Completism

i think i own every proper isb album now. (or every album that i really wanted anyway. all the studio stuff, basically. finally got a copy of be glad for the song has no ending) i'm not a nut about this. definitely glad i'm not a huge sun ra fan. let's say you are a big soft machine fan. and you want everything related to them. what are you talking about there? 300 albums? who knows. anyway, do you need everything by someone? who? does it drive you buggy? we are talking vinyl here, folks. don't care about your vast nww cd collection.

The Shadow Ring, The Dead C, Charalambides. I guess I've fallen off on the Charalambides completism--there are several tom carter LPs I don't have, and probably some other related projects. i get pretty deep though. two migrantes LPs, solo LPs, Scorces stuff etc. i own tons of bruce russell & handful of dust records i never listen to, yet i am always searching for more Gate LPs.

if i started to collect neil young singles i'd lose my mind, but i do have all the LPs except a few i think, and would buy those if i found 'em reasonably priced.

do you have dead man and mirror ball

i have mirror ball. or, well, the store has copies of mirror ball all the time and i could probably buy one today if i wanted it. it's not that good imo. WANT dead man.

was silver & gold ever on LP?

bigger question is why I have four different versions of Greendale

http://store.acousticsounds.com/d/8384/Neil_Young-Silver_and_Gold-Vinyl_Record__LP

someday i hope to be a 78 completist and collect every 78 issued on the columbia viva-tonal label.

i wish i had dead man too. my cuz was film editor of that movie; was there when neil recorded the soundtrack.

he was, not me

I have all the Sonic Boom/Spectrum stuff on vinyl ... the mastering jobs on the Silvertone EPs in particular are pretty stellar

i'm complete on fahey LPs. missing the double 7" and uh, wasn't there a vanity 78 too? and obv i don't have the fonotone stuff.

- john storm roberts's authentic/original music LPs (and also CDs eventually tbh)
- mississippi records (missing about 12 tapes and 3-4 of the original LP's, plus i have a few later-pressings of the early comps)
- i guess yazoo LPs? this is new for me, but i havent heard any bad ones yet.
- i started wanting to have all the captured tracks records, but ive definitely cooled on that. that said, i have them all except for the blank dogs CD-R.
- i think i have every psychedelic horseshit CD-R, tape, 7", LP, and compilation.
- don cherry -- ive gotten 25 LPs in the past year
- i have every jay reatard solo record and single and comp-track, but i havent got too much of the pre-solo stuff
- i have almost every butterglory release?

I AM NOT A COLLECTOR

i remember when 3rd street jazz in philly had, like, a zillion copies of dead man and they were sellng them for nothing. five bucks or less. can't really remember. and i didn't buy one! that was silly of me.

someone tending to vinyl reissues of jarmusch soundtracks would be really worthwhile - the various incarnations of ghost dog are really frustrating too. dead man would be lovely to own.

japanese version of ghost dog is supposed to be tops, right? but did it come out on vinyl?

oh, also i'm a michael hurley completist. need first songs & blue navigator and i think that's it.

big time completist. maybe Sun City Girls has been the best / most ridiculous example of this? I'm pretty sure I have everything they ever released on vinyl, except for Torch (where I bought the CD reissue and haven't bothered to seek out the vinyl) and Crossdressers / Dante's (where I bought the original CDs and didn't by the Locust vinyl reissues)(big mistake). I even got that ridiculous 2LP version of Piano Bar. Dead C pretty sure I have everything now. Hurley I think I have everything except First Songs, which I *used* to have but sold cuz I was broke.

and yeah, there was a Silver & Gold. THere is still a copy at the store down my block for like $40. heck, there was a Prairie Wind, Living At War, and Fork in the Road too, if you are willing to go broke.

Bob Dylan, I'm pretty close to having everything up through the 90s ... I've actually been buying his recent records on CD tho

we've had all those three latest neil LPs in the store but fuck it those are not very good records and $$$$$$$

i gave my brother in law the dante's vinyl for christmas one year and told him it was like a savings bond. when i see the 100 dollar price tag that crossdressers gets on ebay i get a little itchy to sell mine...

i actually need a copy of freedom. don't have mine anymore. and ragged glory too come to think of it.

i'm a bad sun city girls fan. i've bought and sold and traded their stuff for years. if i had held on to everything i'd ever bought of theirs i'd have quite the collection!

