Mighty Collectros Deconstructed

13

  Comments


  • you should type in "psych" and "prog" and
    "classical" into popsike, just for starters.

    Popsike is not shit, my man. Most soul records in the $3,000 and up range (of which there are many) are rarely sold through ebay.

    Wouldn't that also be the case with other genres?

    No!








  • I think some of this "private press" schitt is the same damn thing, personally.

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts
    you should type in "psych" and "prog" and
    "classical" into popsike, just for starters.

    Popsike is not shit, my man. Most soul records in the $3,000 and up range (of which there are many) are rarely sold through ebay.

    Same is true for most psych records. The arguments
    cancel out. Look, I'm not trying to "son you" or
    something, I'm just saying - within the "mighty
    collectro" scene being discussed here, soul music
    is if anything still considered a niche by many dealers
    and old school heads. Ever deal with 50's classical records?
    Dudes have million-dollar "Living Stereo" collections and shit.

  • Just to be clear, I am not trying devalue the
    importance of Black music in history or it's
    importance among collectors and music fans of
    all races ... but to assume that 60's and 70's
    soul music is the dominating genre of music
    collected is a remarkably narrow view, understandable
    because of the enviroment you operate within, but
    still highly debatable.

    It would be extremely surprising to me to learn that psych or prog or classical has more top tier titles (let's just say $3,000 and up for the sake of argument) than soul.

  • yeah, I was referring to popsike. click on the most valuable records in the universe button.

    Sex Pistols
    Beatles
    Mozart


    I agree that if you "obsessed ith collecting black music" you might have some identity issues. what about people that get into records for the music, and dont give a shit about the history or skin colors of the muscians?

    I don't think that this exists.

    how do you determine what's good if you don't give a shit? you have to have a language to place it in.

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts

    It would be extremely surprising to me to learn that psych or prog or classical has more top tier titles (let's just say $3,000 and up for the sake of argument) than soul.

    Wow, really?

  • hcrinkhcrink 8,729 Posts
    You guys sound lonely.

  • Way to kill the thread Crink!


  • It would be extremely surprising to me to learn that psych or prog or classical has more top tier titles (let's just say $3,000 and up for the sake of argument) than soul.

    Wow, really?

    You seem to be more assured than I am about this subject, so from your perspective what is the dominating genre? As just so we're talking apples to apples, how many $3,000+ titles belong to that genre, by your estimate?

  • You guys sound lonely.

    Hardly. I live in a house full of people, and unfortunately, records.


  • spelunkspelunk 3,400 Posts
    I think some of this "private press" schitt is the same damn thing, personally.

    Yeah, cause people do floss it just cause it's rare, but the music still gets played and heard, and at the very least people are paying for music that is actually rare, not just for some packaging and runout groove numbers.

  • hcrinkhcrink 8,729 Posts
    You guys sound lonely.

    Hardly. I live in a house full of people, and unfortunately, records.


    This sounds like an existential crisis. I find that locking myself in the record room and reorganizing by spine color helps during times like these.

  • MjukisMjukis 1,675 Posts
    Good thread. I love that Misfits auction in the Popsike link, I'd almost forgotten about it...


    After many years of hanging on to my punk records I am finally selling them off.Up for bid is a 45 from the band The Missfits and is called Horror Business the record is in Excellent condition and the sleeve is in good shape. Songs on this record are Horror Business ,Teenagers from Mars and Children in heat. I believe this record is a rare one. [/b]


  • This sounds like an existential crisis. I find that locking myself in the record room and reorganizing by spine color helps during times like these.

    I admit I had vinyl organised by spine colour and I got some funny looks.

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts

    You seem to be more assured than I am about this subject, so from your perspective what is the dominating genre?

    I don't know for sure, but I do know that in my experience, I meet more
    obsessive collectors of punk records and beatles/elvis crust stuff than
    soul music. I just think you are really focused on soul as the main kind
    of music/records collected, and it's just not true. But if you are changing
    the argument to this:

    As just so we're talking apples to apples, how many $3,000+ titles belong to that genre, by your estimate?

    For which I don't have an answer, but there are many many punk records
    that sell for thousands ... I would say the closest comparison to soul
    might be rockabilly or doo wop, as far as being 45/78-based formats, with
    many small regional releases with tiny pressings trading hands for thousands
    of dollars - and I will admit that soul's time frame of releases beats
    both of those genres hands down, but still, there are dudes trading big
    $$$ rockabilly 45's on forums just like the guys swapping $500 45's on
    Soul Source as if they were baseball cards.

  • hcrinkhcrink 8,729 Posts

    This sounds like an existential crisis. I find that locking myself in the record room and reorganizing by spine color helps during times like these.

