or I can't do it.
Following DsD's comment, I am going to split the home recorded DVD documentaries into music/other.
Three major categories: sitting room (mostly jazz, old regulars and new records), box under the bed (newish records that don't make the cut to favourites, old records that I felt like listening to again, more pop/rock than jazz) and everything else in boxes in the loft. We live in a very small house, and for some reason Mrs Abahachi insists on having pictures on the sitting room walls rather than shelves for books, cds and dvds.
Stuff under the bed and in the loft has no organising system whatsoever. Stuff in the sitting room is ordered according to something resembling the nilpferd/Borges system. Shelf 1: Miles, Mingus, Shorter, Coltrane, miscellaneous bebop and hard bop, Ellington, vocal jazz, Christmas jazz and Mrs Abahachi's bloody Best Christmas Album in the World Ever!!!; Shelf 2: free jazz and avant garde, assorted European stuff, jazz guitar, electronica, miscellaneous pop; Shelf 3: jazz piano, British jazz, Bob Dylan; Shelf 4: classical, Mrs Abahachi's records.
As for the dvds, they take up a single shelf and form a spectrum from 'mine' to 'hers'; starting with the SF (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Ultraviolet) and the arty foreign films, moving into the foreign films we both like, then mainstream films and box sets that we can generally agree on, and heading off into the territory of Bridget Jones' Diary and Love Actually.
I tried to do it by genre, with similar genres running into one another...but kept getting stumped!
- where the hell do The Velvet Underground fit in to the rest of my collection?
- Squarepusher - in with the harsher Digital Hardcore stuff or alongside Add N To X??
- Nirvana next to Queens Of The Stone Age??Hmm...it just doesn't quite fit
- Can Thriller really go next to Jean Michel Jarre just by virtue of coming out around the same time??
AGGGHHHHHH!!
Although they are colour coded, so maybe I don't need to.
Forgot to mention there is a special section for Swedish language films. I watch them to keep my Swedish fluent.
We don't own enough DVDs to catalog, there are maybe 15 of them.. that's the virtue of having a cheap arthouse rental service just down the road.. Books are arranged according to weight and size so that the shelves don't fall down, we have those cantilevered *ahem* IKEA ones and I'm a bit suspicious about the load bearing capability of our outside wall..
And Mnemonic, I hope you realise just how hard I'm trying not to post a double entendre or some smutty innuendo regarding your reasons for watching swedish films..
@Mnemonic - you can speak Swedish?! Do you have Swedish roots?
Hmmm....alphabetical seems much easier, but I can't bring myself to do it. I usually choose what I listen to by feeling and I don't wake up thinking "you know, I really feel like listening to something beginning with N today"!!
No, I once had a Swedish husband and I studied at Stockholm University for a while (the husband came first and I had to find something to do in Stockholm). I haven't spoken to him for twenty years but I'm still really good friends with some of the family and we go on holiday together, stay in each other's houses etc. Before my much-loved cat disappeared, I spoke to her in Swedish too, just to stay in practice. Something about the sound (lots of sibilants?) seems to appeal to cats.
as a frequent visitor to Sweden (3 times a year for Mrs J's business) I'd definitely say that the language does have a beautiful rounded sound to it, it looks easy to read but seems impossible to pronounce (for me anyway!)
"..the husband came first then I had to find something to do in Stockholm.."
I hope nilpferd's got his SIRS [smutty innuendo resistance shields - Tech Ed.] set to maximum!!
I'm on top of it, DD..
(Changes subject rapidly as first leak appears in SIRS)
I also like the sound of Swedish, the Swedish wife of a good friend of ours for whom we used to work conducted her business calls in the same office and I found through knowing German I could understand about a third of it if I didn't listen too hard, a bit like Dutch. Can't speak it though.
Happy to keep your smutty minds entertained! All Scandinavians know that the Swedes are clean-living prudes and go to Denmark for REAL smut.
