As the title of this blog would lead you to believe, I've held a lot of collections in my life. Some have stayed around longer than others, of course, but one in particular sticks out as my favorite that I've ever participated in: my collection of vinyl records. I'll never forget when I started to see records being added to preorders, and then started to hear about people buying them to go along with--brace for impact--their Crosley turntables. We were all learning back then, so try not to judge too harshly. At this time, the only collection of music I really cared about was the songs on my iPod, as the advent of Spotify was not yet upon us. I had plenty of CDs, but definitely didn't have anywhere near as many as others. It just wasn't something on my radar. Still, there was something really interesting in seeing the different variants bands were selecting for their new albums, or for represses (and first presses) of previous albums. In a way, it felt like an extension of the album artwork--one that captures something the album's cover couldn't quite convey. Of course, I'd go on to learn that sometimes bands pick certain colors because they look cool, but there's a place for that, too.
One of the funniest things about my vinyl collection was that it started by accident. A site called MyCarAndMyGuitar.com, who used to cover the alternative music scene, was doing a giveaway for the debut album by The Naked and Famous (it's Passive Me, Aggressive You--the one with "Young Blood" and "Punching in a Dream" on it). They were asking for responses to the tweet about why you felt you should win the vinyl. True to form, I was feeling silly, and responded "I want to win the record because Naked and Famous is how I want to live my life." A couple days later, I found out I won, and within the next week I had the record. Then, much to my surprise, I received another record as a parting gift from my college radio station: Vampire Weekend's breakthrough self-titled album. I wasn't sure how I felt it about My collection's modest beginning was here, and I had no idea what I was in for.
It wasn't until a few months later, when I was spending time with friends from college in Princeton, that I realized that my will to resist diving into the hobby had fully diminished. Picking up a copy of The Gaslight Anthem's The 59 Sound and Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (two must-haves for everyone's collection, and two of my most-played records), my collection had doubled, and I knew there was no looking back. Since the only other two records were gifts/prizes, I had kept things at a comfortable distance, justifying myself by saying I hadn't actually bought them myself. Well, that was over, and over the next seven years or so, I'd amass a record collection that would exceed 350 records combined.
In recent years, I've taken a liking to writing down what I played on certain days on my record player. It's nice to take a bad-weather day on the weekend and go through them, almost like a diary, to see what I was selecting at certain times of the week, the month, or the year. However, as I looked back at those journals, I noticed that there were a lot of empty entries, meaning a lot of days that I didn't spin anything. This year, I decided to make a bigger effort to play as much of my collection as I could throughout the year. Then, like the Grinch right before he decided to steal Christmas, I got a terrible: what if I tried to play all my records? I could use the journal I write my spins down in to keep track, and by the end of the year, I'd surely have all of them played--and then some. At the time, I knew I had around 300 records, so I barely had to play 1 a day to get to the end of the year with every box checked off. Life, as we all know, has other plans.
Still, I was persistent in my pursuit, even as my goals change. First, it was play every record by the end of the year. Then, it was forced to become "Play an average of two records a day for the second half of the year." At a certain point, the journal became a hindrance, as I'd spend too much time leafing through it to see if I'd played something already, instead of just picking a new 12" and playing it. As a result of the journal's inaccuracy, two records were played twice before I finished playing all of them. I decided that in order to get all of this done, an additional recordkeeping resource would be needed. Given its ability to identify if a value being typed was repeated, and the ability to search for an album to see if I'd already played it, I created a very simple Google Sheets document. In the columns, I kept track of the date played, the artist and album names, and whether or not it was a repeat. With this new resource at my disposal, the process of selecting records to play felt way more streamlined. Since I'm a sucker for routine, I kept up the journal as well, in the event of the eventual meltdown of the internet that we're long overdue for.
In looking at the journal, it's obvious that I was very sporadic with my listening habits. There'd be weeks where I'd average 3 or 4 records per day, and others where'd I'd spin a couple all week-sometimes even less. Still, I plugged along, and even as life got crazy, or as I went in and out of interest in completing the process, I always made my way back to the turntable, and spun a bunch of them. Despite how many times I thought I'd never get this done, I'm proud to say that, thanks to a huge binge around the holidays, I spun every single 12" in my collection in the year 2021. It's very much a milestone rather than an accomplishment, but I'm still very happy to have gotten here. That happiness comes with conditions, though: as the days wound down and I knew for sure that I was going to reach the precipice, I began to look back at how this experience framed my listening habits this year, for better or for worse. The question then popped into my head: was this even worth it?
