Leaderboard

Hello, long-time lurker here. I joined the boards in 2008 -- navigating the Virgil craft beer/VC label days as a clueless 14 year old -- and I somehow continue to follow everything here into my late twenties, for better or worse. Derek asks an excellent question that addresses some things I've recently been wondering, as well. Happy to contribute to the discussion on this one. Over the years my collection has probably fluctuated between 250-350 records. I wouldn't consider myself a casual collector but more of a conscious collector (barf). I purchase and sell and exchange very often. After collecting for such a long time, I'm surprised that my collection hasn't reached the four-digit mark (someday I hope that it does!) However, for some reason, I've always been wary about purchasing records I wouldn't listen to and getting rid of records I don't listen to. Even as a kid, and seeing my regular shelves (I had no clue about IKEA) fill up with three or four of the same record in different colors, I thought about how silly it was to collect in such a way -- especially when I found out adults that were much older would buy a Blink 182 variant for silly, silly prices. As I get older, I am absolutely becoming more of an "occasion-based" listener. Collecting and listening to records requires so much presence -- I play the records that I think best accompany the moment or the season or whatever. I don't have any kids and I work from home so I have all the time in the world to listen to records. I actually make it a priority every day to wake up early before my girlfriend and put on a record or two while making coffee. It's definitely very ritualistic for me. With that idea in mind -- I've done my best to clear up any records that I don't really see myself (or ever found myself) listening to within that "ritual". Anything I take the time to listen to and enjoy on my record player is usually calming or relaxing. Jazz, ambient, older country/folk, downtempo, deconstructed club, slowcore, etc. My turntable gets the most love in the morning or later at night -- and both of those times usually call for relaxing music. The most notable thing I've done to my collection is get rid of my heavy records. This makes me sound old and lame but whatever. I'm sure that sometimes these records sound much better on vinyl, but I usually listen to heavy music in transit or at the gym or through headphones. I've seen some really valuable records come and go from my shelf, and sometimes I kick myself for letting them go, but they almost always fund other purchases and can mostly be replaced with more common pressings if I were to seek them out down the road. Another thing that holds me back and helps weed out the unnecessary records is the quality of music. This sounds incredibly dumb to ask but I question if I actually enjoy the entire record before purchasing. Does it just have one or two good songs or can you throw the whole thing on and fall in love with it? Can you get lost in the entire album or do you take it off the platter after Side A? Within reason, I pride myself on being able to take out any of the records on my shelf, actually knowing and enjoying the entire record, and recognizing a good time to listen to it. My best friend just got a new job at a record store and comes home every day with a handful of new records. He has a brilliant taste in music and an immaculate collection, but I often question if he really enjoys the whole record or just enjoys the idea that he can add another record to his collection. Is it special to him or just another number? Anyway. I assure you my collection isn't 100% up to this criteria -- and typing all of this up made me sound like a huge dork-- but I would say I actually listen to 70-80% of my collection throughout the year. And as I continue to add to it, I'm excited to hopefully feel the same amount of pride in it as a much older adult. At the end of the day, this is a deeply flawed, very wasteful, very incredibly frustrating, expensive hobby -- some mindfulness probably goes a long way.

Haunted Shores - Void out March 11th, 2022 New single 'Hellfire' out tomorrow. Preorders 9am EST 1/12/22 : store.3dotrecordings.com

Don’t know if anyone else cares but happy to get this at a not inflated price. https://allhailbehemoth.com/products/iwrestledabearonce-its-all-happening-lp

Are you using buffer or hootsuite (or something like that) to post? Just came across this in a meme dump and knew I needed to post here haha

https://dogknightsproductions.com/collections/dog-knights-us/products/us-only-dk130-forests-sun-eat-moon-grave-party-12-lp Haven't really seen this band mentioned much on here, but if you're into emo revival stuff (and I know you are) and dig stuff in the vein of Algernon Cadwallader... DogKnights restocked some of this album for the US and Canada, which is awesome because it was getting kind of expensive. They also have some of the tricolor for the newer album. Get em while they're available!

Haha good luck off loading the picture disc, I’ve been avoiding the urge to settle for one those

OMFG yes. Thank you so much @blueeyesgetboring Now I can sell my shitty picture disc lol. TY TY TY!

