Is Record Collecting a Disease?

Do you remember those wonderful things called vinyl records? Remember how you used to run eagerly to your local record shop with pocket money in hand in order to buy the physical manifestation of the latest great new track you just heard playing over the radio. Sure you do! Well, if you're over 35 you do anyway. Vinyl, Wax, Records, 45's, LP's. They had many names and varied in size from 7" to 12" sometimes with colorful sleeves and a special vinyl smell only a collector would recognize. Large flat black disc shaped objects that you span at 33, 45 or even 78rpm on that manually operated device known as a turntable.

With care and precision you would slip your newly purchased vinyl treasure from its inner sleeve being careful not to touch the playing surface with your fingers or thumbs for fear that the grease from your thumb prints would impair the musical experience and mark your record. With breathless love and tenderness you placed the pristine platter onto the soft rubber turntable and then with the gentle touch of a mother to her new-born baby carefully lifted and lowered an ultra-fine diamond stylus over the grooves of the vinyl. Picking your desired speed, usually 45rpm for singles or 33rpm for Long Players (That's LP's or Albums to us old-school kids) you got the disc spinning and painstakingly lowered the hardened carbon tip to softly land in one of the spinning grooves, being careful not to lower it into the actual track but the lead in groove thus not harming the song. With some of the more manually dexterous turntables you had the choice of speeding up or slowing down the rpm (revolutions per minute) of the turntable ever so slightly to suit your ear thus you might find yourself playing a 45 record on the 45 setting but sped up slightly to 47 rpm because hey, it just sounded better that way.

Your speakers would boom and pound as the diamond stylus translated the physically pressed vinyl indentations into sonic noise that would emanate from your speaker (pops, hisses and all) Any deviant unwanted crackles and snaps would usually occur when a record wasn't pressed particularly well or the record was warped or even if god forbid! You had lent your much-beloved record to your girlfriend who would inevitably scratch it up. However you could with patience and acquired skill maneuver your bass, trebles to drown out hisses in a carefully orchestrated feat of audio engineering. This all sounds like a lot of bother I'm sure to today's audio-phobes. CD's are for sure a lot easier to play and look after. Fingerprints and even scratches do not usually stop them from playing at optimum performance but I submit that for those of us who used to enjoy playing our vinyl platters the simple joy of placing a small piece of wax on a turntable and getting it to sound juuuuuuust so! Was a hugely enjoyable thing.

Then there was the visual aspect of enjoying your vinyl collection. Large formats like theses allowed for some visually very appealing artwork, especially on some of the LP's. Even if the music wasn't always particularly good you could enjoy the pretty pictures. There was also the invention of the Picture Disc, shaped disc, 5" disc, multi-grooved disc (wherein you would have 2 songs on one side of a 12" single depending on which groove your stylus landed upon), colored vinyl, etched vinyl, laser etched vinyl, strange covers made from everything from metal cans to camel hair (I kid you not). Then you have the scarcity and rarity value of items that have unusual packaging and limited editions of 1,000 or less have gone on to lead some records to be hugely collectable and valuable.

As an avid Record Collector I am on the constant lookout for a few records that I MUST have to complete my collection. Well, I say complete. No self-respecting record collector is ever really going to finish or complete their collection but that is what is fun about it. It's the thrill of the chase. With the advent of EBay and other auction houses as well as magazines such as 'Goldmine', 'Record Collector' and various online resources such as Craig list, it has become a lot easier and I would hazard to guess cheaper to complete (or at least try to) your precious collection. For years I had been looking for (2) singles by a great old Punk band called 'Wire'. They were 'I am the fly' and 'Dot, Dash'. With Picture sleeves of course. Recently I acquired both these singles for probably 1/3 of the price I would have hat to pay in a London Record Shop over 20 years ago. The competition is greater for sellers and makes things easier for buyers/collectors. Acetates, which are the pre-production lacquered discs that are made in minute quantities and dispersed usually to technicians and/or band members to approve certain cuts, were always horrendously difficult to get hold of but with the advent of EBay I have managed to accrue many Acetates that I would never even have seen before the Internet let alone buy.

Vinyl records have become fashionable and cool once again. Both 45's and Albums are being released by many new/emerging artists and even some of the established bands continue to have Vinyl releases of their albums. Knowing that there are many collectors out there numerous limited edition runs, box sets, special editions are produced to placate the ever growing popularity of vinyl collecting.

As a Record collector I believe that I suffer from something of a disease and the same goes for all collectors. Call it a compulsive neurological disorder that I doubt is recognized by any medical governing body. In most cases it's hardly devastating and is usually an enjoyable and not financially crippling affliction. Although I have probably spent too much money over too many years on records that will survive me to the grave. As with all collectors we all know that we can't take it with us but it doesn't stop us from trying. So for now I say - Long live the Collector, may he or she acquire what they may before death makes the final and ultimate collection.