    I admit I had vinyl organised by spine colour and I got some funny looks.

    How do you handle the multi-color ones?

  • How do you handle the multi-color ones?

    By selecting a dominating colour and blending it into the collection.


  • But if you are changing
    the argument to this:


    I wasn't changing any arguments. My original post was an effort to flush out what the poster meant when they said that the most expensive records were by white people. I didn't know if they were talking about the 10 most valuable records or the 1,000 most valuable records. I then made the suggestion that if you were looking at the 1,000 most valuable records (which, while not actually not possible in reality, is a little more interesting to think about than the first page of popsike), then a sizeable percentage, if not majority, would be soul records. Could be that I'm just wrong though.

  • You guys ever do spine-collage?

  • You guys ever do spine-collage?

    yes



  • I don't know for sure, but I do know that in my experience, I meet more
    obsessive collectors of punk records and beatles/elvis crust stuff than
    soul music.

    "Meet" as in meet them in real life? Virtually all the heavy spending soul dudes are overseas, as I'm sure you know.

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts

    "Meet" as in meet them in real life? Virtually all the heavy spending soul dudes are overseas, as I'm sure you know.

    I know, but, again - so are big psych collectors
    and rockabilly collectors or whatever. I hate how
    I find myself in the position of somehow arguing
    against soul music, since I am all about soul music
    and aren't even trying to suggest it is not a huge
    collector market or whatever ... I just think you
    are selling many other styles of music short.
    Punk collecting is HUGE. Yes, big big $$$ spent. Worldwide.


  • "Meet" as in meet them in real life? Virtually all the heavy spending soul dudes are overseas, as I'm sure you know.

    I know, but, again - so are big psych collectors
    and rockabilly collectors or whatever. I hate how
    I find myself in the position of somehow arguing
    against soul music, since I am all about soul music
    and aren't even trying to suggest it is not a huge
    collector market or whatever ... I just think you
    are selling many other styles of music short.
    Punk collecting is HUGE. Yes, big big $$$ spent. Worldwide.

    The question I should be asking: are there any useful price guides published for punk?

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts

    The question I should be asking: are there any useful price guides published for punk?

    I don't know ... probably? It's been years
    since I read Maximum Rock and Roll, but I'd
    be willing to bet there are a few advertised
    in there. There are around 50 different price guides
    for 50's pop singer picture sleeves, though.
    And there are still a number of subscription-only
    classical record catalogs with records commanding
    huge $$$ figures mailed out every month. Jazz, too.


  • "Meet" as in meet them in real life? Virtually all the heavy spending soul dudes are overseas, as I'm sure you know.

    I know, but, again - so are big psych collectors
    and rockabilly collectors or whatever. I hate how
    I find myself in the position of somehow arguing
    against soul music, since I am all about soul music
    and aren't even trying to suggest it is not a huge
    collector market or whatever ... I just think you
    are selling many other styles of music short.
    Punk collecting is HUGE. Yes, big big $$$ spent. Worldwide.

    The question I should be asking: are there any useful price guides published for punk?

    I think you both are mixing your greens with whatever color your favorite sound is. This morphed from The Social Studies of Male and Female in Record Nerds to which Record Genre is Greener. And It's not easy being green. I am a lost tumbleweed now.

    Time for this...The Mighty Collectros Deconstructed Over The Current $$$ for Raer Punk

    and time for sleep.

  • SoulOnIceSoulOnIce 13,027 Posts

    I think you both are mixing your greens with whatever color your favorite sound is.



    Hey, way to make my argument for me, and then use it against me

    But you are right, we have gone way off topic.

  • luckluck 4,077 Posts
    Interesting.

    Also, as a female, since I don't feel my interest in records is driven by competition or an urge to prove my "manliness", I actually like the music better than the men collectors I know.

    Whereas I actually listen closely and enjoy, and it really means a lot to me.

    That's the only way to be and how I got here in the first place. Though I wouldn't want to say that men in general don't like the music as much as collecting them. I guess I was trying to answer why it's male dominated but ended up posting a few too many lines in a paragraph. I recognize the competition aspect being around some record nerds and it's not my thing. I do care to listen and I can still appreciate the game as it's often quite entertaining. It's also real weird. I'll have to admit, being female also has its perks. (i.e.)It is nice to beat dudes in their intimate circle of break trivia with something simple like The Frog by Kool and the Gang and then go back to doing something totally unrelated. If a dude pinned it down, the answer wouldn't be as cool.