I have both of those (Freedom and RG) ... the crazy thing is that they are both 60 minute albums --- and single LPs! I DO need to get the 2LP Sleeps With Angels.

yeah, crazy about those 3 LP sets on Locust. Are the original 2CDs (also out of print) going for anything, I wonder?

apropos the Steve Miller discussion on the other thread, i have everything up through the 80s except for that one early 70s one with 'Eden' in the title.

I have every J. Geils band album except for Hotline (even including the last one without Peter Wolf -- some dude once sent me it as a throw-in.) can never find a copy of that one that isn't beat up, but i'm sure it will turn up.

I just got Sleeps With Angels! I also have RG & Freedom, which are great records, as opposed to say, this notes for you or everybody's rockin which i also own but consider less listenable.

whabbout Broken Arrow?

never even heard it!

i think i only have two sun city girls records these days, djinn funnel and crossdressers. ill probably never sell those, and id def pick up torch or a few others if i saw em, but im no completist for em.

i guess hurley is another, but im missing a few -- i have first songs, armchair boogie, hifi snock, snockgrass, have moicy, ancestral swamp, and the new 7". do you have the CD only ones, ian?

i have a few of the CD only ones on my computerrrrrrrr.... you need to get long journey! that one is top notch.

if u guys were really hardcore Hurley completists u would be talking about the OG cassette tapes that all those CDRs represent ;)

I am a Virgin Prunes completist, and a Jazz Butcher completist until Max Eider left. At one point or another I have also flirted with being a Muslimgauze completist (really, used to have like 80 LPs/CDs but it became impossible), and a Fall completist (still attainable on vinyl).

Djinn Funnel is one of the very best SCG albums

pete, you have Ida Con Snock too right?? and Parsnip Snips?

oh LOL right i do

xp yeah dude djinn funnel blew me away when i first heard it! i also play DJINN in scrabble a few times a week.

closest i have to being complete (but includes having some stuff on cd) is robert wyatt and alice coltrane

oh wait alice for me too a little?

ok im stretchin the completist thing

ok, i have every alice except A Monastic Trio, and Ptah, The El Daoud. but i've heard those a billion times in the past.

sooooooooooooooooooo do you guys know any troo freeks? the kind that need every label variation and colored single variation and every format and all that? you know, beatles fans. or the like. (this may get into non-vinyl territory, but i like to know about these people.)

as a record collector i've often thought that my life would be so much easier if i were just a one-genre kinda guy. how fun would that be! if you ONLY collected movie soundtracks or only blues records or something. i might still do it someday. sell everything and only buy....i don't know...ancient/renaissance/etc music or something.

Beatles Chris!!! Owns thousands of beatles LPs, CDs, box sets. I don't know if he does singles. I guess he does do picture sleeves, yeah. He's obsessive. He'll buy things "just for the sleeve" and he's incredibly picky about condition. "It's really trashed.. but it's a mono, and I might be able to use the jacket..." wacky dude. ex-cop!

i joke all the time about selling all of my records except for _______. sell everything except the fiddle jams. sell everything except the dead c & tusk.

a guy came into the record store i used to work in and would ONLY buy the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. I must have sold him 3-4 on my own. the owner sold him a bunch, too. I also sold him a copy of the soundtrack to the sequel, whatever it was called. he was freaking out.

fleetwood mac completism could keep you busy for a lifetime.

my buddy at work is into label variations. he's a vocal group collector, big time. 45s and 78s. he can look at the runoff groove and tell you where the record was pressed. might as well give plug his radio show, wrhu, sundays at 3 eastern. ever since wcbs deep-sixed the 50s, there aren't too many outlets for this stuff.

wow, i think that's rad. buying one album over and over. very cool.

there is a mentally ill guy who comes in to work and only buys herb alpert's Goin Places LP.

beatles chris, fwiw, is rumored not to even own a turntable. and he'll balk at paying $20 for a bootleg but happily spend many times that one YET ANOTHER CLEAN UK REVOLVER.

what's gonna happen when all those 50's guys die??? people who only buy 50's vocal/pop/doo wop/etc. who will take their place? kinda feel like most of them were actually around in the 50's, you dig. don't know too many 20 or 30 somethings who only collect 50's doo wop. the price of annette funicello picture sleeves will plummet in 20 years...

yeah you figure there are beatles guys who have to resort to buying even more pristine SEALED beatles albums cuz they have so many copies of everything else.

