Music Obsessives and Record Collectors in the Mainstream

If you're including musicians, then the Cramps - the interview with them in 'Incredibly Strange Music' is a great insight into obsessive record (and general 'stuff') collecting. Stereolab would be another example of a band that would not exist if they weren't obsessive record collectors

azll my musical heroes, basically.

Anyway I digress - I understand that Simon Schama is "mad for it"...
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/omm/recorddoctor/story/0,11109,1590495,00.html

Don't really know if he's mainstream - mainstream historian though for sure.

yeah, i could always tell this about her by her choice in covers. (and you know it's HER choice; she's gotta be too much of an egomaniac to let anyone else pick her songs for her.)

Heroes all:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443696604577647870908169992.html

I remember hearing one of those NPR features quite a few years back when BB King donated part of his record collection to the University of Mississippi and appearantly he had one of the biggest collection of LPs, 45s and 78s of blues and rock out there. Appearantly he had a bit of everything in there, but of course starting out as a disc jockey early in his career, I guess he had an immense blues collection as you might expect.

I swear though I remember them going through some of the oddball things in there and I swear they mentioned he had a couple of Metallica LPs. If it wasn't Metallica, it was some other heavy metal band like it that you would never think BB King would have a copy of in his record collection. They also said the guy was a pretty voracious listener and would pickup a handful of Cds all the time on the road.

Oh man I can't even imagine how terribly cumbersome my record collection would be if I had the disposable income and travel schedule of someone like that.

I've also read that Pete Townshend is a pretty huge record hound. There is some article states when he was at Jazz Record Mart in Chicago and ran into some Sun Ra, which I guess was an artist at the time really hard to find in England and when he found out they had something like 200 different albums by him in stock, he bought them all and had them shipped home.

Found that quote about it, but it has been posted in other places.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NHvAL5IAf0k/TS5iEqTTNVI/AAAAAAAAAVs/pgSPZQH5fiY/s1600/pete%2Bon%2Bra.jpg

lol at the "Mr. Vocalist" anecdote

Yeah I've read that Townshend anecdote somewhere else recently, pretty cool. Though, dude, if you have shrinwrapped Sun Ra records you don't have time to listen, SEND THEM TO ME.

xpost -- yeah that's nuts. Linked a bunch of the dude's songs on this thread revive:

http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?boardid=41&threadid=23168#unread

Unlistened-to records make me angry.

they could be OPEN and in the shrink.

Having to do with something a friend posted on Facebook, I added this excerpt from a 1976 Elton John Playboy interview:

PLAYBOY: You're quite a collector of singles yourself, aren't you?
JOHN: I own 25,000 singles -- and I don't know how many albums I've got. I go through Cashbox, Record World and Billboard and write down all the records I want. I put them in alphabetical order and then just go to a record store. If it's New York, it's Colony. I'm crazy. I buy a set of records for here and a set of records for England. If I buy a single, I buy four -- one for my collection, one for the jukebox here and the same in England. If I buy tapes, I buy two of everything, too, two cassettes and two eight-tracks. I keep Tower Records alive. I mean, when I first saw Tower Records, I died. I didn't know where to start. Now I know it back and front. In fact, people come up to me and ask me -- I'm always in there, sort of browsing around -- they ask, "Do you work here? I'm looking for the Temptations." And I say, "Step around this way...." They even open up the store for me at eight o'clock in the morning, so I can browse around in peace and comfort. I refuse to take free albums. I always buy them.

I love him for that. And Honky Chateau.

Do musicians really count?

I've heard a lot of drummers count all the way to four