Your Music Collector Idiosyncrasies

[Rooster_Ties]

2 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Like what? Sounds interesting.

 

24 minutes ago, Dub Modal said:

Indeed. Rooster Ties’ collection of obscure 70s jazz by no names sounds like it could make a helluva comp. 

I’ll have to post the whole list sometime (I’ll make it a separate thread). I’m out of town visiting my Dad this week, and I’ve got a couple hundred discs I need to refile (been like that for months), before I really know what all’s in that section. But I’ll start a thread about it in the next week or two — and see what people think.

Come to think of it, it’s probably more like 60 discs — but still, lotta stuff too obscure to remember much of by title or even artist, even though I own it. (Plus I do have a few other better-known things in there, just because they sorta fit nicely stylistically.)

Maybe I’ll post a new title every day, with some YouTube clips, if I can find ‘em. Not all of it’s world class stuff, mind you — just stuff I liked well-enough to keep and not trade away (or donate).

Edited April 28, 2022 by Rooster_Ties

[porcy62]

I hate dupe. Usually I keep originals in any case and a reissue only if the original is heavy damaged. And I tend to get rid of stuff I don’t listen to anymore, keep some of it only for sentimental reasons. I was an avid listener of everything for ages, so I accumulated thousands of records of every kind from African folk to electronics from avant-garde to country from punks to classical ecc.. Now I’m discharging most of this stuff at my local stores trading for jazz records I don’t know, after selling lots of stuff on discogs. 

Edited April 28, 2022 by porcy62

[Stonewall15]

I Have my collection on a spreadsheet. First column is the artist, which I file by. I also have a second and third column where I can list other significant artists. I can sort these columns when looking for a particular artist. This helps me find LPs/CDs in my collection with multiple prime artists.

[sidewinder]

Mine is pretty random, no plan to it at all. I do segregate original Blue Notes, Impulses etc. and British Jazz has its own rack. Mosaics also stored together. Amazing that I ever find anything.

[John L]

The way that I arrange my CDs is kind of crazy.  I somehow need to put them in a rough order of the history of jazz, but then keep all CDs of a single artist together, and kind of keep certain movements and subgenes together...kind of.   In the end, it is a mess.  I can find artists with more than 8-10 CDs in my collection right away, but cannot remember where I filed quite a number of CDs.  With age, it is getting worse.  Thank God that I have my collection ripped to hard drives where everything is organized by artist in alphabetic order.  

 

 

[HutchFan]

3 hours ago, Dub Modal said:

Indeed. Rooster Ties’ collection of obscure 70s jazz by no names sounds like it could make a helluva comp. 

Who needs Gilles Peterson when you've got Rooster Ties!?!   

 

[felser]

4 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

When there isn’t a definite leader in a one time all star ensemble, I usually file them in with the various artist anthologies, but there are exceptions that I make for no particular reason.

If one of the members produced or arranged the session, or wrote a preponderance of the material I file it under them (Timeless All-Stars goes under Cedar Walton, many of the 50's Prestige sessions go under Teddy Charles or Mal Waldron).

[HutchFan]

1 minute ago, felser said:

If one of the members produced or arranged the session, or wrote a preponderance of the material I file it under them (Timeless All-Stars goes under Cedar Walton, many of the 50's Prestige sessions go under Teddy Charles or Mal Waldron).

Please let me correct an error you've made: Timeless All-Stars go under BOBBY HUTCHERSON. 

JK   

 

[felser]

42 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

Mine is pretty random, no plan to it at all. I do segregate original Blue Notes, Impulses etc. and British Jazz has its own rack. Mosaics also stored together. Amazing that I ever find anything.

I file Blue Note, Strata-East, Nimbus West, and Black Jazz by label, secondary sort by artist, tertiary sort by recording or release date.  Everything else is by artist, secondary sort by recording or release date.  I also have oversized mini-lps (excluding Blue Note and the other named labels) in a separate section for shelving efficiency reasons.  

[HutchFan]

39 minutes ago, John L said:

The way that I arrange my CDs is kind of crazy.  I somehow need to put them in a rough order of the history of jazz, but then keep all CDs of a single artist together, and kind of keep certain movements and subgenes together...kind of.   In the end, it is a mess.  I can find artists with more than 8-10 CDs in my collection right away, but cannot remember where I filed quite a number of CDs.  With age, it is getting worse.  Thank God that I have my collection ripped to hard drives where everything is organized by artist in alphabetic order.  

I really dig the idea of a chronological filing system.    But I can see how it would be difficult to maintain. 

 

[felser]

1 minute ago, HutchFan said:

I really dig the idea of a chronological filing system.    But I can see how it would be difficult to maintain. 

 

You would need a cross-index available.

4 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Please let me correct an error you've made: Timeless All-Stars go under BOBBY HUTCHERSON. 

JK   

 

Your unbiased opinion  

[HutchFan]

2 minutes ago, felser said:

Your unbiased opinion  

Precisely!

 

[Rabshakeh]

12 minutes ago, felser said:

I file Blue Note, Strata-East, Nimbus West, and Black Jazz by label, secondary sort by artist, tertiary sort by recording or release date.  Everything else is by artist, secondary sort by recording or release date.  I also have oversized mini-lps (excluding Blue Note and the other named labels) in a separate section for shelving efficiency reasons.  

Do you differentiate labels by period? Blue Note 1962 is quite a different fish to Blue Note 1974. 

[Kevin Bresnahan]

22 hours ago, mjazzg said:

I admire this approach but honestly it gives me the collywobbles, I'm going to have to lie down.

I'm like Hutchfan, if I like one album by an artist I invariably just have to have more. I have a shelving section specifically for albums that they are the only title by an artist I own, it's quite a small section. This week I bought my first Charlie Mariano and loved it so much I immediately bought another. I'd not even got close to fully absorbing the first.