    You'd always top me with breaks! trivia; my brain is no good at spotting samples. I even had trouble with the Willie Hutch loop for UGK's I.P. Anthem - and that's an LP I first heard years ago.



    It is late (early) and I have no idea if the following will cling to a semblance of reality. Nevertheless, as it regards this piece:
    Interesting concepts are broached here, namely regarding the nature of collections/hoards and the group mentality wherein and whereby like-minded collectors congregate. This, and the fact that hoarders of music disproportionately appear to be male. Furthering this in a scientific manner, however, seems to be a task for the departments of Trait Studies and Probability and not inclusion in a largely speculative work like this.

    A good number of points the author makes are either flatly indefensible and/or fall into several logical fallacies (i.e. Appeals to Belief and Common Practice) or smack of dubious psychoanalysis. Another Leslie Fielder Krin Gabbard is not (although, frankly, thank god for that). To claim that the Jazz fan that happens to find himself white while listening to black music is in actuality "...concern[ing] himself with with the homoerotic and voyeuristic elements of his fascination with black men as they enact their masculinity with saxophones, trumpets, and other phallic instruments" is to marry the most dubious facets of Freudian psychology and whip them up with the same sensationalized and racialist fervor which it denouces. The bulk of the sources used by Gabbard are Hollywood films, for god's sake. I am certainly missing the context of this chapter in its relation to the rest of its corpus (for among all things, I do not even know the title, much less the thrust of the work in toto). If it specifically is a study of film (fantasy) as it indirectly relates to compulsions (real life), it might begin to redeem its stolid pop culture trappings. Either way, the shortcomings of genre films are to blame for the shortcomings of their creators or auteurs. Perhaps if the author is interested in psychoanalyzing the authors' or directors' percieved intents behind their imagining of the respective noted works, then a certain dialogue (though again, completely speculative in nature) may be opened.

    I also read, for the first time in my life, the term "nerdism." May god save my mortal soul.

    I don't know about anyone else, but I live for the fleeting moments in which I can play, for instance, a Gospel track that excites another person, that opens someone's mind to the genre in general. Perhaps it's partially bourne of pride, but I'm glad to potentially represent a conduit - in the same manner as countless teachers before, alongside, and after me - to pass on my few scraps of knowledge to others that can find it fulfilling. It's really an an of contrition for me - I've been taught so much and have taught and can teach so little to others.

    That, plus the apparent fact that when he plays his trumpet on my turntable, I lovingly imagine Miles Davis with a gigantic cock in his mouth and in turn, I literally and figuratively masturbate in a poor and unfulfilling attempt to find my Spiritual Center and throw off the White Guilt that encompasses me within a 50-year-old extinct American black artistic experience. I had no idea that I was so lascivious. I'm going to have to wash watch my hands more often.

  • mannybolonemannybolone Los Angeles, CA 15,025 Posts
    Holy shit - someone who actually READ the essay.

    Luck: the essay is part of an anthology on gender in film. A friend of mine xeroxed the piece for me but I believe the anthology is called "Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls."

    One issue, that I think you're raising, is that record collecting has tended to be studied from a lit crit perspective (hence the bend towards psychoanalysis) and there's nothing really resembling qualitative data (such as interviewing actual collectors) to help bolster any of these theoretical claims.

    The "big" essay that's out there isn't Gabbard's, it's actually Will Straw's "Sizing Up Record Collections: Gender and Connoisseurship in Rock Music Culture" which appears in an anthology on sex, gender and popular music called "Sexing the Groove." (From the late '90s).

    Straw, if I recall, takes a similar approach as Gabbard though Gabbard's "contribution" is to bring in more of the racialized analysis (itself adapted from Eric Lott's writing on minstrelsy) since Straw is primarily concerned with issues of masculinity rather than race, per se.

    All phallic imagery aside, I think the main points in both essays have merit to consider, namely that 1) serious record collecting is connected to an alternative masculinity but still one very much concerned with mastery and domination on some level and 2) cross-racial interest in Black music, on some level, has to do with race and racial desire.

    These are, of course, not theories meant to explain human behavior across the board or in each and every case.



    Interesting.

    Also, as a female, since I don't feel my interest in records is driven by competition or an urge to prove my "manliness", I actually like the music better than the men collectors I know.

    Whereas I actually listen closely and enjoy, and it really means a lot to me.

    That's the only way to be and how I got here in the first place. Though I wouldn't want to say that men in general don't like the music as much as collecting them. I guess I was trying to answer why it's male dominated but ended up posting a few too many lines in a paragraph. I recognize the competition aspect being around some record nerds and it's not my thing. I do care to listen and I can still appreciate the game as it's often quite entertaining. It's also real weird. I'll have to admit, being female also has its perks. (i.e.)It is nice to beat dudes in their intimate circle of break trivia with something simple like The Frog by Kool and the Gang and then go back to doing something totally unrelated. If a dude pinned it down, the answer wouldn't be as cool.