Nilpferd, I understand quite a lot of German for the same reason, although I can't speak it.
Thanks, Mnem. The Poles, on the other hand, get offended by Germans nude sunbathing on the beaches just across the now non-existent border- just as well they've got a sea to separate them from those depraved Danes.. Japanther, you could always order the albums according to how many tracks they contain which have made an A- or B- list; once this part of your collection is sorted, you'll only need to analyse it carefully to disern the secret pattern, whose completion will guarantee you A-list picks for the coming 12 years.
@nilpferd - Great plan! it's almost too easy...
Hmm ...
Vinyl is alphabetical, though I gave lots of them away so only have 100 or so now, and nothing wired up to play them on. There are a few '45s in the wardrobe.
CDs are split into classical and non-classical and then alphabetical.
DVDs - only have a few and they're shoved in a drawer. Most of them were free with The Grauniad. Sprog's DVDs are sometimes in topic order but usually not.
Cassettes - nearly all bootlegs so hard to keep them in order, e.g. one might have Roy Harper on one side and Metallica on the other, so can't even categorise them really. Most of them are in an old music chest thingy with drawers in, next to the bed. The rest are in my mum's old chest of drawers which lives in the sitting room and is also full of sprog's stuff and useful things like string.
Books - well, you've seen them in an earlier post. Still haven't got around to photographing the ones that make me look more intelligent, though. They're alphabetical but also by topic.
Nothing Swedish but my brother in law lives in Denmark and we have a Danish dictionary.
Somehow I don't think this will help you at all!!
Oddly enough I have hardly any Swedish in my music, video and books collections so that makes it all fairly easy. I started recording music related programmes to VHS back in the '70's, in the mid '80's I realised the value of cataloguing them on my Mac so each box was given a number and a brief description; I simultaneously realised that it would also work for boxes of slides of which I had many; now the VHS number over 600 and the boxes of slides are in the thousands so it was a smart way to go. With both systems I included names, places and specific keywords so searching is simplicity itself, the only potential problem is that the software I used, Macworks, has long been discontinued so I keep one very old Mac just for that purpose and I keep threatening to see if I can transfer it all to a modern database. It's been invaluable.
I used to be a woodworker in a different lifetime so making storage cabinets has always come easily plus I have a fairly well equipped woodshop. Over the years I built several cabinets for vinyl and as mentioned here recently I consolidated them all into one in the living room. The albums are stacked 5 levels high and 9 feet long, alphabetical female vocalists followed by male vocalists are on the top, below them for one and a third levels are alphabetical jazz, the remaining 6ft is jazz piano, blues and jazz box sets, including an almost complete set of the excellent Time/Life series each devoted to a single artist. Each level has dividers every 6" so I use those for artists I have lots of, they get their own slots, ie, Ella, Sarah, Nina Billie, Miles, Basie, Duke etc.
Fourth layer down is alphabetical reggae with a special section just for BMW, the last 2 ft is rock 'n roll which spills into another 2ft at the bottom, the balance of the bottom is classical, again all alphabetised. 45 7" singles have their own cabinet on the top.
CD's are on the opposite wall and similarly organised except they're not alphabetised, they're in a cabinet that's 6ft wide and 7 shelves high, each section is labelled for either style or country; there's female vocalists again, lots of reggae, jazz, classical, choral, tango, accordian plus there are many sections for India, Brazil, France, Spain, Africa etc and a lot of miscellaneous. Music DVD's are also in there.
Books of which there's lots are not organised but are housed on 12- 6ft shelves in the computer room, they're loosely stacked by subject and I know approx where everything is. I built an 8ft high bookshelf for the other living room just for all those books that I wanted to have at hand, references and all those that I hoped one day to read.
Something that I've done with all of these collections is to install numerous goose-necked lamps above them, it makes it so much easier.
We're lucky to have yet another unused room, it's under the slates at the top of the stairs, everything that doesn't fit down here is in boxes up there, dozens of trays of slides, books, vinyl and more VHS.
