Pruning our LP Collection

Carload of LP's

We listen to and collect music, these day it's mostly Country, Americana and Folk, but over the years we've "been into" all sorts of stuff — e.g., the current war in Ukraine takes me back to Gogol Bordello and Gypsy Punk. In the 1980's I was really into punk music and the local scene in London where we lived at the time. Some of my photos from that era are documented in this blog.

I recall signing up with the Columbia Record Club back in high school (that would have been the late 60's) as a member of "The LP of the Month Club". You got some free LP's when you signed up and promised to buy one a month for the next year or so. I think my copy of Bob Dylan's "Greatest Hits" (1967) would have been from that contract. That started my addiction and over the years we have accumulated a lot of music on Cassettes, LPs, CDs and digital formats. But, as we're getting on in years, it's time to prune our various collections. Especially the records that we've carted around for all these years but haven't played in many, many years!

The picture above is the last of our LP collection which I sold to Speed City Records in London back in January of this year. Over the last 10 years or so I have been slowly getting rid of our LP collection, much of it to Speed City Records (they've been especially keen on the obscure local punk stuff), some to Randy's Records in Owen Sound, and a lot was given away to friends who wanted them. I had digitized some of these albums but it's time consuming. There would have been albums in the collection that I had never played very often (in pristine condition) and never needed to digitize. We've saved a few that we can't part with and the collection in the picture would have been about the last quarter of the collection.

There are people who still collect LP's, I am not one of them. I hate the snap, crackle and pop of vinyl. But we still have a traditional stereo system with a good quality record player and, when required, we can play LP's (often to digitize them for later).

These days I still buy CD's but it's becoming increasingly hard to do so — there aren't very many record stores to haunt anymore and buying online means you get hit hard with postage charges (well postage isn't a problem if you subscribe to Amazon Prime). Our most recent car purchase, a Honda CRV, doesn't even have a CD player. Even CD's are becoming obsolete. I see there's a resurgence of obsolete media like cassettes and LP's but nostalgia for a noisy format isn't for me.

I subscribe to iTunes (pretty much anything you want to find will be found there and, if not, then on YouTube, or Spotify, etc.) and iTunes Match which lets me rip my CD's onto my computer and then store them in the cloud. There's still a lot of my CD's I haven't done but there's only so many hours in the day and, if it's already available on the streaming service, there's no need. I also buy digital music through BandCamp even when the music is available on streaming services — it's a good way to support struggling artists. Since Napster everyone who makes music is struggling as those who consume the product think Everything is Free Now (Gillian Welch, 2001).

Of the LP's we've kept several are framed and on the wall. Eg. 63 Monroe's N.F.G. (1980) is long out of print although there are rumors (2022) that it's going to be re-released. There's also albums and EP's by D.O.A., Bobby Bare, Eric Bogle, Leonard Cohen, John Prine, Guy Clark and more that are framed and decorate our home. They are lovely reminders of the music we continue to enjoy and the evolution of our tastes.

A caveat — sometimes there are artists or albums you just can't find on streaming services. We have a collection of CD's by Michelle Shocked. Her song "Memories of East Texas" from the album "Short Sharp Shocked" (1988) is one of our favorites but all of her music is impossible to find on any of the streaming services we use!