Record Rehab Revisited

I blogged about how I was becoming immune to the record on vinyl bug.  I named that piece Record Rehab.

That kind of thinking can lead one to feel a certain way about vinyl and result in selling up to three crates of records.  I know from firsthand experience.  Prior to discovering Montreal's Death of Vinyl record store in 2007, I trimmed down my collection.  I sure as hell have brought home the three crates and more in the last few years. 

At that particular point of writing the Record Rehab blog post, I wasn't hungry to buy records. I used to wish I’d find at least one record that interested me when I would go to a store and eventually lost that anticipation. My rationale was that I have a lot of records and most of them haven’t been heard yet.

It made me wonder why I’d be seeking more when I could probably be very surprised by my own collection. I have heard people talking about trimming down their collections and that brought me to ask myself some questions. If push came to shove, which is my most prized record on vinyl? Which are my prized records on vinyl? How many do I really need to own?

I finally learned that I can’t own or play all the music in the world. It’s starting to come together.

I had thought about cutting back, downsizing and curbing my appetite for records on vinyl since starting this blog.  After the two major Montreal record conventions each year, some intense crate-digging episodes during a handful of trips to New York and a few trips to Toronto in recent years, I've been forced to review that stance.

Record conventions like the WMFU Record Fair are right up my alley. There's a beauty in racing against the clock with more choices in records than humanly conceivable and hopefully remembering where/when/how you found those records before the vendors pack up at the end of the night.

The bi-annual Montreal record conventions, including the Puces Pop Record Fair, have been very good to me as well. On many occasions I come back home with a bag bursting with beats. I have found a number of wishlist records as well as others I didn't expect to see.

A local record vendor told me how much he admired my restraint where record hunting is concerned. That's an interest comment to make about me because for someone who practices restraint, I leave record conventions with my bag at the breaking point. I claimed to have wanted to cut down my record buying but have brought home multiple copies of records which I already owned and gave up years ago! What kind of restraint is that?

There are so many records & choices in this world that it can be easy to go overboard.

History has a way of repeating itself. I'm a vinyl man to this day but these days I gotta streamline the collection a bit. Pray for me!

My name is DJ Solespin and I love vinyl!