There's an issue here that most of you probably don't have to face, my wife is 20 odd years younger than me and I may not be around for much longer, almost all of the above is 'mine', ie I've collected it, she uses it all but is not as obsessively interested as I am, so so what happens when I pop my clogs? Lets assume that at some point she'll want to move so how do you deal with all of the above? All of it's saleable but how do you deal with it living in a rural area? It's something I think about quite a lot.
Sorry to be so long winded as usual.
A relevent ps:
There was this middle aged couple, he was a vinyl collector, he met a sweet young thing and they eloped to the south of France leaving the missus to look after the kids et al. His money ran out so he wired her saying 'I need some cash, could you sell the record collection and wire me the proceeds?' She went around to the local record shop and asked 'Do you buy records, I have some to sell?' it was arranged that he'd come by the next day to see them. When he arrived she was doing the dishes so she showed him the record collection and said 'I'll be just a few minutes'. He started poring through the albums and couldn't believe his eyes, everything was pristine and every rare record in the world was there, he drooled. She came back and said 'What do you think?' he stuttered and spluttered so she asked him 'How would ten quid be?' and so the deal was done and she wired her husband the cash as requested.
Was this in Hi-Fidelity?
@ goneforeign - to avoid your wife becoming a victim of the apocryphal dealer shysters, and with apologies for so casually accepting the prospect of your eventual passing, my tuppen'th:
Get the whole lot valued in saleable lumps NOW, whilst you are still compos mentis. Once you and your wife have been through those results together, agree and put instructions in your will about which batches (after she has extracted all the stuff she's keeping) are for specialist auction, which are for dealer sale, which are for garage sale, and - importantly in my view - which are for donating to which collections, public bodies, hospital radio stations, etc. You can even include clauses about non-dispersal for so many years after your/her death.
My will also has a clause about what has to be done by my executors in the event of the joint passing of Julie & I.
If a phrase including the words "granny" and "suck eggs" has just gone through your mind, please don't be offended!
Even from afar, I think all of us on The 'Spill are beginning to realise what a massive treasure your collections constitute. Anyone would hate to see that get broken up and profiteered on by the cash-crazy vultures.
Alphabetical by artist, with the exception that all multi artist compilations are kept separately and my classical and jazz CDs are also separated from the rock, blues, soul, reggae and folk stuff.
SYSTEM????????
ORGANIZED??????
HA ha ha ha ha HA ha HA ha Ha
13" by 13" box shelves knocked together lower down hold heavier books and records..
the towers that go up hold 10", singles 10" clasical 78s, box sets and then random shelves hold cds. old farm boxes hold rare or unreleased tapes.
Folks farm still stores the rest and my mate Jons 3 crates of vinyl.
ORDER: kinda hip hop.. 4Ad .. cover mount.. really my favorite section.. oh that'll do section... distracted put it on the turntable section.. give up trying section.................
simple
I have A4 ring folders with cdrs for me to listen to and take notes on.
AND a shelf with almost every RR compilation I made during it's first year, most with cover designs!
Ms sane says its piles of random stuff and she can't find anything...
I've pointed out the African/Ska/Shake your arse section and she is now happy.
It's as organized as my mind. HELP.
@Goneforeign
many years from now when you do pass away.. I'll pop over and sort yours out for you, wont do it now obviously.. you seem to be muddling through.
Mine was in glorious non-order for years but it reached the point where I was buying stuff again because I couldn't find the first copy so I bought all these fancy shelves from IKEA and divider cards from Heal's and went alphabetical. Then of course, I bought a new computer and wifi and now the whole lot is catalogued in iTunes.
Mine is broadly alphabetical by artist surname/band name and most have been stored on the same Ikea (AAAGGGHHH) Robin units for a decade. When I first got them I only had 50 or so albums. Therefore alphabetising was easy. Now they are both full and, when we moved, I had to alphabetise up to maximum load (midway through 'R') and then shift to the new Ikea (AAAAGGHHH, again, but who am I kidding, we needed shelves, fast and cheap, plus they look lovely...) bookshelves in the living room.