Thanks, and heard! I know I'm in the minority re: keeping heavy albums. I'd say I'm actually actively listening to music for atleast 6-8 hours every day and quite a few of those hours are filled with heavy music. It's what I grew up on and I believe that I'll continue to appreciate and crave heavier and heavier sounds. Just don't really think those belong on my turntable (I'm sure my apartment neighbors appreciate this, as well.) I'd rather crank them in headphones. 100% -- actually thrilled you brought up Bohren (great esoteric music guy™ example) as their discography gathers dust on my shelves until those rainy, dark moments. But when those moments happen, I'm basically salivating at the chance to throw those records on the platter. This also kind of brings up the seasonality of music that I only scratched the surface of. I always, always recommend people start organizing their music into seasons -- this is the best pairing for vinyl imo. I promise I'm not so starkly neurotic, but it's surprising how much more enjoyable it makes music listening for me. In the summer, I'll throw on my OG pressing of Siamese Dream and it's like I'm hearing the record for the first time again -- waiting all year for that moment and experiencing it again gives me the chills. When I love a record or artist, I *really* love the record or artist and tend to obsessively listen until burnt out (or the seasons change lol). So much so that I often step back after some time and feel like I've listened to everything ever released ever. Or, ironically, painted myself into a corner by assigning albums strictly to certain moments/seasons. This is all entirely false but forces me to listen to online radio to discover new artists and albums, which generally is a really great thing. I'm usually pretty good at staying up to date on spotify releases but then I remember that those don't even come close to releases that only go through Bandcamp or Soundcloud or Youtube. It's overwhelming! It is also a wonderful reminder that there are hundreds of thousands of records that you haven't heard or you will never listen to unless you seek them out -- best part of being passionate about consuming music. All dorks! Anyway: I lurk multiple times here every day and mostly just find disappointment seeing threads about old Yellowcard releases. Seeing stuff like this is always heartwarming and a good reminder of how nuanced and enjoyable this hobby can be! Thanks for asking these questions, it's been a fun read. PS: Here's kind of a fun example for me: I have a first pressing of As Cities Burn "Come Now Sleep" staring at me on the shelf right now. I bought it when it was finally pressed (maybe five+ years ago?) and I was waiting quite a long time to have it in my hands! I think it's a great album, the guitar work is absolutely gorgeous, and the packaging/variant is awesome -- really resonated with me as a young adult. But now? Not so much at all. I can still recognize that it's a great album and I enjoy knowing that I own it. But as I type this, I'd rather just sell it and use the money to buy a jazz record I can throw on each morning¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So now completely TBA? 👍

So annoying that stopped. The CRCR Demos are some of my favorite Pavement.

New song and interview on BrooklynVegan. https://www.brooklynvegan.com/an-interview-with-anxious-whose-debut-lp-little-green-house-is-a-breath-of-fresh-air-for-emo/ Edit: Got a shipping notification for the Dark Medicine variant.

I haven't looked in a while, but yeah, Hootsuite's integration with IG was very lacking. I don't think you could even do a multi-pic-post with Hootsuite.

A couple I can recall offhand where a reissue was announced and I needed to listen a bit before I decided to purchase and ended up picking it up: -Soul Coughing & Beck’s Odelay album - Albums I loved in high school and wasn’t sure would hold up but on relisten definitely did. -Juliana Hatfield’s first album - I owned most of her other early albums and trended more to those but in relisten found a lot I liked and it kind of completed an early JH collection so I purchased.

Very excited about this. There is also a Brooklyn Vegan variant that wasn't listed in the DW list. EDIT: Looks like that is the "Project M" version.

New Soul Glo for pre-order https://deathwishinc.com/collections/all/products/soul-glo-diaspora-problems First song is damn good

Or release more Secret History LPs. wth happened with that. its supposed to be on going.

