Dear Blue Note, Sony, and EMI

After many years of annoyance, today I have finally decided to stop buying your CDs. This decision didn’t come lightly and I can assure you that I thought long and hard about it, but the decision is final. I will neither buy, promote nor talk about your CD releases anymore.

Let me explain.

I am a music collector. In the past 20 years, I have bought thousands of CDs. In fact, now that I reorganized my entire collection, sold some items and got rid of some doubles, my collection spans roughly 38 meters of CDs (yes, I’m too lazy to count them). Each and every one is legal and was paid for, more often than not also at a considerable price. And I’m not even going to mention the positively large LP collection and the thousands of digital files I was stupid enough to purchase from you. If we lined those up, we could probably double the meters. Continue Reading →

The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia

God, I don’t know how often I hit the various online shops to check for prices … until I managed to snatch up a copy for 60 Euro on Amazon.fr. In December of 2004, Christmas came two weeks early to this household when “Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia (1933-1944)”, a ten-disc collection the size of a 78 album sleeve, arrived here in pristine-perfect mint condition.

Before I unpacked this stunning box, I opened one of the better wines I had left (a difficult-to-find 1992 “Puyfromage” from one of the smaller vineyards in southern France) and sat there sipping my wine while looking at the as-yet unopened Amazon package. Continue Reading →

IKEA Benno gives more head

When I have a look at my site statistics (and to be quite honest, I rarely do that), I notice that my short description of using the IKEA Ivar system to store my CDs is by far the most popular post. Of course, people often reach this site trying to find assembly instructions, which I don’t offer, or a “free IVAR system”(?), which I certainly don’t have either, but a whole bunch of those accidental tourists actually decided to subscribe to the site’s RSS feed, so why not pull in the other half of the earth’s population as well, the one that goes for the other outrageously cheap IKEA system, the Benno CD/DVD/Video unit (and no, I did not forget the “Billy” fans … they’ll be served next week)?

I am a fan of cool designs, expensive storage systems and classy shelf units, but my budget is eaten up by what I actually put on the shelves or into the units, so until I win a million in the lottery, IKEA it is for me, and many others like me. Continue Reading →

Monty Alexander and Ray Brown

Once in a while CDs just sneak up on me. More often than not they have been lying around forever and suddenly, while crawling around in front of my jazz collection, which is housed in low shelves, CDs literally jump out at me. I just have too many CDs and when the bug bites me, I try to listen to sessions I haven’t heard at all or just sampled and shelved away for some reason.

I wonder what went wrong when I went on a Monty Alexander and Ray Brown buying binge and stowed the CDs away. I was probably hooked on some other stuff (I did buy the CDs discussed below just when I entered one of those retro fits after having purchased the remastered Status Quo back catalog, which transported me back to my childhood and lots of air guitar playing in my 9 square-meter room at the time, so that might be an explanation). Continue Reading →

Why I Do What I Do

After having covered many of the things that can bug a music collector like me in three different posts, I came across “I Heart Compact Discs” by Jared Christensen, a new 9rules member. It made me think of why I do actually collect so much music.

From experience I know that we collectors are a special breed, but from simply observing people around me, I do believe that collecting is a genetic thing shared by many in more or less extreme forms. I know people who collect the more obvious things like stamps, books and art, but also people into things like watches, coffee mugs and – not exactly a cheap hobby – motorcycles (my question why anyone would need more than twenty of those is invariably answered with the one as to why I have several thousand CDs).

I can’t speak for the others, but aside from knowing that what I do is crazy and, considering the expenditure, extravagant, it has become a part of my life that is just too difficult to shake. It’s not an obsession or a clinical condition yet, but there have been times when common sense went out the window and money was spent on some rare recording, a limited-edition book, or even some equally rare Scandinavian bone china or furniture. There have been times when the “gotta have” voice in my head was just screaming too incessantly for me to successfully battle that particular inner demon. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (III)

I already vented in part I and part II of this ongoing series on collecting insanity, but I’m far from finished. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (II)

In our first look at the many things that can drive a collector bonkers, we discussed terrible box sets, maddening stickers, irritating packaging, generic covers and stupid or incomplete liner notes, small print, and the hidden track of doom. If you thought that was all, think again …(11) Freak Programming: Not all collectors agree, but I prefer chronological sequencing on boxed sets collecting all the recordings by any one artist. Jumping between sessions or from 1952 to 1973 and back to 1964 just gives me headaches. Add to that the sometimes very in consistent volume between tracks and you have a maddening ride that feels more like an excursion on the Titanic than gliding along in a sailboat. Continue Reading →

Trials and Tribulations (I)

If you are a collector, you are constantly confronted with insanity right and left, not only when meeting other collectors, who could sometimes single-handedly feed the entire profession of psychologists, but especially when confronted with irritating to completely moronic label behavior, product design, or else. There’s just so much to get irked about that I thought I’d dedicate a page, or two, three or four to it. So, in no particular order … Continue Reading →