Having filled up two more shelves I then approached the pile of 20-30 loose cds that are always lying around in the 'still active' piles (generally around the hi-fi, computer and car). Not knowing what to do with them, I began a sort of 'classy dinner party music' shelf in the living room. It is in plain sight for all guests and is laughingly intended to make us look quite the worldly cultured sorts. It almost certainly fails.
All CD singles are in a chest doubling as a bedside table in Lola's room, vinyl is bunged at the top of the bookshelves out of breaking range (it isn't much stuff anyway) and other various 'novelties' are compiled in a wallet beneath the larger shelves.
Books are more broadly Dewey, but we have some Nilpferdesque weight concerns too. Dvds go wherever they fit.
I have an Abba best of, but that's the best I can do for Swedish. Oh and The Knife, are they Swedes?
@Abahachi - 'Christmas Jazz'? You have enough to deserve a section? Maximum repsect.
Sheer chaos.
Most of my CDs are still in boxes from the last time I moved, but they were never really categorised even before that.
Most of my vinyl is dance music, so it's vaguely separated out into sub-genres, but I take them out to DJ with so often that they never retain any real sort of order. Because of that they tend to get put back in the oder that I've taken them out and so have taken on some sort of sense, known only to me, of the type of event I'm likely to play them at: new stuff, laid-back Sunday afternoon barbecue stuff, big arms-in-the-air classics etc. All my trusty favourites for all occasions are usually in my record bag.
Quite apart from the fact that I'm a disorganised scatterbrain, I quite like the fact that they're not too rigidly catalogued, as it means I'm always hitting upon something that I wasn't looking for and giving it another airing.
I suppose I should have mentioned books and DVDs too.
Books are everywhere, I have even more books than I have CDs.
There is no system though really.
I try and keep authors together but there isn't any kind of organisation along alphabetical lines. More like books and writers I enjoy most being on the more accessible shelves.
I do keep my history, wine and food books separate from the fiction though, and I try and keep the non fiction apart from the fiction, but not always successfully.
DVDs are sort of vaguely rationally organised; historical subjects, rom-coms, other comedies, serious films (a very subjective classification), SF and fantasy, superhero films, anime, animated features, box sets, TV series, musicals, music DVDs etc.
One day I will catalogue everything and maybe copy all my CDs to a massive hard drive.
Colour in my case. I use the spectrum starting with red and using the main colour tones of the CD case, class them all in their various colour groups - from red going through orange and right through to violet.
Beat THAT, Rob!!!!!!!
And I don't think anyone's done it yet, but re: Blimpy's 'spill window slogan:
Boom! Boom! Lagga Lagga Lagga Boom!
The vinyl is in the lounge. The albums are sorted into a "recent" section on one self, then another section (one shelf below) where old favourites are sorted by genre & association.
There is a smattering of 7"s that are the "awesome to throw on for 3 minutes" ones. This shelf is 2 shelves above the last mentioned shelf.
The rest of the vinyl is upstairs in the study.
There's a "recent" 100 or so CDs squeezed in above the 12"s & LPs. These shouldn't really be here, because they are ugly, and should be shunned in a cave.
The other 1000 cds are in a drawer in the hall, and in a drawer upstairs. They are hidden from plain view because they are ugly and should be shunned in a cave.
Also upstairs, in the study, are books books and dvds. The dvds are unsorted. The books are divided music/other and are then sorted by size.
The vhs tapes are in the loft. Shamefully I have no current way to play vhs tapes. I also have no CD player in the house anymore (apart from the ones built into the laptops)
I keep the bodies under the courtyard slabs.
