Freaks out there who are freakier than I am...

May 10, 2013 11:33 AM

Vinyl -- Alan Zweig feat. Harvey Pekar -- 2000 -- M VG+

"Yeah, the music is the most important thing. I wish it were the only thing. It's not. I'd be better off if it were the only thing."

A documentary about the most noble mania.
posted by OmieWise (15 comments total)

Great!!!
posted by frankbooth at 11:46 AM on May 10, 2013

Gee, I feel almost somewhat normal now in comparison...
posted by jim in austin at 11:55 AM on May 10, 2013

After 17 years of collecting, I finally catalogued the whole thing on Discogs over the past few weeks. It's been really fun. I saw stuff I hadn't seen in years. I concluded that I'd be just about perfectly happy if I could just quit my job and devote myself solely to managing the record collection full-time.
posted by anazgnos at 12:02 PM on May 10, 2013

I chatted with chaps on Discogs who had temperature-controlled rooms dedicated to their vinyl collections. They always made me feel better about my collection that merely covered a wall.


"Yeah, the music is the most important thing. I wish it were the only thing. It's not. I'd be better off if it were the only thing."

For a brief while, I would by CDs or records to add information to releases on Discogs. I realized that was a bad way to purchase music. And then I read about Beastie Boys fans who tried to get copies of the albums, EPs and singles from every country they could, and again, I felt better about my own habits.
posted by filthy light thief at 12:44 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

When I was a toddler, my folks bought me a record player. We had one record in the house, which I played over and over and over, and my folks had to buy me more records just to keep from going nuts. Next week I will be speaking at a conference in Kansas City to deliver the message: there are two different recordings of Sergei Prokofiev conducting his Romeo & Juliet Suite No. 2! Not just one, two!! Yes, we are a special breed of nutters.
posted by in278s at 1:04 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

That's one of the great things about the internet: we've learned that wherever you stand - and whatever direction you look - there is somebody further out there than you are.

It's a comfort, sometimes.
posted by AsYouKnow Bob at 1:05 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

I felt better about my own habits

As I chase down weirder and weirder Rundgren stuff (hey did you know the last three Utopia records were on completely different labels in different territories but it's okay because shipping isn't that bad from Australia oh wait) I make myself feel better by calmly repeating my mantra, "At least I'm not an Apple label variations guy." That hole has no. bottom.
posted by mintcake! at 1:29 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]

Mrs. Fnarf and I are up to about 7,000 now. But we're not CRAZY like these people. I remember seeing this documentary in the theater, at the EMP. My favorite is the loon who insists on sorting all this records by the full name of the group, even if it starts with "The", meaning most of records are in the Ts (and what on earth does he do with groups whose "The" sometimes disappears on some releases?) I guess it doesn't matter, because his other ambition is to collect "every record ever made" which even the most casual collector knows is not just an impossibility but an insanity. And he has the boxes of terrible easy-listening thrift store records to prove it.

But hey, it's his hobby. I'll bet I've got some records he would laugh at too. I've been buying a lot of vocal easy-listening lately (think Ray Conniff or Gunter Kallman), and also a lot of "when squares do rock" stuff, especially pre-Beatles pop idols trying to adjust to the new world in the late sixties, with mixed results -- Pat Boone's version of Tim Buckley's "Song of the Siren" (on Departure (Tetragrammaton, 1969) is pretty stellar!

Item, a friend of mine was flooded out by Sandy, and his entire vast collection was drowned -- the covers swelled up and locked themselves in the shelves, and had to be pried out with a crowbar. Most of the vinyl is sort of OK, but the sleeves and labels are totally ruined. In a way I think that's worse than what happened to you. Maybe not. I hope I never find out. You have my deepest sympathies.
posted by Fnarf at 1:38 PM on May 10, 2013

This movie is great. I saw it at an afternoon screening with a friend at the Empty Bottle, probably close to when it came out. My moment of self-recognition was when my buddy was chuckling at the guy who was thoroughly cleaning and listening to his records from A to Z. I'd been doing the same thing. In fact, I'm still at it, thirteen years later. I'm up to N.

Pat Boone's version of Tim Buckley's "Song of the Siren"

!!!
I was really into a few covers of Tim Buckley before I knew anything about him, so more are always exciting.
posted by hydrophonic at 2:09 PM on May 10, 2013

I got 45 minutes into this doc before I turned it off. Then I considered quitting record collecting. It should be called "Cautionary Examples."
posted by The Card Cheat at 2:37 PM on May 10, 2013 [2 favorites]

Hydroponic -- even better, Pat's version came out a year before Buckley's own (but after Buckley performed it on the last episode of "The Monkees". Yes, really.) It's pretty decent, though the rest of the LP is mostly a mix of up-tempo and down-tempo country-rock schlock. Which is not a shock; Boone can suck the soul out of pretty much anything.

And of course I got the title wrong -- it's "Song TO the Siren". You can hear it on Youtube. The album is rather scarce, I gather. People selling it for $40 around -- don't bother, unless you REALLY NEED IT.
posted by Fnarf at 2:39 PM on May 10, 2013

Thanks, it was fun to hear. Too bad Pat Boone turned into such a nutcase. (Or maybe he always was.)

On the other side of the artistic and political spectrum, I can't recommend Eugene Chadbourne's Buckley covers enough. I can't find full songs to link to, but allmusic has samples.
posted by hydrophonic at 3:48 PM on May 10, 2013

Ah, I was wondering if/when anyone would get to this.

The most interesting Tim Buckley cover I've heard so far, here.

The next-best-to-"Vinyl" music-obsessive documentary I could find on YouTube (at least), here.

Food for thought: Lester Bangs died with, allegedly, 10,000 albums stashed in a not-especially-large Manhattan one-bedroom apartment.

My girlfriend's been on a vinyl tear lately. She was kind enough to set aside Pere Ubu for me, from her stash.

But she was getting ready to donate a *cherry* copy of Don Lonie's debut to Goodwill, can you believe that?!?
posted by dr. zoom at 12:34 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

When Albums Ruled the World BBC Full musical documentary movie 2013
posted by gen at 10:01 AM on May 11, 2013

"This video is private.

Sorry about that."

Hopefully this link works better. Thanks for the suggestion!
posted by dr. zoom at 1:36 PM on June 9, 2013