My aunt Leslie is a Nick Cave completist. right down to t-shirts she'll never wear & 45s she (probably) never plays.

xp: The fifties guys are pretty intense. There was a really great old guy who came into the store & was a big collector of doo wop & early r&B, northern soul even sometimes. He'd sit down in the basement for hours picking through 45s and then be happy to drop hundreds on them. He was also cool enough to alert us to $$$$ items that he did not care about or need or w/e. He was very ill, and I think he may have passed away as I haven't seen him in ages. Sad :\ I think about him a lot actually! Super friendly. I think he may have been a fire fighter? He'd always shake my hand and ask how I was doing. he was good at small talk.

i actually think that buying nothing but movie soundtracks would be awesome. you can get so many amazing ones for cheap. if you ask me, soundtracks are one of the truly undervalued vinyl collectable genres. that, and classical, obviously. i find amazing 60's exploitation soundtracks that i've never seen and i look them up and they are selling for, like, five bucks online.

they aren't always so friendly! the 50's guys. they can be big bullies. they like to bully their way into people's basements. i was always too intimidated to go to val shivelys when i lived in philly. i heard he was like the soup nazi.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rr0bq5rfOJA

God, I'm the original in-completist - even artists I love, I've nothing near a complete run..... too much random pecking, not enough structured searching.

is it even possible to be a vinyl completist in the strict sense? i mean, think of all the pressings, all the compilations....

i sometimes collect records in a series. because i'm anal and hate to have a vol. 3 if i don't have the preceding volumes. but in general i am not remotely a completist. if i have too many records by somebody i tend to get anxious and guilty about it, and i usually end up getting rid of all but the few that i will actually listen to regularly.

a guy came into the record store i used to work in and would ONLY buy the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack - lol, there was a panel in Hate comics where crazy Lisa does exactly that. I've always wanted to wallpaper my ultimate record room in 'Whipped Cream and Other Delights' covers, so I can see it.

I'm a completist on all my favorite artists (up to a point) in that I'll buy anything new that I come across, but I haven't NEEDED to collect everything since high school when I had to get like every Sonic Youth record that came out. I'm also not a vinyl snob and tend to collect in 'native media' so most are across formats.

some vinyl complete or almost: Throbbing Gristle, Steely Dan, Jackie Gleason, Beatles, Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Byrds, Martin Denny, Les Baxter, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Black Sabbath (Ozzy/Dio), bunch more

I know a guy who basically only collects small label soul & funk 45's. Sort of like the guys who do Numero Group must be. The records literally cover like every inch of the floorspace in his apartment. Crazy. I love all that stuff too, for a while I toyed with focusing all my energies in that area, but at the end of the day I could never be so single-minded about genre. Plus doing that is like a full-time job. The pickings are slim these days. The Brits and Japanese did a good job of cleaning us out in the late 90s. More power to the people that do this, though, we all reap the benefits through all the comps and so forth...

and yeah, I'm kinda a completist when it comes to certain comp series. Like all the Bloodstains, 'History of Pacific Northwest Rock', Love Peace and Poetry, that kind of thing.. Tons of funk series. have all the Ultimate Breaks and Beats, 'Nothing But Funk', etc. There are just so many of those things. (I started this thread --> TS: Sound Of Funk vs. Funky Jams vs. Luv N Haight vs. Funkaphonix vs. Ultimate Breaks And Beats vs. Funky Jams vs. Soul Patrol vs. Funk Cargo vs. Break Down ) I think my faves are the ones that come out on Soul Patrol records, out of France. They just do an amazing job of turning up great funky 45s.

kind of obsessive when it comes to pressings, but not really. Like, only for my fave groups. Like I have the US & UK pressings of the first Black Sabbath album (different track lists). All green-label Warners of their first few, Masters Of Reality with the poster, that kind of thing. I bought a sealed copy of Jeff Beck's 'Wired' a while back for not very much money. like 5 bucks. already had a slightly beat-up dollar bin version, but it's a great record and I wanted to upgrade. When I tore off the shrink I was pleasantly surprised to find it was an orange label Epic! I was totally expecting it to be one of these guys-

http://www.westcoastpioneers.com/uploads/pics/label_stereo_crew_shes_a_skag_epic_05921_1986_a.jpg