CDs live in the study (ie 2nd bedroom, fat chance) in two mahoosive bookcases, alphebetised and with various artists at the end. Vinyl lps are on shelves under the stairs (from Ikea), 7" singles in shoe boxes under the (Ikea) coffee table in the alcove.
DVDs on (Ikea) shelves on the opposite side of the room. One case is taken up by boxsets (Buffy, Star Trek TNG, Blake's 7, Ultraviolet, Dr Who, etc), the other is mainly film or tv comedy.
Books live in my library, which is a summer house in the garden, a present from Jon (mainly because he thinks the books breed and he wants to be able to see floorspace in the house). Fiction was seperated into genre (kids', Victorian, Celtic) but it got too unwieldy, so I spent a blissful day alphebetising the crap out of them, and now Judy Blume sits next to Iain Banks and has to lump it. Non-fic (mainly feminist history or folklore) is seperate and biogs go on top. Separate shelf for comics and TPBs. I bloody love my library.
I loev the way we are all individually geeky about categorising stuff!
I am always rather pleased that in my CD collection, the Pet Shop Boys are rubbing up next to Tom Petty.
Oooh, now there's a good game, Carole ...
Hmm. Been on a trip to my folks (saw the Gormleys on Crosby beach) whose books are A-Z in various rooms around the house... makes my head hurt. Mine are UNREAD on one set of shelves, deposited randomly on any other shelves when READ. Which probably accounts for why I still can't find Echoes of Celandine - what did you make of it TracyK?
Vinyl is 'filed' in plastic crates in the cellar. If someone wants to go halves with me on one of those USB record players (you can have first bash) just say the word. I miss those songs.
Mnemonic, I'm impressed. The S and K stuff foxes me in Swedish, just can't get there at all. Off to Gothenburg in a couple of weeks for annual baking on a rock. Can hardly bear the wait. So sorry Zissou hasn't put in an appearance.
(I am typing this outside in a hammock in the dark, screen covered in moths of all descriptions. Lovely!)
An early pace-setter in the unimpressed neighbour stakes:
Andrew WK / Antony And The Johnsons.
And I can't imagine either Tim Simenon or Will Oldham will be too chuffed having Bon Jovi for a common neighbour.
[*sound of an off-stage scuffle*]
Sorry, but my conscience has just told me I really must do some work.
MUST
I don't have records or Cds anymore - everything was put on my compooooter and is on my iPod and GOT SOLD to people who like to sit around all afternoon farting around getting all nostalgic. You have my sympathy Japanther.
itunes just puts all the choons into whatever order you want them.
Magic.
@cauli - buy a (non usb) record player!!! you won't regret it!!!
Cauli: Echo'd, they're mostly very cheap with awful cartridges, they'll ruin your records. Connect a decent 'normal' TT through the 'line in', you may have to use some software but there's plenty that's good and also free. Try Audacity.
There's another option that no one ever mentions, record the cuts you want directly from spotty or some similar.
5000+ vinyl singles: alphabetically in the cellar; with a couple of handy cases sorted out for my infamous "DJ-sets"....
3000+ vinyl albums: alphabetically per genre, where genre is purely my own definition
6000+ cd's: all over the house, no system at all, but I can find every cd I own within 2 minutes
80 vinyl singles (changing regularly) are in my Seeburg jukebox, which plays 4 songs for 25 cents...
Books: sorted by genre, in book cases all over the house, some special display cases for my antique Swiss travel guides (Baedeker's & Meyersche, with handcoloured panorama drawings, from the 1890's)
@Snadfrod re Christmas Jazz; Mrs Abahachi is a great lover of Christmas, hence the collection of Forty More Fabulous Xmas Novelty Hits from the 70s cds, annual White Christmas ritual and so forth; having Christmas jazz allows me to put on some half decent music while cooking the dinner without being accused of Scrooge-like tendencies (which would be an entirely fair accusation, but might sour the mood...)