    You'd always top me with breaks! trivia; my brain is no good at spotting samples. I even had trouble with the Willie Hutch loop for UGK's I.P. Anthem - and that's an LP I first heard years ago.



    It is late (early) and I have no idea if the following will cling to a semblance of reality. Nevertheless, as it regards this piece:
    Interesting concepts are broached here, namely regarding the nature of collections/hoards and the group mentality wherein and whereby like-minded collectors congregate. This, and the fact that hoarders of music disproportionately appear to be male. Furthering this in a scientific manner, however, seems to be a task for the departments of Trait Studies and Probability and not inclusion in a largely speculative work like this.

    A good number of points the author makes are either flatly indefensible and/or fall into several logical fallacies (i.e. Appeals to Belief and Common Practice) or smack of dubious psychoanalysis. Another Leslie Fielder Krin Gabbard is not (although, frankly, thank god for that). To claim that the Jazz fan that happens to find himself white while listening to black music is in actuality "...concern[ing] himself with with the homoerotic and voyeuristic elements of his fascination with black men as they enact their masculinity with saxophones, trumpets, and other phallic instruments" is to marry the most dubious facets of Freudian psychology and whip them up with the same sensationalized and racialist fervor which it denouces. The bulk of the sources used by Gabbard are Hollywood films, for god's sake. I am certainly missing the context of this chapter in its relation to the rest of its corpus (for among all things, I do not even know the title, much less the thrust of the work in toto). If it specifically is a study of film (fantasy) as it indirectly relates to compulsions (real life), it might begin to redeem its stolid pop culture trappings. Either way, the shortcomings of genre films are to blame for the shortcomings of their creators or auteurs. Perhaps if the author is interested in psychoanalyzing the authors' or directors' percieved intents behind their imagining of the respective noted works, then a certain dialogue (though again, completely speculative in nature) may be opened.

    I also read, for the first time in my life, the term "nerdism." May god save my mortal soul.

    I don't know about anyone else, but I live for the fleeting moments in which I can play, for instance, a Gospel track that excites another person, that opens someone's mind to the genre in general. Perhaps it's partially bourne of pride, but I'm glad to potentially represent a conduit - in the same manner as countless teachers before, alongside, and after me - to pass on my few scraps of knowledge to others that can find it fulfilling. It's really an an of contrition for me - I've been taught so much and have taught and can teach so little to others.

    That, plus the apparent fact that when he plays his trumpet on my turntable, I lovingly imagine Miles Davis with a gigantic cock in his mouth and in turn, I literally and figuratively masturbate in a poor and unfulfilling attempt to find my Spiritual Center and throw off the White Guilt that encompasses me within a 50-year-old extinct American black artistic experience. I had no idea that I was so lascivious. I'm going to have to wash watch my hands more often.

  • The_Hook_UpThe_Hook_Up 8,182 Posts
    So, really being into Stax means I am secretly wanting to be into a racially integrated intellectual and musical enviornment that produces top shelf soul and pop music?

    Well, right on....

  • Guys, read the article before you get all defensive... most of these posts are like "hey just because I like Black music doesn't mean..." and of course that's not the total gist of what the author was saying and it just makes it look like you actually DO have some strange subconscious thing going on because why else would you be getting all defensive without even knowing what's being discussed?

    Try to look at it like this: people collect types of music that express some innate desire for a particular "cool" that is informed by their subconscious and how they wish to be seen by their peers (often, other collectors or at least music aficionados). To deny that race plays any part is foolish, just because virtually all American music is very race-specific and race-conscious (let alone American society). So, while the article refers to collectors of jazz, and their subconscious desire to associate with a cool Black music and its accompanying scene, the next logical step is not that a guy who collects Polish freakbeat wants to be Polish - he wants to be cool in his own conception and that is likewise informed by subconscious desires and ideas. This isn't revolutionary.

    Everyone's leaping to defend themselves as if they've been called out, but the article is about a very specific type of collector and of course we all know there is a degree of variance... but seriously, I've met enough record collectors to know that we're all trying to be SOMETHING... what that is may be specific to the person but the subconscious factors are mostly the same.

    I tried to consider how I fit in to all of this, because I am not at all a collector who operates off lists or completion of discographies... often I will actually decide I have too MUCH of one artist. I do not concern myself with gaps at all, yet I do not have a "complete" collection in any sense... unless that sense was based around my own personal happiness with my collection.
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