This will be an ongoing series of stories and stats from music junkies around the world. The next confession will be brought to you by the founder of Menlo Park Recordings.
What are some of the crazy dedicated things you have done in the name of record collecting, for a band, as a band…anything out of the norm just because you love music? Feel free to leave us details of your music addiction in the comments section.
Name: Pitchperfect
Occupation: Tuningforkmedia founder / 17 years in the indie music industry
First record ever: Go-Go’s - Vacation
Years collecting: 22
Most ever paid for a record – 50$
Number of records in collection – 4,200 ish ( 7” and 12”ers) I don’t really collect cds
Bonus – I do not own an mp3 thingy of any kind. Technology scares me.
- I have never had any job outside of the indie music world.
- I passed up a poetry scholarship to NYU so I could work in a record store.(I know my shit grammar, spelling, and punctuations reflects my lack of schooling but come on, like poetry was going to get my any farther in life, ha!)
- At least 30% of my weekly paycheck goes to buying new and used music.
- I will not loan out a record (lp) from my collection.
- I will not combine my record collection with another person’s.
- I go see bands play 1 – 3 times a week.
- I will go back to a record store as many times as it takes to find at least one record a week that I love enough to play several times in a row. I am not kidding, if I take home a record and it doesn’t wow me right off, I will go back out again and keep trying until I find one. Some people call that OCD I call it dedicated to the cause.
- Between work and pleasure I listen to 10 – 30 records / cds / singles a day.
- I created a ridiculous blog (TFM), my first and only blog and it takes anywhere from 1 to 6 hours of my time a day.
- I moved across the country as a 21year old to a city I had never been to just to work for a record label that put out my favorite band at the time. Like a religious zealot I wanted to help spread the good word of quality music. By the time I moved there the band had broken up. DOH!!!
- Anyone who has spent time in a full time band can tell you the same love / hate story. Playing music I loved with friends seemed like a good idea at the time but it actually = 5 years of being in severe debt, the end of 2 relationships, created the loss of the best apartment ever and a move across country, doctor visits for throat bleeding and irreversible voice damage, 1 year of couch surfing and living out of suitcases, a charity donation of most of my possessions so I could easily move across county and back again, the sale of ½ my record collection at the time to pay for said move, and
- …it actually hurts my head to think of all the other (often stupid) things I did thanks to my love of music…both making it, collecting it, and bringing it to others suffering from the same bad habits.
My name is Pitchperfect and I am an addict.