@AliMunday: a fun thing you might do with your double-sided cassettes is a sort of dominoes - Roy Harper/Metallica - Metallica/Pink Floyd - Pink Floyd/Beach Boys and so forth. And if you don't have enough duplicates of artists, you can play connections: Roy Harper/Metallica - Megadeath/Abba - Cardigans/Pink Floyd etc.
Burt Bacharach next to Back To The Planet?Sandy Denny next to Depeche Mode? Duran Duran next to Dylan next to Easyworld? Fairport next to Faith No More? Senseless Things to the Shangri-Las?
Cauli, I've not finished Echoes of Celandine, as I don't usually like books to overlap and I'm bogged down in nthe middle of Reay Tannahill's History of Sex, I'll have to come back to it!
Donds to the Senseless Things - one of my first ever gigs!
And their Jamie Hewlett covers!
Most unlikely neighbours ever found on the shelves of a record store: Dinosaur jr. / Dion, Celine
If any wandering visitor needed convincing that we are a hopeless bunch of musical trainspotting compulsive obsessives - this thread ought to do it.
1. Vinyl - Nameless shed 3,000 miles away being eaten by mice.
2. Cd's - Was kind of alphanumeric 2 or 3 years ago, but it's a little dangerous to go too close because of the Everest pile of new & recently played stuff tottering on top.
3. Cassettes - little magnetic particles falling off & sucked into the AC. We are breathing the old bootlegs & mixtapes - very few of which have any kind of label or are in the right box.
4. External drive - Organized by i-Tunes. Burn the tracks that I likey, or if a cd is worthy, the whole thing (AOTW proves this is pretty rare). Same for dropbox, 'Spill & other blogosphere stuff.
5. Shoephone - 8gig of current & old faves for the car & to annoy/entertain family at mealtimes (thanks to the portable Bose player). Mrs SG thinks this means that 2&3 can be contributed to the next neighbourhood yard sale.
Well you did ask.
Some of this reminds me of a VERY obsessive reggae friend back in the 80's. His living room had C90's stacked on EVERY available horizontal surface, rising like industrial chimneys almost to the ceiling. He knew what went on which pile and pulling one out with 3-4ft of cases above it was like brain surgery. Something I said to him on many occasions was "Don't you realise we're sitting on the San Andreas fault?"
Something about GF's post reminded me of an aquaintacen in New York, living in a tiny, TINY apartment in Greenwich Village. He's a Black Mountain poet, a founder member of the Knitting Factory and very involved with NY jazz scene for the last 60 years. Every room was 2 feet smaller across than it should be, because all walls were covered in records, floor to ceiling. Thousands of 'em. You had to squeeze sideways down the corridor to the bathroom. His wife was tolerant, but not ecstatic. His whole life was in those walls.
Which in turn reminds me of a news item in 1980's Long Beach. The rent was due, the tenant didn't answer the door so the landlord opened it and went in, at least he tried to go in. The entire 2 bedroom apartment was filled with broken concrete, wall to wall, floor to ceiling with exception of 15-18" 'tunnels' going from the front door and into every room. The tenant had worked in building demolition and had brought home 'his work' every night! There was no follow up story, no explanation and he was never found. And they think we're weird!
Somehow, this is the one aspect of High Fidelity I've managed to avoid. Kind of. I tend to categorise things by band, or rather personnel (so, for a random example, Sonic Youth is in a pile with whatever solo records, then offshoots such as Free Kitten, which are then beside Pussy Galore, Boss Hog and Royal Trux). Then there are other categorisations based on trivia (for example, when I saw Royal Trux live, David Pajo was playing with them, which means Aerial M, Slint and The For Carnation are also in that pile, as are Gastr Del Sol and Jim O'Rourke for his stint as a member of Sonic Youth). It's one of those systems that is but isn't random, but, like everyone her, I'm sure, I know exactly where everything is, and could tell you where everything is without leaving my chair. It's the same with DVDs for me, it makes complete (and most) sense for me to have 'Gods And Monsters' beside 'Frankenstein'.
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