I looked into that just for kicks. I can see the value in it but even giving it a test run, it seemed really unintuitive for me. (And aesthetically outdated by a few years, but that's neither here nor there.) A dark theme for it, and connectivity to Discogs for vinyl would be awesome. To answer your question, I keep a spreadsheet live, daily, with a bunch of behind-the-scenes formulas I've tinkered with over the years to cleanly monitor my incoming records, pre-orders, stuff I ordered but haven't been charged for, daily changes to Discogs values, and how much I've been spending. It's a labor of love but there's something very satisfying about keeping it synched up. Not only does the excitement make it difficult to wait until new releases are in hand before checking them out, but this "new normal" 4-9 month turnaround for vinyl pre-orders is simply brutal. I'd love to do that and I respect anyone who does but I've been hyped on music way, way longer than I've been into vinyl, so it's always about the day 1 experience for me. Every once in a while I'll stay up on a Thursday night to hear a new release – if it hasn't leaked – but my Friday mornings are super quiet at work, so I've been soaking in new releases then and it's working for me. Usually it builds the hype even more, if I know a sweet record packaging / variant is tied to what I'm enjoying digitally... even if I have to wait another month or two to have it show up. 225 records over 10 years is impressively modest. Not to come off condescending when I ask this, but do you normally just stick to a handful of genres? Or do you make it a point to only own your absolute favorite record from an artist? I feel like I would struggle immensely if you put a gun to my head and forced me to reduce my collection down to 225... which is still a sizable chunk of vinyl, for sure. I think a lot of us can easily stray off course when we see r hear people with 2,000, 3,000, 4,000+ records. We can use those numbers to justify the fact we "only" have 800 records... or - worse yet - look at them as ambitions. I absolutely do not want to be a hoarder, either. I've always told myself that it'll be "too much" if I get to a point where I can't speak to certain records drawn at random from my shelf. Right now you could draw anything off my shelf and I could at least tell you the artist, album name, variant, and describe the general vibe of the record. If I can't do that, it's not worth taking up the space on the shelf, if you ask me. What were some of the "YES" answers if you don't mind me asking? I'll do the same, especially with stuff from 2003-2007 since that was a sort of strong "musical awakening" stage of my life. But my approach is streaming it while I shower, cook, or clean... and if I find myself wanting to resume it after the task – instead of just hearing a few songs to rattle the ol' nostalgia cage and get my fix – then I'll consider the buy. Same setup for me, which could very well be a contributor to why I'm not spinning stuff as much as I should be, myself. I don't really have the space for a designated music room but perhaps one of these days. Way cool. I really admire the quality time that you and the wife make for one another, and how much she'll accompany your vinyl time outside of the extreme / metal albums. To your last point, as cornball as it is to admit, I think some of my more coveted records have been really nice to own – even without gloating or flexing them online – and have totally risen in value. I'm not treating them like stocks or anything, nor do I expect my loved ones to retire off mint, rare Converge variants that I may leave them, but there is definitely an odd appeal there, for me. Fortunately that's such a tiny % of my collection and I absolutely do not drop big money on super rare variants of stuff I already have, these days. But just an interesting point to consider, I guess. Like if I have a clear-with-splatter variant of something that's /25, and people pay $300+ for, but I also have a black copy that's valued at $15, and sounds even better on the turntable... your take is "eh, you only live once, who gives a shit about these anyway?", and you'd get around to playing both. Whereas I'm guilty of falling into the collector's trope, thinking that I'm going to strike it big someday - or something - by stashing away some rare 12"s that won't ever see a needle. It's dumb even writing it out. And it'd be a different story of there weren't readily available copies for cheap... not trying to deprive myself or anyone else from owning the album, you know? Just an interesting "collector tendency" to consider as a part of the hobby™. Yeah... for your first paragraph there, you 100% captured why I very, very rarely buy up OSTs. I think there are exceptions to the rule, don't get me wrong, and the presentation / packaging is really an added allure... but I always wonder how often people legitimately sit down and listen to a full album of film or video game scores instead of watching said movie or playing said game. I know they're out there – the people who genuinely go hard to Hans Zimmer – but I genuinely and wholeheartedly feel like most people buying OSTs don't made it through the B/C sides very often. (Sorry to the soundtrack fiends that have every Mondo release.) There's nothing wrong with being super passionate about a movie, game, show, etc. and wanting to consume merchandise from it, but I don't trust myself, personally, to buy the score for anything that entertains me. I just know it wouldn't get played, and to top it off, I feel like they're typically priced higher than traditional band LPs more often than not. I think we've all been there, regarding your "ravenous consumption" of bands you're into. I know I'm starting to sound [even more] like an elitist prick and I want to reiterate, to any keyboard warriors reading this, that this is all my opinion, and that you're encouraged to buy what makes you happy, but I feel like one of the tell-tale signs of a newbie collector is when they're running rampant to own every potential release for a given artist. I say that because that was me when I first started. I needed every variant possible, and the b-sides, and the demo tape. (Because I'm definitely going to opt for those stripped-down, tin-can versions of the studio songs over the album version.) I'm not saying that those versions aren't cool to check out once or twice, but to physically own? And multiple variants of? To each their own but I can think of no bigger waste of space. But this is also coming from a guy who's dicey on live records, so, your mileage may definitely... especially considering how much some people love live recordings. Point is, I feel like a lot of people get swept away when they find themselves in a honeymoon phase with an artist... whether it's hearing them for the first time, or getting caught in the hype of a new release that's raising the bar. Or I guess, alternatively, a band can wow you early on in their catalog but continue to release stinkers that you should feel obligated to buy, for the sake of saying you own their full discography or whatever, I guess. But sometimes you just have to put your foot down. Kudos to you for already realizing that, ha. I feel like that's half the battle.

