I should be filing this guest post under our “confessions of a record addict” series.
I’ve been friends of Aaron Turner for what I am guessing is about 7 or 8 years. I say guessing because I really can’t remember exactly how long to save my life. I have seen him play, Isis play so many damn times that it is impossible to set the shows apart. All I can remember is it was at CBGB’s on a bill with National Acrobat and Cave In and again I think this is the bill but wouldn’t swear on it. We have many a mutual friend but oddly it was a mutual affinity for Bjork that began some of our earliest email exchanges and like all friendships, we began ours with a mix tape, this one featuring the rarest of rare Bjork material. From there it was only a matter a time that we discovered we were both record addicts and Bjork was just a surface obsession; there were hundreds of other artists and other rare records we were actively looking to get our hands on. Okay and it doesn’t hurt that he bought a shirt from my old band when he was a kid at one of our worst shows ( we were the last band to play a three day hardcore / emo fest in Mass during the early 90’s.) ever.
I’ve learned since the true depth of Aarons obsession with music and if anything I think his label Hydra Head reflects all aspects his (and his partner Mark Thompson’s) genuine love and respect for music. Beyond putting out music that is consistently excellent and mind bending, their attention to detail, their ridiculous stellar packaging, artwork, and limited color pressings are a record collectors dream come true. After you read Aaron’s piece below you will truly understand just where Hydra Heads dedication for flawless releases comes from. To put it mildly, it ain’t no accident and just to be clear while a good addict loves company, Aaron’s record collecting ways sits at the bottom of a long list of things I admire the man for. The number of talents and skill Aaron has makes me feel like an ant along side a giant.
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I'm sitting here in an airport, the Oakland airport to be exact...
I'm at the end of another short trip, one of many that I've made this year, and like many in recent years past. the purpose of this trip was to surprise a close friend for his 30 birthday, the arrangements having been made by his girlfriend, also a close friend of mine. Though the trip was just over 24 hours in duration (from my front door and back to it), I somehow managed, as I so often do, to rack up some more credit card debt by purchasing hundreds of dollars of records in a VERY short time. This particular time i was victimized by the cruel staff at Aquarius records, who certainly know a sucker when they see one, and who have swindled me many times over since my discovery of their shop 5 or 6 years back. Though I was only in the store for a matter of minutes, I predictably walked out with a fairly large stack of records and feeling about $250 lighter. the funny thing about this particular trip is, I somehow considered my spree "moderate", if that gives you any indications of how far my rampant record consumption has escalated over the course of my life, and more specifically in the last 8-10 years. You could say I have a problem, and addiction even, one which causes detriment to my wallet and causes all available spaces in my home to be filled with CDs, LPs, 7"s, cassettes, box sets, 8 tracks, flexi discs, and all manner of recorded media. It is not however, a problem I wish to escape, though I occasionally feel guilty about the excessive amounts of money I spend, the time I spend scouring the globe for these things, and the hours spent negotiating trades with other obsessives. once in a while I also feel as if some of the records I buy suffer neglect from too much competition, a coked listening field if you will - some CDs and LPs retain their shrink wrap for weeks or even months after being hauled back to my lair, and some of those that are emancipated from it are quickly relegated to the vaults after only one or two spins. That said, I feel that it's all worth it when I find that ONE record - the one that doesn't leave the cd player or turntable for weeks, the one that romps around the interior of my mind when I'm trying to fall asleep, the one that I seek out on all formats and import versions (with bonus tracks of course!), the one that I mention to anyone with whom I share ANY musical common ground for months after it's purchase, the one that inevitably ends up on my self important year end best of list - the one I wish I'd made myself, or somehow had participated in making....
Being in the airport now reminds me of so many other return trips, my bag bloated with records, my shoulder sore from it's weight, my anxiety over whether the corners of the LP sleeves are getting bent, the anticipation of the "session" when I get home - to sit down, to select a record from the stack (usually the one i'm most excited about - which I suspect could be on of THOSE, the holy ones), I'll ceremoniously pour over the liner notes and art of the first selected record, and when it's contents are exhausted I move on to the next.... or perhaps I'll just sit back and soak up the sounds. Sometimes if a new item has been acquired that has a particularly handsome sleeve i will display it, cover out, on the shelving that holds the stereo as well as the other "recent" acquisitions (recent meaning anytime in the last 18 months).....
I'm thinking of one particular return trip right now - coming back from a short tour of Japan - short, but not so short that i was unable to spend over 1,000 bucks on records, in 7 different stores in 3 different cities. Most of my purchases consisted of vinyl LPs - the hardest to transport of all formats, and of course my favorite as well. Due to my need to have my collection in the best condition possible, all the records I purchased on this particular jaunt had already been inserted into the requisite protective plastic sleeves and packed together in well padded bags in accordance with the self imposed requirements of my return voyage. I had in insisted that I did not want to put the records in the luggage that I was checking, for fear that the luggage would be thrashed by callous and even spiteful baggage handlers of whatever airline I was flying at the time, so I reasoned, the records MUST travel with me in my carry on.
As a result I had the pleasure of lugging around the heaviest carry on I've ever traveled with through the immense and winding maze that is Narita International Airport, and then through the long terminal, US customs, baggage claim area, and parking garage at our arrival airport, LAX. Not more than 10 minutes after I'd entered the sliding glass doors at Narita in front of our particular terminal a particularly distressing incident took place. I was limping along, crushed by the weight of my carry on, lamenting my inability to control myself at ANY of the record stores I visited, feeling as if this was somehow my penance for being a collector of records, when much to my dismay, my shoulder strap snapped, the plastic bits of latch shooting off into oblivion, the bag and it's precious contents smashing into the hard tiled floor with a soft thud, followed the unsympathetic laughter of my band mates who were only steps behind, and had witnessed the whole event. funny to them, near tragic to me, I cautiously opened the top flap of the bag, unwrapped one of the several bundles of bubble wrapped LPs, only to discover to my horror, the very thing which I sought to prevent at all costs: every fucking corner (lower left) of every fucking record in the bag had been bent, dented, smashed. I had done myself the very thing which i had feared would be perpetrated by the ruffian bag handlers - i had scarred my latest cache of LPs in it's entirety, for all eternity - for, as any record collector knows, there is nothing to be done for a sleeve that has suffered and dent, scratch or fold - no matter of fiddling, pawing, or flattening can mend these awful wounds. I grimaced and cursed my own stupidity once more, and shot resentful glares at my still chuckling band mates who were completely unaware of the severity of the blow I'd just suffered by my own hand. Now, I can stand a record where the vinyl itself might be a bit dinged up, a bit scuffed, the character that this adds to the recording and the experience of listening to vinyl is not undesirable - there's something warm and reassuring about the sound of a well worn record. Conversely there's nothing I hate more than an lp sleeve that is visibly damaged, ESPECIALLY if it's a sleeve of particularly pleasing graphic ingenuity. In fact if it's a record I like enough, I've been known to purchase 2nd and even 3rd copies of an album if i come across a one with a sleeve in better shape that my own. Stupid? Yes... satisfying to me, most certainly....
Now, who cares about any of this, my trials and triumphs, besides me? Not many I'm sure, BUT for those out there who suffer the same affliction as I, these may be tasty tidbits, reminders of similar experiences, reassurances of the existence of other souls following a similar path of scavenging, coveting, and gleeful acquisition. a record collectors collection is never complete, the quest never ends, the piles and stacks never cease growing, and the desire to hear, hold, an own that which has yet to be found is unceasing, infinite.