Duplicates, twice the fun!

I have duplicates, triplicates and quadruplicates galore. I have started paring them down but I still do stupid shit like, "Well, this CD has the alternate takes" when I know damn well that I don't ever play those alternate takes.

[JSngry]

Ok, case in point, just from today - I need more than one Kenny Burrell record, but there's no way in hell I need every fucking one of them, just no way. There's buttloads of them, and they're all good, but, you know, how many times will you feel like listening to the ones that are "merely" good? I mean, the guy's made a lot of records for a reason, but if 1000 people buy one of them but another 1000 buy a different one, that's still 2000 Kenny Burrell records sold. so he's done his part and shouldn't feel bad about that.

Me, though, if I listen to one of them one time and am not pretty damn solid on that, yeah, I'm gonna need to hear this one again at some point, then holding on to it just to have is...not a sustainable practice over the longest haul.

Still, there's a good number of Kenny Burrell records that I want to have on hand. But not all of them. NO!

[Rabshakeh]

There'd be an interesting thread to be had considering which album people would pick if they had to pick one album per artist (or period, for those whose work does periodise). 

 

[felser]

31 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Ok, case in point, just from today - I need more than one Kenny Burrell record, but there's no way in hell I need every fucking one of them, just no way. There's buttloads of them, and they're all good, but, you know, how many times will you feel like listening to the ones that are "merely" good? I mean, the guy's made a lot of records for a reason, but if 1000 people buy one of them but another 1000 buy a different one, that's still 2000 Kenny Burrell records sold. so he's done his part and shouldn't feel bad about that.

Me, though, if I listen to one of them one time and am not pretty damn solid on that, yeah, I'm gonna need to hear this one again at some point, then holding on to it just to have is...not a sustainable practice over the longest haul.

Still, there's a good number of Kenny Burrell records that I want to have on hand. But not all of them. NO!

I tend to concentrate on a specific time period for someone like Burrell.  I tend to have a bias and generally don't go beyond the 70's for an artist unless something changed in what they were doing.

2 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

Do you differentiate labels by period? Blue Note 1962 is quite a different fish to Blue Note 1974. 

I combine the Lion/Liberty/UA albums together, as there was continuity in the artists (for example, Horace Silver).  The label changed, but it was still the uninterrupted history of the label.  I consider the Manhattan era which "relaunched" in the 80's to be an entirely different label (just using the same name), and don't include them in the segregation of the label in my collection.  So a 1960's Freddie Hubbard BN gets filed in BN for me, a 1980's Hubbard BN goes into my general Hubbard shelf along with his Atlantic's, CTI's, etc.

[GA Russell]

LIFO - My CDs and LPs are filed merely by how recently they have been played.

Except...

I file my bossa nova, surf guitar and surfing records separately (We've discussed this elsewhere.) for summer listening.

I also file separately my newest (to me) albums, by year.

[Peter Friedman]

I am just the opposite of some here. I have been an obsessive collector going way back many many decades. If I like a musician, I begin to search out more recordings by that person and over time try to get everything that individual has available. And that mean searching all over the world if necessary to locate that one recording done in South America, or Japan or Poland, etc.

That has meant my collection has become huge, which means I am unlikely to be able to listen to every single LP or CD on my shelves in the time I have left on this planet.

Though I have to admit that while I was never interested in streaming jazz recordings and wanted hard copies, as I have reached my "old  age", I stopped purchasing hard copy recordings about 3 years ago and now subscribe to Apple Music where I download items that interest me that are not among the multiple thousands of LPs and CDs on my shelves throughout my house.

[Teasing the Korean]

Here is mine:

I file by genre, so I may file one artist in as many as five places, depending on the nature of the music.  

 

[Ken Dryden]

23 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Here is mine:

I file by genre, so I may file one artist in as many as five places, depending on the nature of the music.  

 

David Grisman is a challenge to file by genre.

[Chuck Nessa]

1 hour ago, Ken Dryden said:

David Grisman is a challenge to file by genre.

Not if you ignore him.

[felser]

3 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Here is mine:

I file by genre, so I may file one artist in as many as five places, depending on the nature of the music.  

 

I only have two filing genres ("Jazz" and "Everything Else"), but do split my CD's by someone like Lou Rawls across those.  How many genres do you have his stuff in?

[John L]

9 hours ago, JSngry said:

Ok, case in point, just from today - I need more than one Kenny Burrell record, but there's no way in hell I need every fucking one of them, just no way. There's buttloads of them, and they're all good, but, you know, how many times will you feel like listening to the ones that are "merely" good? I mean, the guy's made a lot of records for a reason, but if 1000 people buy one of them but another 1000 buy a different one, that's still 2000 Kenny Burrell records sold. so he's done his part and shouldn't feel bad about that.

Me, though, if I listen to one of them one time and am not pretty damn solid on that, yeah, I'm gonna need to hear this one again at some point, then holding on to it just to have is...not a sustainable practice over the longest haul.

Still, there's a good number of Kenny Burrell records that I want to have on hand. But not all of them. NO!

 I feel the same way about most artists.  But some artists I love so much that I want to be surprised, want to be able to choose something for which I cannot anticipate most of what is going to be played from memory.  So I deliberately accumulate as many recordings as I can and sometimes choose one at random.  

Edited April 29, 2022 by John L

[Rabshakeh]

2 hours ago, felser said:

I only have two filing genres ("Jazz" and "Everything Else"), but do split my CD's by someone like Lou Rawls across those.  How many genres do you have his stuff in?

Same, although I add a third: Evil Jazz, which is the part of the jazz collection my wife knows to stay away from. With the three sections the records are organised by when I last listened to them.