Fair enough! Saw the last few sales on discogs for the US version was in the 75-120 range 🤷‍♂️. I see now, too, that the EU copies go for 😳 a lot more than I thought! I'm pretty open to negotiation with anybody. Sorry to hear about your cats...I'm proud cat dad myself and can't imagine where I'd be without my boy. This album definitely soothes the soul. Updated the op to trades and willing to negotiate..thanks!

Bullmoose is oos. GITD on amazon

https://www.bullmoose.com/p/35357553/the-mars-volta-landscape-tantrums-unfinished-original-recordings-of-de-loused-in-the-comatorium-glow-in-the-dark-vinyl $26 shipped 😂

You know you’re in for a good time when a service provider has to have a status page.

I’m so ready for that chat pile record

I’m only selling records in bitcoin from now 😂

I'll step up with a reasonably genuine response before the T-swizzle gifs. Been collecting 25ish years technically, but more "seriously" for probably 15-20 years. I'm sitting at about 1500 in my collection. I managed to get most of what I wanted before prices/scarcity went way overboard, so I'm at the point where I have about 15 older records on my discogs wishlist that I'm convinced I'll probably never own because of price/scarcity and most of my current record collecting is newly released music. I still go to record stores hoping this is the day I'll run across that copy of This Desert Life for $20 bucks or something, but I find myself leaving empty handed more and more. I feel like I've reached a plateau in that respect, which is frustrating I guess but fine - it means I have a lot of what I want. I would say close to 100% of my collection has been on my turntable at some point. I've never really been a sealed or variant collector except for the Felix Culpa (check the avatar yo) and the odd album I really love where a cool variant/remastered album/etc. came out later. I have a shelf of test presses and I'll actually spin the 50% or so where it's only vinyl version of the album I have. I have a cabinet below the stereo where I put new purchases and it's pretty rare that something goes upstairs (where my collection is) before I listen to it at least once - for some reason I find myself paranoid that I'll buy an album and there will be an issue with it or it won't even be the right music on it and if I don't listen to it, by the time I do it will be too late to do anything about it. Now I'm married with two kids (brag), so you're comment that your free time vanishes isn't lost on me. My kids like music and I've had music on the stereo whenever I can for as long as they can remember, so I can often get away with putting something on during dinner or on a weekend when we are all hanging out or playing or whatever (and if I can get Encanto or Frozen or whatever out of the stereo), but I'm obviously limited in what I can put on in terms of intensity/profanity. I don't listen to anything THAT intense, but there are certainly things that I wouldn't play when my kids are around or that would cause my wife to suggest I turn to something else. I also can't really play something brand new unless I'm certain the content is OK (found that out the hard way a couple of times). That type of album also isn't ideal for listening to after everyone's gone to sleep, so they might sit in my "queue" for a while until those blissful few times when everyone else is gone. Which happens maybe 1-2 times a month and I definitely have to make it a priority to listen to them. But if I know I'm going to have an afternoon to myself, I get a little excited (lame) because I know I have the opportunity to listen to certain stuff I can't generally spin with the kids around and at a volume that would not otherwise be allowed. I do make an effort to thumb through my collection on a fairly regular basis (maybe 2-3 times a month) to see if I feel like listening to anything I haven't spun in a while. If I haven't listened to it, I'll try to figure out if I have a good reason and if I don't I should probably listen to it to try to figure out if I even need to still own it. I have tried to sell some stuff recently (with pretty good success) and when COVID first started I did do a pretty heavy weeding of records so that I have about two shelves worth I'll trade into the local shop when I get around to it. I have a very small collection of 7" and I can't really imagine bringing those out to listen to anytime soon, but it's bands I like and they don't take up much space, so I'll keep them around. Anything I really like (like, say, MCR's Conventional Weapons set) I've since just purchased digitally and I'll do that if I want to listen. I do have some stuff I bought before you could easily listen to every album to see if you like it and maybe I put on and didn't listen to the whole thing, but I keep around because I think if I revisit it maybe it will click. Prog rock and old folk records were my two go-tos when I was studying in college/law school. I don't find myself in the mood for that stuff as much anymore when I get time to myself, though I still genuinely enjoy it, so I'll get back around to listening to it eventually, I think. There's certainly an argument to be made that given my current lifestyle, vinyl collecting no longer makes all that much sense, and I completely understand that argument except that it's the best and I love it. Plus, as I think I said in the other thread you mentioned, if I didn't collect vinyl I would have to take up coin collecting or parkour or serial killing or something and I really like listening to music and supporting musical artists, so I guess it's as good a thing to waste my money and time on as any.

1- Harmlessness (10/10) 2- Whenever, If Ever (10/10) 3 - Illusory Walls (6.5/10) 4- Always Foreign (4/10)

It’s black.