There are reasons that this experiment was really, really fun. There are several dozen records that have been sitting unplayed on my shelf since the day I brought them home, and all of them got their first plays because I decided to branch out my listening so drastically. Had I not done this, I would have missed out on being reminded of how consistently great Daytrader's only full-length Twelve Days is. I also learned that I was depriving myself of the wonderful experience of bopping around my apartment to the sounds of Frank Sinatra's Christmas album. In addition, I learned a lot about records I've played before, too. I played the Naked and Famous I discussed earlier in this post in the fall, and learned that the scratch I thought the record had that caused it to skip was not there at all; I had avoided playing it for years because of a scratch I made up in my head. What I didn't make up, though, was Chiodos's album Devil, heralded as the return of scene king Craig Owens to the band where he made his name, is still not very good.
Despite all the discoveries and rediscoveries in my collection that I found, there was a little bit of a drawback to planning out my spins like this. Once I inevitably fell behind the pace I needed to keep, spinning records felt more like checking items off of a checklist than it did experiencing an album. Granted, since the process of playing a record is one that requires time to complete, it wasn't as though I wasn't paying attention to an album, but when you're trying to cycle through as many as possible, you don't get to take it all in to the fullest. Along those same lines, once I fell behind, repeating records simply wasn't an option. Since the whole exercise was meant to mix up what I'd spin on a regular basis, this accomplished its main goal, but sometimes you just really want to throw on one of your favoritesand jam it out. By around July, I realized that this wasn't going to be an option, so I started to "space out" a lot of my all-time favorites, so I can celebrate big occasions and holidays with the best soundtrack possible. Doing so took away that spontaneous joy you feel when you're browsing for something to spin, and find one that fits your mood perfectly. In addition, with concerts coming back, I began to feel that urge to spin a record from a band I just saw to relive the show I saw. This was especially true when I saw Knocked Loose in September. However, since I'd already played A Different Shade of Blue earlier in the year, I had to listen to something that was heavy. Plus, only playing Circa Survive's Blue Sky Noise once in an entire year just doesn't sound fun, and I don't ever want to have to do that again.
Even with the negatives lined out like they are above, I'm so happy I decided to do this. Having that goal in the back of my head kept me going back to my turntable, which may not have happened in previous years. Plus, the creation of the Vinyl Diary spreadsheet I made can add a huge boost to the statistical analysis of my spinning habits (that might be the nerdiest sentence I've ever typed). Plus, since a lot of my spins come when I'm cooking and cleaning up dinner, I'm sure I ended up eating at home instead of a restaurant (okay, I'll be honest, Chipotle) more this year than any other. Plus, to set a goal that involves listening to hundreds of hours of music throughout the year, and to actually hit that goal, was a really fun feeling. I don't think I'll be doing this again any time soon--and certainly not next year-- but it's definitely something I'd be up to the challenge to try again in the future (of course, with even more records). For next year, the goal is simple: average listening to a record a day for the entire year. This *could* mean that I listen to every record at least once, but I won't be looking out for that. That's because I'll only be logging records in the physical journal throughout the year, then transferring them to the spreadsheet at the end of the year (or the end of each month, I haven't decided).
Thanks for showing some interest in this wild ride I put myself on this year! As a reward for getting to the end, here's some #stats about my spins this year:
-First Record: Fireworks - Gospel
-Month with the most records played: August, 47 records (November was a very close second at 46)
-Month with the fewest records played: June, 2 Records (brutal); Runner Up: March, 7 records (these two months were the entire reason I was behind pace all year, yikes)
-The two records that were played twice: Dance Gavin Dance - Artificial Selection; The 1975 - I like it when you sleep for you are so beautiful and so unaware of it
-Day with the most records played: July 31 and November 22, 6 records each day
-Last Record: Brand New - The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me
Here's to more vinyl adventures in 2022! Happy New Year!
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