Sometimes when I visit a record store I’m overwhelmed by the feeling that I know nothing about music. Surrounded by tens of thousands of albums, realising I might have listened to less than one percent of them.
Visiting Discogs’ LP section can do the same: 3.5million releases and counting. Take one square from the above photo and multiply it by fifty, the result by another fifty, then once more. That’s close, but the Discogs catalogue is far from complete. So double or triple it again.
Ten million, give or take. However, that’s not tangible so not as overwhelming.
In the physical space? It’s too much to comprehend at even a fraction of the size. The ultimate paradox of choice. If you don’t know what you want, where do you even begin?
Epochs
Sometimes when I visit a record store I might be searching for a specific item, or an item informed by various epochs in my musical influences.
Those influences could include (in some sort of order): The record collection of my parents; The music press I was reading as a teenager (NME, Melody Maker, et al); The skate videos I was watching from the late nineties to the early noughties; IRC/Napster/Soulseek/Limewire, which would (in some cases) allow you to browse the entire music collection of a peer; The time I was playing guitar; The Radio/Films/TV I was listening to/watching at various times; A gap filled by my partner, roughly 2009 to 2019? Oh, and finally, my own growing record collection.
There was about a decade when I wasn’t paying as much attention, as I was mostly playing fingerstyle acoustic guitar. Ask me a music trivia question from that period, or play me a popular piece of music from then, and I likely won’t know the answer.
I guess for some people that gap becomes a cavern, as they don’t ever backfill it. Then it just keeps growing. At some point you turn into Rick Beato and lament that new music is getting worse, but do that by cherry picking all the worst examples of new music.
Look harder, beyond the algorithms.
The Pleasure of Finding Things Out
Sometimes when I visit a record store I don’t know what I’m looking for. Something. Anything. Perhaps a recent release recommended by the owner of the store.
As was the case Seattle, in the summer of last year. A release by Reunion Island in the new arrivals section that was described in a way that appealed to me. So I picked it up, then listened to it a few weeks later when we got back home.
When you’ve spent money on something you’re compelled to consume it with more attention than you would otherwise. Or if it’s a recommendation from a trusted source it might command more of your attention than if it came from an increasingly less trustworthy bottomless algorithmic feed.
I liked it. And since it wasn’t already on Discogs, I added it. Plus one to that roughly ten million catalogued releases.
In fact, I liked it enough to purchase the band’s previous album, and even though the shipping cost turned out to be far higher than they had estimated they sent it to me anyway. I liked it as well.
That’s the pleasure of finding things out.