(totally wanna hear *that*, btw. "she's a skag" by Stereo Crew)

oh, apropos of this thread -- headed to the record store after work yesterday, and as I'm flipping through used 'new arrivals' what turns up but that Steve Miller 'journey to Eden' lp. 4 bucks, more than I'd like to pay, but in the spirit of this thread and since i was just talking about it I picked it up. so i can cross him off the list. Also found the first s/t Bonnie Raitt lp! she was another where I was just missing one. now I have everything up through 'Nick of Time'. AND i got Hot Tuna's 'Hoppkorv' which was the only one of theirs i didn't have from the original run, now have everything S/T through 'Double Dose' (the last two were two bucks apiece for pretty decent copies.) Actually think I have everything Airplane related now including all Airplane, Hot Tuna, all the solo albums and Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra crap, and the first few Starship records up to Spitfire. i guess I should probably pick up 'Earth' at some point for a bunck. It *does* have Marty on it and "Call On Me", which is really beautiful..

Stormy! Where do I start with Bonnie Raitt? see the records all the time, i think my mom was a fan, i know a few folks who dig on her.. what's the real shit?

I would start with 'Streetlights' maybe. It has her wonderful version of Prine's "Angel From Montgomery". and it has her covers of Allen Toussaint's "What Is Success" (might be my fave Toussaint tune, but god the guy's written so many tremendous ones...) and Howard Tate's "Ain't Nobody Home". god that one-two punch of "What Is Success" and "Ain't Nobody Home" to open side 2 is awesome. but it is all well-prodouced R&B type stuff, her earliest records are a little more blues, like on 'Give It Up' with the title track and "Love Me Like a Man". Definitely avoid anything from the 80s tho, she was terrible then. I only have those recs cuz, well, i'm a "completist"...

actually, 'Green Light' from '82 ain't so bad. kinda rocking. has my guy Ian McLagan from the Faces on piano too

all the 70s albs are a nice mix of stuff she wrote, covers of stuff her contemporaries wrote (Prine, Joni, Jackson Browne, etc), and old blues and soul covers. still haven't popped on this first LP yet, but it has covers of Sippie Wallace and Tommie Johnson, so i have high hopes

what's gonna happen when all those 50's guys die??? people who only buy 50's vocal/pop/doo wop/etc. who will take their place? kinda feel like most of them were actually around in the 50's, you dig. don't know too many 20 or 30 somethings who only collect 50's doo wop. the price of annette funicello picture sleeves will plummet in 20 years...

― scott seward, Friday, February 12, 2010 12:50 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

man, I think about this every time I look at my ^$^ '50s records (that I got for 35 cents or whatever). I should really just SELL NOW I guess, but as long as I still have a day job I think I'll keep em. I mean, they're good records!

God, I'm the original in-completist - even artists I love, I've nothing near a complete run..... too much random pecking, not enough structured searching.

― sonofstan, Friday, February 12, 2010 4:30 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I am exactly like this. Although someday I should post my Command/Project 3 "haves" list just for giggles.

really only did this in college and immediate aftermath and I don't think I ever got complete on anyone with a substantial catalog. I'm pretty close on Pavement, I think I have all the vinyl except Slay Tracks (Peel Sessions, bootlegs, Pacific Trim 7")

some bands I tried to get complete or near-complete on back in the day, I ended up selling most of it (e.g. all the Tortoise dance remix 12"s)

i think steve shasta might have a slay tracks for sale?

re. bonnie raitt - GIVE IT UP is my favorite. TAKIN MY TIME is great too.

i'm pretty bad at completism, mainly because i can't quite afford it these days. i'm close on tom waits, neil young, fleetwood mac, and several others. i think the last time i vowed i would complete a set of something was this texas/mexican border music series that was released via arhoolie; i had a few lps in the set and wanted to get them all, then i realized there were over 20 in the series and i don't think i can swing that.

buy one a year.

plus imo theres a big qual difference bw volumes

i saw a weird ESP-disk LP for sale last night, and im wondering if i should grab it. it was underpriced, and i feel like i could probably be okay with being an ESP completist.

have you guys heard this one?

sounds interesting if nothing else
http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=43:118907

I have that, on CD. I was an ESP completist back when ZYX first did that series of reissues in the mid-90s. I think I ended up with everything. I remember thinking the Ito music was cool enough but don't recall too much about how it sounds now. I'd definitely pick up an LP cheap tho

i mean, it's 25. not CHEAP, but underpriced.