Schopenhauer wrote “Buying books would be a good thing if one could also buy the time to read them in: but as a rule the purchase of books is mistaken for the appropriation of their contents.” I sometimes feel I’ve fallen into this trap with recordings as well as books, especially when I spend some time mournfully perusing the shelves of “not yet listened to” discs in my music library.
In a collection of around 15,000 items, there are nearly 1,000 that I haven’t gotten around to yet. The problem is simple: for the past 40 years I have acquired more recordings in a week then there are waking hours in which to listen to them, thereby continually growing the list of “unheard but owned” no matter how much time I devote to the collection. For instance, in 1996 I heard about an album called “Kaddish” by the British noise band Towering Inferno, described as a harrowing work that had the capacity to blow out stereo speakers if one was not attentive to volume controls. I had to have it and listen immediately. Nonetheless, it continues to reproach me every time I see it, patiently (?) waiting for the last fifteen years to get moved back to the “hear it now” stacks from limbo.
Unlike some of my music fanatic colleagues, I continue to be interested in contemporary music, having resisted the retreat into the all-too-common thinking that posits “nothing good happened after 1958/1967/1973/1980 etc.” I figure anyone missing out on Fleet Foxes, The Decemberists, Arcade Fire, Tyler The Creator, Arctic Monkeys, Regina Spektor and the like because they are still hung up on Jefferson Airplane and Procol Harum needs a good talking to. I remember one period (around 1998) when I was beating myself up for my collecting compulsion. I decided I’d use the approaching millenium to draw a line in the sand, and stop collecting anything not produced during the 20th century. I imagined myself loftily declaring “Ah yes, it’s all very well for other people, but I’m dedicating myself to being an expert in 20th century music. One can only do so much in a lifetime.” About a week after my resolution to limit spending and the size of my collection through these psychological gymnastics, I modified my resolve. I would continue to collect anything produced by a musician who began their career in the 20th century, but nothing by the whippersnappers about to join the musical conversation.
Needless to say, I never followed through on any of that.
Aside from the shelves in the music library housed in the garage, there are several other levels in the heirarchy. In my office I have stacks of CDs and DVDs I consider “no, really, you have to hear/view these now, do not banish them to the garage” and “you should get to these by the end of the year, but not today.” (Now that I have a radio show, I also have stacks of recordings that are in the “possible theme material for future programs” area that expands and contracts.)
There are also sizable items that intimidate me just by existing, constituting entire listening projects in themselves. I’ve heard only one disc of the 9-CD Andy Partridge “Fuzzy Warbles Collector’s Album” I bought in 2006, and I shudder each time I see the Grateful Dead “Europe ’72 Complete Recordings” box, all 73 discs daring me to get started.
Every so often I buy a CD or LP I already have. Thank goodness this rarely involves something I’ve already heard and forgot I owned, or I’d worry even more about the onset of “senior moments” in my life. When I get excited about something, like Ron Elliott’s solo album “The Candlestickmaker” – which I used to own on LP but stupidly traded in at some point – it is quite deflating to purchase the CD reissue and later discover it already sitting on those “unheard” shelves in the garage. Sometimes there are treasures lurking there. I was enthusing over Steve Cropper’s latest “Dedicated” album and bemoaning my idiocy in not owning more than a track or two by The “5” Royals when I had a vague memory of an album cover. Combing those neglected garage shelves, I spotted Rhino’s 1994 two-disc anthology “Monkey Hips and Rice.” The set is now out of print, but it’s brand new to me!
4 Responses to The Unheard Music
Lovely post, Mark. I think we can all identify here. Interesting exercise to contemplate for the New Year: head counts of all the unread books and unheard albums… mind you, who really needs 73 discs of the Dead in Europe when the original triple is probably too long? I speak as a great fan of live Dead.
There’s a footnote to this, by the way: the poignancy of surveying one’s collections of albums, books (and DVDs too) and realising one may/will never hear/read/see them again. Not sure at which age that revelation kicks in (40?) but it’s a heartbreaker. Probably why I just re-read Proust’s Swann’s Way for the third time…
Ditto, Mark. We’ve all been through the accumulate-vs.-appreciate conundrum in regard to our obsessive collections of music or whatever. The only time in my life I acquired recordings in bulk was when my Creem residency of the ’70s and ’80s put me on lots of promo mailing lists. But I’ve long since been dropped from them, and I’ve shed much of that booty over the years, as my interests have narrowed/intensified.
To my mind, rock-criticism-as-we-know-it has labored since the ’60s under the messianic charge of discovering “The Next Beatles” or “The Next Dylan” in their/his earliest incarnation, which in turn has led to many critics’ obsession with evaluating & cataloging every possible recording that comes their way. Robert Christgau has built a whole career in this mode with his clockwork Consumer Guides, which show no sign of stopping as The Dean approaches 70. I was always more of a grad teaching assistant in that academy, perversely enough in it simply for THE WRITING, and (confession!) I didn’t worry about hearing everything as long as I could spin passionate prose about the stuff I did cover.
One of my pastimes this year (in the many hours I wasn’t keeping up with current r’n'r) was watching those various “Hoarder” shows on A&E, The Learning Channel, etc.. While I dislike most “reality” shows on sight, the hoarder house tours fascinate me, maybe partly because I visited some places like that in my many years as a welfare worker, probably more so because I know I have certain hoarder tendencies myself, though they’ve never gotten out of hand. Many of the TV hoarders, when social workers are trying to help them clean up and organize their stuff, cling to the most insignificant little objects, because THEY MIGHT BE ABLE TO USE THEM SOMEDAY — which is the same virtue-in-the-future ideal that keeps a lot of the unheard music and unread books on our shelves. Mea gulpa.
In parting, I’d appreciate it if you guys keep it quiet about that 73-disc Grateful Dead box. Unlike you, I’ve never been a fan of the live Dead oxymoron, and I’m paranoid now that if I’m ever taken into custody by Dick Cheney’s goons for my antiwar activities, they’ll extraordinarily rendition me not with old-school waterboarding, but by making me listen (with headphones!) to that full 73-disc Dead set. Down that endlessly quaint jugband loop 24/7 — aarghhh!
Mark, a young, online acquaintance I’ve since met who’s both a pro DJ and guitar tech to a major guitarist wrote that he knew he’d found the perfect woman when he realized she loved his very eccentricities that others faulted; i.e., massive ongoing music collection, ongoing guitar collection and persistence in assorted music careers. Don’t sweat it as hoarding when it’s your livelihood.
Great piece, Mark. I am a hoarder too, and feel truly bereft if any of my stuff is thrown away. While I was away at uni,, my mother threw away all my books, letters, childhood mementos, pop memorobilia ( letter from Hugh Cornwell in jail, Sting’s autograph on a cotton hankerchief, gig tickets, any records not taken to uni etc), clothes, and I still feel traumatised, even though I have built up a bulging flat full of more stuff since then!
My current hoard item is books. Ever since I started reviewing them, they have arrived faster than I can read them. But while I am very happy for people to borrow them, I would baulk at the idea of getting rid of any of them, even though there’s no way on earth I’ll get to read even half of them.
Richard, I laughed at your appreciation of hoarder programmes on TV. They always make me feel relatively ‘normal’, because I comfort myself with the fact that at least I don’t hoard junk, like the people in thise shows. ( Though my boyfriend would beg to differ.)
I think trawling through the ‘stuff’ of people you care about -with their permission, of course – is fascinating. I hope when I depart this world, the many people I love and like will have fun going through my possessions and choosing what they want. Possessions and hoarded items say as much about a person as words ever can